It could've been worse, though. And in fact it was! Wrinkly green Jedi master Yoda was one of the few characters that not only scraped through the much-maligned Star Wars prequels with some dignity intact, but actually ended up having his reputation improved. The craggy old puppet who was kind of a jerk to Luke Skywalker in the Empire Strikes Back was upgraded to a fully CGI character who pulled out some pretty sweet moves during the climax of Attack Of The Clones, doing acrobatic battle with Christopher Lee's villainous Count Dooku. Then he did the same when crossing Emperor Palpatine in Revenge Of The Sith, and there was the break dancing thing. The little guy ended up being quite the badass. Which was totally spoilt when his next on screen appearance was in a series of mobile phone commercials. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYk8ywCzHTU We actually remember the first time we saw one of said adverts, and wondered how it had happened. Was it a joke? A Banksy-style prank? Culture jamming? Nope, it's a legit series of print and television advertisements starring the diminutive Yoda trying to use the Force to solve a bunch of problems which are, apparently, easier solved just by giving Vodafone's sterling customer service team a bell. So not only were they pretty weird commercials, and had the similar issue of the Currys/PC World ads where having a sci-fi character in everyday locales was a little off-putting, but they also made one of the most powerful characters in the Star Wars universe being shown up by a guy sitting behind a desk working for Vodafone. Yep. Thanks for that, Lucas. We should've known it could get worse than midichlorians.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
