Cardboard Wars is the best fan-made Star Wars creation since Troops. The 52-minute Star Wars parody on YouTube is a worthy successor to Spaceballs and Hardware Wars. Cardboard Wars tells the entire story of Star Wars using practical effects and cardboard. The Millennium Falcon is made out of a pizza box. Vader is played by an adorable-sounding kid who rides on Governor Tarkin's shoulders. Everyone, except Vader, wears flip flops, because California? Stormtroopers bump into things because they can't see anything in their helmets. OK, that part is the same in the original, but it's still funny.
Cardboard Wars even fixes some of George Lucas' mistakes. Han shoots first, without even giving Greedo a chance to threaten the Falcon, and Chewie, portrayed by an adorable Doodle, gets the medal he so rightly deserved. There is, in my opinion, one unforgivable change: the noble R5-D4, whose sacrifice saved the rebellion, is replaced by a giant GNK droid. (Check out A Certain Point of View, if unfamiliar with R5-D4 selfless heroism.)
The scenes are all a combination of perfect recreations of scenes from the original and lines that are punched up with humor, or slightly altered, possibly to avoid the ire of the notoriously litigious House of Mouse. The music is evocative of Star Wars, while remaining legally distinct from John Williams' perfect score. The Disneyfication of Star Wars is all over Cardboard Wars, with mouse ears on everything from the Star Destroyer in the opening scene to the Death Star.
Creator Zach King — who outs himself as a fellow Star Wars fan of a certain vintage by calling it Star Wars, and not a New Hope — told Space.com that the entire production took only five days, and all the interiors were shot in a Los Angeles warehouse. King has promised to make the Empire Strikes Back in cardboard if Cardboard Wars gets 350,000 likes.
