German Navy blasts out Darth Vader theme on Thames

https://www.bbc.com/news/videos/cn87608w389o

by croes • 2 years ago

62 65 2 years ago

cs7022• 2 years ago

The German Navy ship blasting the Darth Vader theme on the Thames was in London for training and a supply stop.

A German Navy spokesperson said the choice of music had "no deeper message." The ship's commander personally chose the music.

Given the history between the two countries, it was perceived as a poor choice.[a]

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[a] In particular, think of the elderly in the UK who lived through the Nazi bombing raids and their aftermath:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blitz

cjs_ac• 2 years ago

Irony is a fundamental aspect of British culture and communication, and exceptionally few Britons would find this anything other than amusing.

leprechaun1066• 2 years ago

A couple of old fogies down in Tunbridge Wells, "I say old chap, how very uncouth." Meanwhile everyone else, "It's been almost 50 years since Fawlty Towers. Took them long enough."

johndunne6• 2 years ago

I live in the UK and this will be taken with the tongue in cheek it was delivered with. Most here in the UK will probably appreciate the humor. Now, how to counter?

dkga• 2 years ago

Monty Python’s “Bright side of life”?

H8crilA• 2 years ago

Next time a British RC-135 overflies Germany it should change its callsign to Obi Wan Kenobi, or something like that. People from flight tracking forums will take care of the rest.

Though it is not quite flashy enough, hmmm...

dgfitz• 2 years ago

Now, how to counter?

I have never been to Germany or the UK, so my thoughts are probably uneducated a touch, I really love this response. Instead of somehow becoming offended, find the humor and plan a counter-prank. Make some fun headlines, get a smile out of people reading the news, this is the way.

cs02rm0• 2 years ago

Don't mention the war.

Kurtose• 2 years ago

Helicopters over Berlin blaring Ride of the Valkyries. https://youtu.be/VE03Lqm3nbI

ivan_gammel• 2 years ago

With a theme from Avengers, of course.

vundercind3• 2 years ago

Luke’s theme?

mrweasel• 2 years ago

You fly overhead in helicopters blasting the Benny Hill theme song as they sail out the Thames.

walthamstow• 2 years ago

We do consistently boo their national anthem before football games and sing stupid songs like 'ten German bombers'

croes• 2 years ago

Don't mention the war

neilv• 2 years ago

Interesting. FWIW, it immediately registered to me (in the US) as inappropriate.

I realized I don't know why they would do that, but regardless of why, my first thought was hotheaded stereotype: how quickly an 'escort' could arrive, of boats/aircraft capable of sinking them.

My second thought was that the escort boats could play Queen's "We Are the Champions" [1] over loudspeakers. If it can be many sailors impromptu singing it, all the better.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04854XqcfCY&t=33s

Tomte2• 2 years ago

Put an aircraft carrier into Lake Constance.

mjbeswick• 2 years ago

It was a great choice; as most people in Britain would find it bloody funny!

johndunne6• 2 years ago

And here's me thinking the Germans don't have a sense of humor. Well played Commander, well played. :-)

theGnuMe• 2 years ago

You do realize all of the Imperial commanders have British accents...

GJim3• 2 years ago

*English accents.

I don't recall any of them sounding Welsh or Scottish! A "British accent" is something I've yet to hear anywhere in Blighty.

projektfu• 2 years ago

11 days earlier and it could have been a tribute to Peter Cushing, thirty years after his death.

vundercind3• 2 years ago

Not just he history between the countries, but the heavy influence of Nazi propaganda films on the appearance of and shot choices around the Empire in Star Wars, and that two of the most-cribbed-from movies for the first film were about the British bombing either Germany directly, or German-controlled Norway, during WWII. It’s not just bad guy music, it’s bad-guys-very-directly-inspired-by-WWII-Germany music.

(But put me on team “it’s funny”—oh no, ze Germans!)

[edit] I just watched the video and it’s even funnier than I thought, because the lines of that vessel call to mind a star destroyer more effectively than most non-battleships do.

kjfarm• 2 years ago

That is not what the BBC link says (text copied below. including their weird British spelling of "recognisable"). It's seems much more light hearted and funny than what you are portraying.

German Navy blasts out Darth Vader theme on Thames Londoners spotted this ship on the Thames near Tower Bridge, playing the iconic Imperial March theme from the Star Wars trilogies, otherwise recognisable as the Darth Vader music. But it wasn’t coming from a galaxy far, far away - it was a German Navy ship, in London for training and a supply stop. A spokesperson from the German Navy told the BBC the music had "no deeper message" and "the commander can choose the music freely".

ttepasse• 2 years ago

[a]

Someone who has still memories of the bombing will be in their 90s. I don’t want to complete minify that – my late German grandmother had bad memories of the allied bombing her teenage years – but witnesses who lived through WWII are very few still alive. Time flies. The release of Star Wars and the Imperial March (Ep V, 1980) is closer to WWII than to our times.

