"Movie" - Star Wars: Revelations

Because I am a geeky Star Wars fan boy, I decided to download the 300+MB behemoth amateur Star Wars movie, "Revelations" . I'd give you the official link, but their servers are still down.

It completed downloading today and I just watched the first 34 minutes and 20 seconds. I had to stop for a while because I was afraid I'd laugh too loud and wake someone up. "Oh!" you're thinking, "They managed to put some humor into it!". Not so much. I was laughing too hard at the huge climactic light saber battle going on.

I won't go into too detailed of a review but you can fairly easily guess at some of the things that I am going to say. Let us think for a bit first: what kind of people would be getting together and making a half hour plus long movie set in the Star Wars universe? I bet a bunch of Star Wars geeks with props and costumes would want in. I'm guessing there are a myriad computer geeks that would love to join. Oh, and the audio/visual club has to be a part. Wow--that's some trifecta. But what could be missing?

Oh yeah, writing and acting.

(Hey, that sounds like Episodes 1 and 2!)

As one may expect, the effects are quite amazing considering that this was an amateur project. There were some nice ship designs and flying scenes and green/blue screen effects. That's the high point.

The writers had some trouble with most of the dialogue, it was trite and meaningless. Things like "There's two Star Destroyers!" Oh, thanks for pointing that out, I would have missed those gigantic death machines in the sky bearing down on us. I would say the plot has the same problem, but I'm not done yet. Maybe there's a huge twist at the end that pulls it all together and makes it all worth while. But mostly the "plot" is a vehicle for the camera to go from location to location where Star Wars geeks are done up and running around in costumes and masks.

The director (and probably cinematographer and editors) take themselves a bit too seriously at a few points as well. Long shots of the city scape drag on to show us how big and busy things are. All right! Things are crazy! We understood that after the first 15 seconds (that's a lot of screen time, just ask my brother) of the ship flying into town. Or following a character down a stairway for 10 seconds (still a lot of time). Oooo! It's the Emperor's Hand, we get it, she's important.

Don't get me started on the Emperor's Hand. Let's see here...the main bad guy of the movie. Well, I can't say that. Let's call her the main antagonist, the Emperor and Darth Vader are still badder. So we have the main antagonist, an ex-Jedi who is now the Hand of the Emperor. Sadly, the Emperor's HR department was bored the day they were hiring for that position. They must have run an ad in the Galactic Gazette that said:

WANTED
One Ex-Jedi looking to help find and exterminate the remaining light side Jedi throughout the galaxy. Pay dependent on performance. No long term benefits. Must deal with heavy breathing cyborg.
Ideal candidate's presence should strike fear into enemies, demand respect from allies, and send fan boys into convulsions. Less-than-ideal candidate will be slightly overweight, have large facial features, and an annoying, hard to place accent.
Complete badassness a plus, but not required.
Please contact D. Sidious on Coruscant.

A chubby lady with a chin bigger than Chyna (of wrestling fame) is not the first vision that pops into my mind when I think of badass villian. Oh, and she has no screen presence and her voice is rediculous. (though the lines she has to read don't help her at all) You may be thinking that I'm sexist and "weight-ist". Well, you know what? I'd love to dress up in tight clothes and run around with a light saber slaughtering Jedi, but it ain't gonna happen, you know why? I don't think I have what you'd call a "Jedi physique". I have more of a "Porkins from the Death Star run in Episode 4" physique, and that's the role I'd play. Sit me in a space ship and only show my head and shoulders.

Hmmm, this is rambling a bit, but I only have a few more points to make.

You know what else Star Wars fans like to do? They dream about all of the cool stuff that could happen with Jedi that hasn't happened in the movies. When Episode One came out people couldn't believe how cool Darth Maul was with his double bladed saber. Then in Episode Two Anakin fought Count Dooku with two light sabers! Unfortunately that fight happened to be horrible, so what would fans do? Film themselves fighting with two light sabers. And what could be cooler than that? How about two Jedi, both with dual light sabers, fighting against one another.

And so we reach the point in the film where I had to stop. The Jedi and the Hand follow the trail of a Jedi artifact to a cave that holds a secret. They all stand around watching a video recording together until it's done and then the Hand decides to kill everyone. So a huge lightsaber battle ensues, with the Hand and the main Jedi character (a woman much better fitted to her role than the Hand) running off into the caves to find each other. The good Jedi prevail over the bad Jedi and the two main characters find each other and start fighting.

They fight normally, one saber on one saber for a while. Until, inexplicably, the Hand pulls another light saber out of no where and starts fighting with it. After a couple of swings in that config, the main Jedi all of a sudden has another saber as well! What? If you're so much more deadly with two, why wouldn't you always fight with two?

It reminds me of that scene in The Princess Bride where the Dread Pirate Roberts and Inigo Montoya are fencing at the top of the cliff. They both start out left handed just to toy with the other. When Inigo realizes that Roberts is really good, he switches to his good hand. After a few swings of that, Roberts releaves that he himself is right handed as well and proceeds to easily win the fight. Unfortunately, for Revelations, The Princess Bride is a really good movie and the acting is excellent and the characterization allows that exchange to make sense.

Oh, and did I mention that neither the protagonist nor antagonist have any martial arts skills whatsoever?

So I started laughing and had to turn it off. Maybe I'll finish it tomorrow and let you know how it turns out.