Some New Yorkers were in a tizzy on the day before Halloween on spotting Star Wars characters zipping around town on a Speeder Bike. Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia, as retro rebels from Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi, drove through traffic on the levitating bike they stole in the film, to the awe of onlookers in Manhattan.
It wasn’t, of course, a coincidence that the scene was enacted on the day before Halloween, a day when many across the US don costumes and props to celebrate. But YouTube vloggers Jesse Wellens and Carmella Rose, in collaboration with YouTube prankster Casey Neistat, took their costume act very seriously.
The pair created a replica of the Speeder Bike from the film with help from Lithium Cycles, and actually built it to create the illusion that it was floating. Unfortunately, the rebels managed to attract the attention of a Storm Trooper – also on a Speeder Bike – who immediately started to chase them.
The spectacle, which rightly deserves its “twenty points for originality”, turned into a something of a debacle as the bike chase was joined by members of a group not in make-belief costume: the New York Police Department.
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