If the last moments of “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” taught us anything, it’s that you don’t want to tangle one-on-one with Darth Vader. If you do wind up fighting him, you at least want Jedi Force powers… and you definitely don’t want to be Buzz Lightyear.
That last item might not occur to most “Star Wars” fans, but it did to the filmmakers who run the YouTube Channel Nukazooka. Nobody pops open Buzz’s helmet, fortunately. He does find himself getting choked (a lot) by Darth Vader’s infamous invisible death grip, though. Lucky for Buzz, he’s an action figure, so even the “Star Wars” cliche of getting an arm cut off by a lightsaber doesn’t especially bother a Space Ranger from Star Command.
Buzz also gets quite a bit of use out of his laser and his ability to fly during the battle. But, unfortunately, his most effective weapon against the Dark Lord of the Sith turns out to be a rock.
The fan video is the work of filmmakers Andrew and Seth McCurry, the creators of the Nukazooka channel. Their projects follow a fashion similar to this one: They tend to be slick, well-produced special effects shorts. Often, Nukazooka makes video game fan films, like many other YouTube filmmakers. Game concepts offer plenty of opportunity to create funny, cool-looking or ridiculous videos, and Nukazooka’s videos feature creative takes on “Super Mario Bros.,” “Pokemon Go” and “Skyrim.”
“Super Mario Underworld,” for instance, is a live-action look at the horrifying place Mario winds up when he falls into a pit in the game.
Like Vader vs. Buzz, not everything Nukazooka produces focuses on ideas and characters from video games. Some of their other videos include an exploration of how to safely use a “Star Wars” lightsaber without killing yourself, how superhero Deadpool might pull pranks on Spider-Man, and what a full-scale “Saving Private Ryan”-esque Nerf war might look like.