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Sunday, June 05, 2005

What $20K will buy you....

So I read about this in Entertainment Weekly, and I had to see it for myself:

http://www.panicstruckpro.com/revelations/

That's the weblink for "Star Wars: Revelations," a fan film shot on the East Coast.

First, the bad stuff. The plot is convoluted and, for the most part, well nigh incomprehensible. It took me most of the 40 minute running time to figure out what the heck these people were trying to do. The acting was lamentable. All the Jedi in the movie seemed to come from the "Whiny Anakin" school of acting. Honestly, there wasn't a single actor I wanted to "get behind" and root for. And this may sound insensitive, but they really needed to cast a larger net to find "The Emperor's Hand." For those of us in the know, "The Emperor's Hand" is a sort of assassin introduced by Timothy Zahn in his Thrawn trilogy. Zahn's Emperor's Hand is a lady named Mara Jade. You can see what she looks like here. Very sleek, very stealthy, very deadly. Zhanna, the Emperor's Hand of this movie, was not sleek, didn't appear to be able to sneak up on much of anything, and seemed mildly put out, not lethal. If we're going from a purely Star Wars perspective, this movie didn't add much to the Extended Universe.

But I still liked it. Why? As you watch the movie, keep this one fact in mind: they did this with a budget of $20,000. All the effects, everything, for twenty grand. If that's not worthy of admiration, I don't know what is.

Hollywood, take note! You don't have to spend tons of money. Simplify!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hey John! Cool blog you got going here.

I agree with your comments on Revelations. I ended up liking it in the end as well, mainly because I knew how much effort/blood/sweat/tears went into it. For these guys this was a big risk, praying that it would work out, and probably knowing that they'd never make their money back. And so I was willing to look beyond the amature acting and simply enjoy another Star Wars fan's imagination.