Volkswagen Super Bowl Commercial: Star Wars Ad Fails to Impress This Time Around

Volkswagen has released their 2012 Super Bowl advertisement and it’s a bit disappointing.

They returned to the Star Wars theme that was so popular last year, but did it in a way that did not truly involve the iconic film for much of the 75-second advertisement.

VW’s ad, entitled “The Dog Strikes Back”—a play on “The Emperor Strikes Back”—spends most of it’s time showing a dog who becomes inspired to use cardiovascular and weight training to chase a VW Beetle he could not catch in the beginning.

After a workout montage, the dog is shown catching up to the Beetle and then we finally get a glimpse of what we came to see this commercial for.

The camera pans out to reveal the famous Mos Eisley Cantina from Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope.

Three patrons, recreated along with the exact bar from the film, are discussing which commercial is better, the Vader kid or the new dog one. Darth Vader makes a surprise appearance to use “The Force” to let the man who did not like the Vader commercial better know it was a bad decision.

It certainly was a bad decision by the German automaker not to use more Star Wars in this clip.

The most shocking part about the lack of time spent in the fictional universe is the fact that they released a great teaser entitled “The Bark Side.”

This one-minute YouTube clip involves a number of dogs barking out the tune to “The Imperial March” and was meant to get viewers excited for VW’s actual Super Bowl spot.

While this pre-advertisement does involve dogs and Star Wars, they at least combined them instead of making it two nearly separate spots mashed together to form a minute-long Super Bowl ad.

VW should have done two commercials, one involving the dog training and another involving strictly Star Wars. They could have appeased all fans and gotten much more exposure.