Bad Lip Reading’s “Seagulls” Turned Yoda Into A Popstar

Bad Lip Reading’s “Seagulls (Stop It Now!)” song turned Yoda into the Star Wars popstar audiences have been waiting for. The success of Star Wars was far from a given when it was due for release in 1977. The movie’s production had been stressful and went $3 million over budget. Fox also felt their other big movie, Damnation Alley starring George Peppard (Breakfast At Tiffany’s), was the one that held blockbuster potential.

Director George Lucas was already pondering a sequel at the stage, but in case the movie wasn’t a big financial success, he conceived of an idea dubbed Splinter Of The Mind’s Eye, where Luke and Leia crashland on a swamp planet. Darth Vader would soon give chase, and the whole concept was designed so it could be shot cheaply on a soundstage and reuse props from the first movie. Of course, Star Wars would prove to be a much larger success than anybody could have imagined. Alongside Jaws, it’s the movie that helped create the idea of summer blockbusters, and it spawned a franchise that spans movies, TV shows, video games, comics and much more.

Sequels and movies franchises were considered something of a dirty word during this era, but the unbelievable success of Star Wars made one inevitable. Splinter Of The Mind’s Eye was scrapped in favor of a story that would expand the lore of the series, introducing new characters and planets. The Empire Strikes Back introduced Yoda as Luke Skywalker’s new Jedi teacher, following the death of Obi-Wan. Yoda is one of the franchise’s most popular characters, but Bad Lip Reading’s Yoda “Seagulls” song helped (briefly) turn him into a popstar too.

Bad Lip Reading’s Yoda “Seagulls” video takes footage from The Empire Strikes Back where the wise Jedi master teaches Luke and dubs over the dialogue with an infectiously catchy song about the time he was attacked by seagulls. The song is utterly bizarre, but the combination of the lyrics and the video make it hilarious; he also briefly uses R2-D2 as a drum. Yoda’s “Seagulls” song has amassed nearly 90 million views on Bad Lip Reading’s YouTube channel and even reached the top of the Billboard Comedy Digital Track chart in 2016.

Sadly, a full album of Yoda jams has yet to surface, so “Seagulls (Stop It Now!)” will have to do. Mark Hamill himself was a big fan of Bad Lip Reading’s video and was later asked to voice Han Solo in their parody of Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Hamill’s gruff Harrison Ford impression was a perfect match for the video, though the “Seagulls” video is still Bad Lip Readings true masterpiece.

About The Author

Padraig Cotter
(3484 Articles Published)

It’s pronounced Paw-rick, not Pad-raig. Now that’s out of the way, a brief introduction. Padraig has been writing about film online since 2012, when a friend asked if he’d like to contribute the occasional review or feature to their site.

A part-time hobby soon blossomed into a career when he discovered he really loved writing about movies, TV and video games – he even (arguably) had a little bit of talent for it. He has written words for Den of Geek, Collider, The Irish Times and Screen Rant over the years, and can discuss anything from the MCU – where Hawkeye is clearly the best character – to the most obscure cult b-movie gem, and his hot takes often require heat resistant gloves to handle.

He’s super modern too, so his favorite movies include Jaws, Die Hard, The Thing, Ghostbusters and Batman. He can be found as i_Padds on Twitter making bad puns.

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