By now you’ve seen the full trailer for Solo: A Star Wars Story and maybe even this week’s fan recut of the trailer. No? The recent tradition is back yet again, that knack of a fan taking a movie trailer and “Sabotaging” it by laying a track of Beastie Boys’ song Sabotage over whatever the studio produced, or, better yet, recutting the trailer to actually make the original that much better. Some may not be able to get past whether or not new Han Solo actor Alden Ehrenreich looks like Harrison Ford, and others may not care, but the first trailer from Lucasfilm had plenty to get fans excited for this May’s theatrical release. Maybe it’s Donald Glover as Lando, maybe it’s seeing an early Millennium Falcon, or maybe it’s just seeing Chewbacca again. But like we saw with its 2016 predecessor Rogue One: A Star Wars Story–where the a band of Rebels handed off the infamous stolen plans to Princess Leia aboard her Corellian Corvette–on a big television screen with the sound turned way up the Sabotaged fan trailer really amps-up the excitement.
Fair warning, if you don’t like the Beastie Boys, you may really not like the band’s song by the end of this article, because we’re going to play it a few times.
The impetus for the trend is no doubt Star Trek and Star Wars director J.J. Abrams’ own love for the band and the song, enough to include it early in the first reboot of the Star Trek movies back in 2009. Young James T. Kirk plays the song on the car radio as he’s racing along the road in Riverside, Iowa, having stolen his step-dad’s 1963 Chevrolet Corvette, and right before he sends it over a cliff (there are not really cliffs like that in Iowa, but… nevermind). Director Justin Lin brought the song right back as a surprisingly on-point, key plot device in the climax of the third reboot film, Star Trek Beyond, and he used it for the film’s official trailer.
So that gives us a few versions of the song adapted to two big franchises worth re-watching. Like we said here a few years back: Sabotage makes everything better. But how about a Sabotage trailer for a third or a fourth major fandom franchise?
