Star Wars: Threads of Destiny (2014)

Good movie but grossly overrated

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

It is obvious the people who gave this flick low reviews have never watched a fan film before. It's not The Force Awakens, which is apparently what the naysayers were looking for, but you won't believe what these people were able to accomplish with fans doing all the acting, production, and absolutely no budget. I found this gem after a soul- crushing run of fan flicks that only reaffirm that the negative reviewers have never watched a fan flick... ever. I was so jaded that the trailer had me convinced they had cherry picked a couple of nice shots out of a bunch of crap, but I watched on and I'm so glad I did. If anything, the trailer showed the mediocre and saved the breathtaking for the film, and yes, some stuff does approach breathtaking. Yes, there is some chromakey artifacting which I bet wouldn't have been there if they had a RED Epic and a soundstage with tons of expensive lighting, and yes, some of the CGI was a bit simple in places and that could have been fixed with a multi-million dollar render farm. Still, in other places it was rich and vibrant and looked extremely professional and absolutely gorgeous. Some of the sound effects were changed; I don't know if that was for a copyright reason or if they wanted to make a point that it was nearly a century after the fall of the Empire, but who cares - they weren't out of place and were mixed very organically. As a project, it was damn near TV ready in quality, and past that point in several places. If you've ever seen Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning, I'd put it on par with it, and those guys went on to produce actual feature films based on that work. It exceeded any fan film I have seen to date by a large margin. The acting was wooden at times, but these guys weren't actors... they were fans, and you could see their passion showing through. Truthfully, Raven Darkham, Lord Siege and Karus Kahn carried the film quite capably on their own. Lord Siege was deliciously evil... he made Darth Vader's military discipline seem like a motivational speaker who handed out gold stars.As for the story... it's a young knight, a cocky pilot, an evil guy and a princess... light versus dark in a battle for the galaxy... it doesn't get more core Star Wars than that! The love story was way better than Anakin and Amidala. It was rushed but had that feel of the classic cinematic love story set in the swashbuckling era... which is exactly what it was supposed to be. And there were so many nods to the original, right down to the Wilhelm Scream. I had no problem with the pacing. It established, sped up, let you catch your breath, action, caught your breath... then the finale actually started with something that made my jaw drop and elicited an audible gasp and kicked my tail till the end of the movie. The battle was EPIC and I would put it up against several of the actual movies. The final saber battle was awesome.My only three complaints are there could have been more humor thrown in, and the space station sequence went from cinematic to hand-held for some reason... but it wasn't enough to detract from my enjoyment.You do yourself a disservice if you miss this because a bunch of people who don't know what a fan film is would have rather gone to a movie and took it out on this absolute gem of a fan flick. I watched it twice on my own, again with my kids, have it set as a date movie and shared it on Facebook. This flick is frigging amazing and gave me faith in the "fan flick" when it had all but been extinguished. This is a fun ride and I really hope they do a sequel.

First of all, although the acting wasn't great, it certainly was adequate. I found the sceneries of the the different planets extremely beautiful. Admittedly I watched this film on a laptop computer, but I was never aware of any flaws in either the cities, the wooded garden, the landing strips nor, of course, the asteroid belt. However, though there were a few, I did miss the various robots from the original Star Wars movies. And the Yetis (though they were very much there in the much-different Star Wars Christmas movie). All in all, I very much look forward to the next film by this director. maineocto, a.k.a. Art Since, alas, my review didn't contain enough lines, I add that my home is the mid-coastal Maine Bunny Foo-foo for President Headquarters. "Bop most politicians on the head!"

Sure, sure, the accents, the acting, dialog, at times and the direction. All sub-par. Who cares? The special effects are really, really, great. There are so many good, and breathtaking aerial shots. Sure, perhaps the resolution could have been higher, it's not as 'sharp' as a Hollywood movie, but then, they probably didn't have the bloated and overpriced software that Hollywood uses. And there are so many, especially towards the end of the film. Especially the asteroid belt sequence was pretty awesome. There are so many space scenes, and city scapes, it's just very cool to watch. I hate CGI, which why the special effect of A new Hope are far superior, but somehow here, it didn't bother me.Also great were the fight scenes. In general, this film looked as if it had very high production value. In an expensive country like Sweden, with the highest living standard in the world, that is pretty impressive to achieve that for a budget of 6000 euros. One way to make this film 'better' would be to re-dub it with English or American actors. But I wouldn't. One, it would be unfair to the actors, especially the two actors that are ALLEREDE have been dubbed. Two, that would be just giving in to the stupidest demographic in America. Europeans don't really care about Swedish accents. Because they know it's not the accents that matter.The only ones who complain about the script being slow, are ADHD kids with a multiplex addiction.It was a bit weird to see a SW movie with no black people in it, and yes Sweden DOES TOO have black people.Lord Siege and Raven Darkholm were the best actors, Siege was VERY convincing, I hated that guy! The king and queen were decent, the pilot and the mentor Jedi were pretty bad, as well as the princess.The Melancholic Alcoholic.

Do not waste your time. The now 14-year-old fan film vignette "Knight Quest" is a gem compared to this (youtube it), and even it is far from perfect. I was expecting something along the lines of the quality of the fan-created "Star Trek Phase II". This was no such endeavor.I do applaud both their efforts and intentions. But being somewhat exposed to both tons of written fan fiction and video fan fiction of the Star Wars genre over the last 11 years (which I daresay the makers of this film would have benefited from reviewing), I have to say this movie comes across like one long Star-Wars self-pat on the back. As if the creators are saying to you, "Hey, it's Star Wars and WE made it, therefore it must be good, and YOU will think it's good too."The love story is really where this film falls short; weak and predictable. Doctor Who proved in the 1970s you can tell a fantastic story with a minimal set and special effects budget.The story aside... The changed lightsaber sound effects from SoundFX Master Ben Burrt's original format are absolutely horrid. The overall story arc is slow paced and far from interesting. Characterization...bad...the characters lack any real depth. And the acting is terrible, especially the character Jedi Master Soran Darr (I don't know whether this was bad directing or bad acting, but I've never seen a more wooden performance of a Star Wars character, which makes him the only memorable character to me in the film, and not for good reasons).Overall the movie almost feels like what would have happened if Star Wars had been made into a bad underfunded made-for-TV-movie in the 80s.I will say one good thing about it...the video effects were very decent, but poorly integrated anytime they had to be mixed with the live action sequences. But even this would be completely excusable for me if not for what I listed above.As stated, I applaud both their effort and intent - as this movie was well-hyped among the fan community long before it was released - but that is where my platitudes end. Given that in their efforts the makers of this film could conjure a project of this magnitude – a fan made Star Wars film - it's somewhat perplexing that they also couldn't seem to come up with better writers, directors and actors who would be willing to work for free as a labor of love for Star Wars (and let's be realistic, they HAVE to exist out there in vast numbers -- this is, after all Star Wars). If I had to guess, there was more nepotism involved in the cast and crew more than there was talent consideration, but I could be wrong about that. Perhaps the creators of this film will learn from their mistakes. Or perhaps they will go on listening only to their good reviewers and continue to put out the same product as before.I remember waiting a long time for Threads of Destiny to come out, I was actually very excited about it. A large disappointment, even for a fan film.