Are you prepared to Unleash the power of Chad Vader?

This recent article on the Vanity Fair website about the creation of the upcoming Star Wars: The Force Unleashed Xbox and PlayStation game has a lot of ground to cover, and makes as its primary focus the game’s revolutionary special effects and lifelike physics. But buried deep in the middle of the piece (scroll down on page 2 if you’re not into reading the whole thing) is a little tidbit of news that I found rather startling:

The character of Darth Vader is fleshed out further, and…like the dramatic arc of the six-episode saga within which it’s nestled, The Force Unleashed is ultimately a tale of redemption. In a particularly inspired casting choice, Matt Sloan, who is the voice of Darth Vader’s heavy-breathing, black-helmeted supermarket-manager brother in the popular YouTube parody Chad Vader, lends his pipes to the real deal.

I think it’s an extraordinary understatement to call casting Sloan as Vader’s voice in a high-profile Star Wars property “particularly inspired”. The character of Darth Vader is well-established as an iconic cinema villain, and the fact that he remains so fascinating and compelling despite the considerable damage done by the movie’s prequels only points up how popular and intriguing his character continues to be as a fixture of pop culture. Add to this how deeply the fiber of Vader is tied to the rich, menacing tones of James Earl Jones’ characterization and I think it’s spectacularly mind-boggling that they’ve handed the voice duties over to an actor from an internet parody.

But don’t misunderstand: this is not a good thing; it’s a great thing, an amazing thing. It points up the fact that George Lucas, as traditionally tight-fisted, territorial and ham-handed with his characters and concepts as he is, is actually capable of loosening control once in a while so that the good instincts of other smart, creative people can prevail. And further, it suggests that viral videos created for seemingly niche-sized YouTube audiences have not just staying power, but legitimate talent behind them that can and does develop into more “real world” applications.

Obviously this is not the first plucky little internet player who has made good, but – great jumping midichlorians! – I just get a bit tickled by having watched the Chad Vader phenomenon develop its own legitimacy. It’s the idea of championing an underdog story, the feeling that perhaps we’re not all working in the backwater obscurities of the internet, that maybe – just maybe – someone out there is listening.

And it goes without saying that the completed Force Unleashed game MUST include a level-ending cut-scene where Vader performs “Chocolate Rain”.