Star Wars: Threads of Destiny

For a fan film, this is a huge undertaking I bet. I found it not so well executed, as the acting, directing, screenplay, script are mostly amateuristic. The audio was fairly nice and the CGI is jumping out as the classy aspect of this movie. Impressive, really. The blue-key was not properly applied and it shows, badly.

We see a Jedi master, kind of Obi wan, and the prodigy, kind of like Anakin. Throughout the film there are lots of scenes and lines that look very familiar. It seems this film is more like a tribute, re-hashing bits from the originals, stitched together with a story around a truly naive princess.

Also some action scenes were fairly nicely done, where one can see they had to make do with little equipment. Conclusion: not all was that bad. I was slightly entertained, but the big damper is the lack of consistency. I just couldn't just go with it you know. The only way to watch this and properly enjoy it, is to be a true Star Wars fan.

Key to understanding this movie is not to compare it with big budget studio productions

I've just stumbled over this film here on IMDb, downloaded it and gave it a go, despite the rather bad reviews. And I sat there, totally awed by what I saw. This has got to be one of the most ambitious fan projects ever done and, in my opinion, they pulled it off.

From the opening score to the end credits this film was full of great ideas,great scenes and great effects. The music was excellent, the actors mostly good or sometimes even great and the story entertaining.

For those of you, who think you know better or you could do this better: You are wrong. But let me put all that into perspective: The making of this film cost EUR 6000,- !!

If you complain about flaws in acting, story or continuity, let me tell you there are hundreds if not thousands of movies out there, that had a budget of 100k or more, that had professional writers, directors and actors and that are worse. Not to mention the really bad movies that cost many millions. Sure, the production quality is that of a fan film - but there it is top notch and as such a masterpiece.

Everybody who has ever tried to make just one costume or to build a 3D model or to write, act or shoot a dialog knows how much work and time, and what's even more, how much love was put into making this movie.

More than 100 people spend their time working on this, the whole production took 9 years,there are more than 1500 FX shots and the overall outcome is simply awesome, with the 3D and FX being the real stars of the movie (as it always was in Star Wars).

Don't get me wrong. Don't expect a polished,commercial movie. This is a no-budget fan made film, but it is the best I have ever seen.

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.

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.

First off, you have to realize that this is a fan movie made of a very low budget and for what it is, it is an outstanding project!

As a major Star Wars fan I am very skeptical about fan films like these - but they pulled it off pretty nicely. Even though the obvious Swedish accents, bad acting, and failed green screen is a problem with this movie, it still executes and plays out quite nicely. And hey - It's a free movie too!

The story is kind of similar to the three first Star Wars movies, but in a completely different way. And as a major Star Wats fan I can say that i was mildly entertained and my interest in the story was pretty high. The script was very well written - even though it sometimes make you cringe because it's obvious it was written by Swedish people. I am not giving away any plot details or spoilers - go check it out for yourself.

As for the music, I think the soundtrack is quite nice and fits the moments pretty good. The CGI is awesome considering it's a low budget movie, just don't get any high expectations since it really isn't comparable to todays Hollywood movies. This movie took an amazing 9 years to make (!!!) since the movie has been post-poned and canceled multiple times. But the final result is pretty darn impressive.

However, there is a lot of things wrong with this movie that I can't skip complaining about. For example, the terrible accent and the god awful Green Screen / Chroma key effects. The acting is very mediocre, and you can hear the Swedish accents on most of the actors, and the words are not pronounced correctly. This, for me, is very annoying and really destroys a part of the movie that could have been much better. I must say some of them did a fairly good job on the English accents though. I just wish every actor had taken a course on how to speak proper English and pronounce the words the right way. Maybe a few acting classes too. About the green screen thing, it is understandable that they can't do as well as recent Hollywood movies, but the green screen is really, really, awful. It keeps on bugging me and I just can't stop thinking of the badly done chroma key. I think they should have taken more time to fix this as it becomes a very irritating part of the movie.

It was a fairly made movie and I did find it mildly amusing to watch. If you are a serious fan of the Star Wars movie you should not miss this. Hopefully, when the next Star Wars movie comes out 2015, Disney will not screw it up.

Threads of Fate is a far from perfect movie, but still delivers an amusing plot and some fairly good CGI and acting, even though most of them make you cringe. Considering this is a fan movie and a low budget one, this is done very well and I would say this is an amazing attempt even though the dialog and the actors are a bit so-so at times.

I admire that the creators of this movie made this movie and released it entirely for free making no profit of the movie at all, since they spent quite a lot of money for a fan film. This shows that there are passionate people out there that just want to please the fans and express their fandom.

7/10 stars.