Star Wars: Revelations

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• USA • 2005 • 47m •

• Directed by: Shane Felux. • Starring: Gina Hernandez, Karen Hammang, Holland Gedney, Frank Hernandez, Shane Felux, Joe Lancaster, Kevin Zabawa, Jack Foley, Errol Spat Oktan, Jonathan Thorpe, Zack Henderson, Nick Jamilla, Jason Ruschell. • Music by: Chris Bouchard.

Seers once shaped the path of the Jedi Order. But their visions grew unreliable and the Jedi came to distrust those with the ability. Seers hid their visions or left the Order forever. In the wake of the Temple's destruction a power struggle has emerged between Darth Vader, the Dark Lord of the Sith, and Zhanna, the Emperor's Hand. Each seek to eliminate the last of the Jedi and gain the Emperor's favor. Caught between them is one woman who cannot deny the truth of her visions as all race to possess an ancient Jedi secret.

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Trailer

2:34

Review:

Image from: Star Wars: Revelations (2005)

Independent film-making has a long and proud history. Lately, online film productions such as Revelations have attracted a lot of publicity, even being publicised as the future of independent film-making. If this is the future of independent film-making, then independent film-making is, quite frankly, doomed. I spent several hours trying to download the ISO DVD image of this fan flick on BitTorrent. Then I gave up on its unrealistic expectations on how I should configure my internet connection and tried FTP instead. It took me a little under a day to download the complete ISO image of the main feature. I wish, having sat through the whole thing, that I had not bothered. The plot is threadbare, the production values non-existent, and the video presentation was unwatchable. About the only thing it has in its favour is the fact that the people who made it did so with next to no money (supposedly), and did so for the sheer joy of making it rather than for commercial gain. Given that commercial gain tends to translate into the Lowest Common Denominator, as the recent Hitchhiker's Guide adaptation proved, this is a strong positive.

The plot, unfortunately, is hardly enough to sustain a forty-seven minute film. It revolves around a device that reads tags a Jedi marked certain apprentices with. He did this on the pretext that tracking failed apprentices and making sure they did not turn to the dark side seemed like a good idea. Now, in the midst of the Sith taking over the galactic government, multiple identities within the galaxy seek to find what amounts to a record of every living Jedi the order has trained. Everyone from Darth Vader to an overweight-looking Emperor's Hand is looking for this database, and our hero is one of the few surviving Jedi who dares to use her skills in public. Not that there is the shortage of Jedi that one would expect from this kind of environment. In fact, there are more light sabers shown in this forty-seven minute short than the entire original trilogy combined. And sometimes one gets the feeling, however small, that the plot took a back seat to this.

When Star Wars: Revelations is showing the nuts and bolts of an exterior universe, it excels apart from one detail I will talk about later. The Star Destroyers do look a little too up-to-date to be in the proper continuity, and there are some deviances from what one would expect from the standard model, but these are well-done enough for it to not matter. The sight of TIE Fighters launching from the Star Destroyers is sufficient to put a big old smile on the face, and the wreckage yard shown near one planet is enough to give the section of the universe displayed in this film a feeling of width. Which was something certain hundred-million-dollar productions definitely lacked. Unfortunately, when one gets into the interior sets, something goes awry. The Emperor looks like someone threw paper maché at his face and left it to stick. Most of the more spaceport-like locations are so undetailed that it makes the next problem look suspicious indeed. And, truth be told, the dialogue is almost as bad as was the case in what I like to call Attack Of The Clods.

The worst aspect of this presentation was the video transfer I encountered on the DVD image I downloaded. While it is not the worst I have ever looked at, it is very much at the bottom of a long list. The image is so dark that aside from our heroes, very little can be made out. In some scenes, skin tones are posterised and macro-blocked, while the grain-like compression effect known as mosquito noise sometimes runs rampant. Since the entire film was recorded digitally, at least as far as I can tell, exactly why the DVD presentation wasn't given the benefit of 16:9 enhancement is beyond me. Then again, more resolution (and yes, a 1.66:1 presentation has more resolution when 16:9 enhanced) means that the flaws in the image are easier to make out. Not that anything is, in fact, easy to make out in this picture. It looks as if it was animated by the old Commodore Amiga pixel-by-pixel painters before being blown up to DVD resolution. A sheer mess, in other words.

While I commend the makers for the independent spirit in which they made this film, I wish they would not state their goal on their web site as being to prove what they can do on no budget. El Mariachi was made on no budget, as was the original Mad Max. To call Star Wars: Revelations an example of the spirit behind El Mariachi or Mad Max is to call a half-baked meat pie in the same spirit as a veal schnitzel with lemon juice and salt. For that reason, I gave Star Wars: Revelations a three out of ten. I certainly hope that what Panicstruck Productions makes next is an improvement.

Review by mentalcritic from the Internet Movie Database.

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