GJim3• 2 years ago

Given the history between the two countries, it was perceived as a poor choice

Don't be daft! It was a damn good choice.

Though I for one, won't be happy until we have extracted our revenge; sending a 00 agent undercover to retune the Kraut Kapitans musical cocktail cabinet to play 'God Save the King'.

DiggyJohnson• 2 years ago

Why are you complaining on their behalf? The number of elderly who lived through and remember the Blitz is in the hundreds at the most. And most of them recognize that the war was ~80 years ago.

ethbr12• 2 years ago

Say what you want about the tenets of the Galactic Empire, but at least it's an ethos...

gitanovic• 2 years ago

Always better than the nichilists

throw0101d• 2 years ago

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118715/quotes/?item=qt0464759

drcongo• 2 years ago

The stereotype of Germans having no sense of humour is so wrong.

slightwinder• 2 years ago

German humor is either terrible, or too subtle to be recognized as humor by most other cultures.

johndunne6• 2 years ago

So you're saying... "It's a trap!!"

Tomte2• 2 years ago

Was machst Du denn hier? — Ich wohne hier. — Aber doch nicht jetzt, um diese Zeit!

(Husband home early) What are you doing here? — I live here. — But not now, at this time of day!

c0l0• 2 years ago

The German military seems to have a thing for Star Wars-related themes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzsxN4HNrNw

(... and yes, they ACTUALLY do have a "Weltraumkommando"!)

I find it kinda funny that they apparently consider themselves part of the Empire. But it seems accurate, too >:-)

hulitu• 2 years ago

I find it kinda funny that they apparently consider themselves part of the Empire.

You should check the headlines in major German newspapers. /s

yourstruly1337• 2 years ago

It was towed backward, up the river ... not a good luck for the Empire.

I would see that as some self-deprecating german spaß

2OEH8eoCRo0• 2 years ago

Interesting choice considering the influence that Triumph of the Will had on Star Wars.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triumph_of_the_Will

m3kw9• 2 years ago

Isn’t Vaders posse modeled after the German military?

rich_sasha• 2 years ago

Darth Vader's helmet, with the crease around the lower edge, certainly looks like German WWII helmets.

vundercind3• 2 years ago

Vader’s outfit is mainly intended to look like samurai armor that’s been kinda bent toward a WWII German army aesthetic.

pragma_x3• 2 years ago

It's not just the helmet.

I will maintain that Star Wars was quite possibly the best WWII movie of all time, although purely as an allegorical and referential work. In the timeless tradition of tailoring your story to your audience, the whole film is packed with references and ideas from other WWII movies, people, and events. Although, it also borrows from just about everything else - a true artifact of its era. For the Boomer post-WWII era, I believe drawing from familiar material like this is one of the keys to its success.

After all, a story about "a young hero and laser swords" doesn't hold a candle to "a bunch of underdogs blow up a gigantic space station filled with space Nazis." I don't know about you, but I know which of those I'm going to see 10 times.

The attack on the Death Star in the climax of the film A New Hope is similar in many respects to the strategy of Operation Chastise from the 1954 British film, The Dam Busters. Rebel pilots have to fly through a trench while evading enemy fire and drop a single special weapon at a precise distance from the target to destroy the entire base with a single explosion; if one run fails another run must be made by a different pilot. Some scenes from the A New Hope climax are similar to those in The Dam Busters and some of the dialogue is nearly identical in the two films. These scenes are also heavily influenced by the action scenes from the fictional wartime film 633 Squadron. That film's finale shows the squadron's planes flying down a deep fjord while being fired at along the way by anti-aircraft guns lining its sides. George Lucas has stated in interviews that this sequence inspired the 'trench run' sequence in Star Wars.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars_sources_and_analogue...

The stormtroopers from the movies share a name with the Imperial German stormtroopers and the Nazi German Sturmabteilung (lit. Stormtrooper). Imperial officers' uniforms also resemble some historical German Army uniforms and the political and security officers of the Empire resemble the black clad SS down to the imitation silver death's head insignia on their officer's caps (although the uniforms technically had more basis with the German Uhlans within the Prussian Empire[71]). World War II terms were used for names in Star Wars; examples include the planets Kessel (a term that refers to a group of encircled forces) and Hoth (Hermann Hoth was a German general who served on the snow-laden Eastern Front).[61] Lucas himself has drawn parallels between Palpatine and his rise to power to historical dictators such as Julius Caesar, Napoleon Bonaparte, and Adolf Hitler, saying the films exist as an examination of how democracies allow themselves to become dictatorships.[72] The space battles in A New Hope were based on filmed World War I and World War II dogfights.[5]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars_sources_and_analogue...

pvaldes• 2 years ago

Probably inspired from a vignette on the french comics Valerian, depicting a sort of galactic samurai robot, and improved later.

zingababba• 2 years ago

Open comments, grep 'nazi', sigh, close tab.

German Navy blasts out Darth Vader theme on Thames

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