Star Wars: Threads of Destiny

There's a lot of bad reviews and ratings for Threads of Destiny here, and I believe they're all mistaken and/or out of line. But allow me to explain what Threads of Destiny is;

Threads of Destiny, is a Star Wars fan film set 96 years after the Return Of The Jedi. The Skenvi Empire, a smaller group of bad guys set out to secure their resources and parts of the galaxy for their own, in order to ensure a lucrative future. The New Republic can't have that, and sends out two Jedi ambassadors to make a better deal for the planet of Coreign. Sound familiar? That's because it is. Threads of Destiny remembers what was good about Star Wars back in the day, but also knows what the prequels did right, by making a compelling story about good vs evil, but also has smugglers, aliens, women and robots.

If you've ever watched the original trilogy, you'd know that the visual effects are quite dated. Such is, regrettably the case with Threads also, but that's to be expected. The film was shot in 2005 on DV-camcorders, and put together by an ensemble of visual effects artists over 8 years.

What people tend to forget when watching this film, is just that. They pick on the Swenglish(Which could really just be a foreign space-accent, to be fair), and the sub-par compositing. Again, the film was shot on DV on poorly lit green screens, and we have to give them credit for doing what they did.

This is a FAN FILM, it's not Episode VII. The amount of work put into this film over nearly a decade is astonishing. The music is great, the sound mixing is awesome, and the story is good. The fact that the VFX look dated, is because, frankly, they are. They're also made by dozens of people around the planet, all being coordinated by Rasmus Tirzitis - the director. Not some fancy VFX house, or even a visual effects supervisor; the director.

So please, when you're rating this film, please take the story into consideration. Not the acting, not the visual effects.

After all, if we rated the original Star Wars films based on their visual effects, we wouldn't give them 10/10 today.

The story is not bad at all, even better then some Hollywood counterparts, and the SFX is REALLY good for a fan movie. The acting on the other hand is often painful to watch. I'm Swedish and I still wish the actors did not have that much accent, for me the swenglish kind of ruins it a bit more, so many Swedish people speak really good English but not most of the main actors of this movie. I can tell that a lot of work has gone into making to this movie and if you are a fan it is still well worth a watch. The princess is much prettier the Leia ever was. Read that this movie was shot with ordinary DV cameras, and with that in mind it is not a great HD film but not as bad as you might think.

First the bad news. The acting was below average, most of the graphics were done sub-par, and the story was predictable. Having said that I think overall this movie was ambitious and it tried to tell a new story. I liked it and look forward to seeing how this production group will make the next installment better. But for the love of god please look into some acting lessons for the main characters. You are on your way to the possibility of an acting career so give it the effort it deserves and make us fans proud. In the mean time have the effects team beaten a little and tell them to step it up, this is Star Wars we are talking about. Don't half-ass it. I did like the asteroid belt scene and wish the entirety of the graphics had seen as much attention. It was obviously green screen a lot of the time and unfortunately you can see the halo around the actors as they walk through the scene. But hey, i can't do any better so keep up the good work and make sure it evolves. Overall I enjoyed it and will show it to my friends to judge for themselves.

First the good news. The storyline is excellent. The music is excellent. The outer space shots are excellent. The chicks are gorgeous Swedes. Unfortunately there is only one good actor in the flick. That's the guy who plays the Sith Lord. I suppose playing a bad guy does a give an actor more meat to chew on.

The guys playing Jedi both had the most annoying habit I have ever seen in a film. They walk about in nearly every scene with their hands clasp together in front of them. They appear as if they're covering or supporting their dangly bits. Someone should have yelled HANDS at them every time they did it. I can't think of habit I've seen an actor have in a film that was more irritating. These folks are stoic Swedes acting in this film so they have little energy or charisma. It's not their fault. That's just the way they are. If another movie gets made by the same crew I would recommend requiring the male actors to shave daily. Having a few days of beard on the face of every male that's old enough to grow a beard is not becoming. If you ever use that king again, get him a crown. He might clean up nicely with a shave and a crown.

From there I'm afraid things get a little worse. As a photographer I was constantly annoyed by the lighting and cinematography. For some reason the light was constantly spilling over into the scene around the edges. Nearly every scene had haze and smoke and fog for no apparent purpose. That constant light spilling in from the edges coupled with the particles of fog and smoke or whatever it was made many scenes blurry which is to say pretty awful. Many scenes appeared to have been shot through glass that had reflections on it's surface.

Still, when all is said and done, I enjoyed the movie. It was apparently the herculean efforts of one guy and a few other people. They are to be commended for the efforts. I hope they make another film and get better acting, lighting and cinematography.

For an amateur Fan Film this is top notch. The special effects are well done, though the same problem most fan films have shine through in the story and acting. It hits upon the clichés, and by the numbers, and the actors come across more than a little stunted, sounding a bit more like Live Action Roleplayers (LARPers).

For all that I stayed with it through the whole thing, which is actually pretty impressive. The acting, as it was, and story were at least if not better than Episodes 1 and 2. I'd really enjoy seeing something like this done by some passionate people willing to push new boundaries instead of the normal Star Wars tropes.