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.

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.

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.

If you want to be impressed by special effects on-the-cheap, then this is the movie for you. Provided you watch less than 10-minutes of it. Otherwise, the writing is pedestrian at best and atrocious at worst. The acting isn't much better.

However, I could have stomached that if the editing had been tight. Unfortunately, the pacing is set to the speed of poured molasses. The creators needed to cut about 40% of the material they presented.

At the end of the day, this is just a hot mess of self-love. I wouldn't be shocked if the creators thought they were making the next great epic Star Wars story. Instead, they've just emphasized that if you were good enough to make a great movie, you wouldn't be making fan-fiction.

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.