Star Wars: Threads of Destiny

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.

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.

This is going to be a mixture of pros and cons; no spoilers. I came across it by accident while searching something else on YouTube, came here and read the reviews (love to hate). I was 20 in 1977 so I saw the 1st (a.k.a. 4th) Lucas Star Wars movie when it debuted and many times after.

Is this anywhere near the insight and writing skill of George Lucas...no. Is it the best fan film (and I've probably seen about 50- 60), yes. The "Summary" line says I want to look at 2 things; movie and reviews.

The script is a combination of concepts of scenes from all 6 films (the 7th hadn't come out at the time I wrote this). While the dialog wasn't taken from the original movies, the themes for most of the movie were. I won't say which ones. Just see the movie. However there have been multiple reviews that make it seem like the writer is stealing from the original. Now the counterpoint: this is a movie about an ancient order (think back...you got it, the Jedi Knights, steeped in custom and tradition). While the writer uses concepts from the original films, why shouldn't he? If this is an ancient order than changing the rules would be bad script writing. Yes the dialog could have been snappier in MANY places but the writer did, as Lucas did in the 2nd 3 installments, keep the rules of the Jedi order constant. They WOULDN'T change over time. So while he should take a writing class to learn to give a script a better flow, he stayed loyal to the ideas of Star Wars.

Something that I couldn't believe as I read this were a comments about the fact that the actors had accents. It leads me to believe that these reviewers might never have seen the original movies; perhaps books on tape. LOL Does anyone recall one or two scenes from ANY of the Star Wars movies? How about the admiral on Vader's command ship? Anyone remember him (before Vader used the force and killed him) he had a few lines as did his subordinates (one of whom was later promoted). And then there was Tarkin (Commander of the death star, etc. played by Peter Cushing), of course let's not forget a couple other minor characters. They would be Alec Guinness and Anthony Daniels. I think they played Obi-Wan and 3P0. Guess what they all had in common? ACCENTS! Why this was even mentioned I can't imagine. And to suggest they take diction lessons. Talk about absurd.

Back to the film. Let's address special effects which people seem again to like or find endless criticism of. I've done computer animation for several large advertising campaigns; concept to sitting at a computer and creating. Was the green screen perfect? I agree with many of you and the answer is no. But would I criticize it to the degree I've seen here...you guess the answer to this one. Just to do a still shot of something against a green screen is an art in just lighting the screen correctly let alone putting moving characters in front of it (and I mean even the slightest move). The fact that this was started in 2005 and is complete is amazing! Having done this work I saw every imperfection there was and probably more than most because it was my business so I know what to look for. BUT, it's a fan film with relatively no budget. Even with the software that was available in 2005 for home or small commercial use they pushed it to its absolute limits so for that alone it should be appreciated. And for the people who commented that this was really a special effects movie, ever seen the behind-the-scenes documentaries of the original Star Wars. Lucas did the same thing only he had a movie studio budget behind him. He wasn't creating his animations on a variety of PCs/Macs/small commercial workstations or whatever they used for this film. And if you think the original Star Wars CGI was amazing I could point out about 100 artifacts (computer image glitches) in Lucas' 1st film alone and it's my personal favorite because it started the whole thing. When people write reviews criticizing an art form, they really should do a little research before "opening mouth and inserting foot". I agree this movie was far from perfect but at least know what you are writing about before making a comment.

Will they make another movie? I actually hope so. Did it have faults? Plenty. Was it an amazing effort? Absolutely. And to all the "arm- chair" critics: a well thought out critique is a pleasure to read. Good or bad in regards to what is being reviewed they can be valuable and might help people from wasting their time. But, there's the key. Know what you're talking about. And regarding the fact that a Swedish person might have a Swedish accent (sorry, you still get a DUH on that one) you neglected to point out which version of English, you as an expert, feel they should be speaking. Did you wish a proper English accent (as in, from England), an American dialect? Just using those 2 countries alone, how many dialectic variations are there? Either country, you have recognizable and very different dialects: north, south, east, west, central region of either country. Who decides?

To people reading this, by now you have probably guessed that about 1/3 of this review is about the fan film. If you are a true Star Wars fan you will probably enjoy it once (you may not want to watch it 1,000 times like the Lucas films but you'll probably enjoy it). The summary of the film here on IMDb is accurate (again, not giving any spoilers). Read what the critics/reviewers have to say with a "grain of salt" and form your own opinions. Enjoy.

First off, you have to realize that this is a fan movie made of a very low budget and for what it is, it is an outstanding project!

As a major Star Wars fan I am very skeptical about fan films like these - but they pulled it off pretty nicely. Even though the obvious Swedish accents, bad acting, and failed green screen is a problem with this movie, it still executes and plays out quite nicely. And hey - It's a free movie too!

The story is kind of similar to the three first Star Wars movies, but in a completely different way. And as a major Star Wats fan I can say that i was mildly entertained and my interest in the story was pretty high. The script was very well written - even though it sometimes make you cringe because it's obvious it was written by Swedish people. I am not giving away any plot details or spoilers - go check it out for yourself.

As for the music, I think the soundtrack is quite nice and fits the moments pretty good. The CGI is awesome considering it's a low budget movie, just don't get any high expectations since it really isn't comparable to todays Hollywood movies. This movie took an amazing 9 years to make (!!!) since the movie has been post-poned and canceled multiple times. But the final result is pretty darn impressive.

However, there is a lot of things wrong with this movie that I can't skip complaining about. For example, the terrible accent and the god awful Green Screen / Chroma key effects. The acting is very mediocre, and you can hear the Swedish accents on most of the actors, and the words are not pronounced correctly. This, for me, is very annoying and really destroys a part of the movie that could have been much better. I must say some of them did a fairly good job on the English accents though. I just wish every actor had taken a course on how to speak proper English and pronounce the words the right way. Maybe a few acting classes too. About the green screen thing, it is understandable that they can't do as well as recent Hollywood movies, but the green screen is really, really, awful. It keeps on bugging me and I just can't stop thinking of the badly done chroma key. I think they should have taken more time to fix this as it becomes a very irritating part of the movie.

It was a fairly made movie and I did find it mildly amusing to watch. If you are a serious fan of the Star Wars movie you should not miss this. Hopefully, when the next Star Wars movie comes out 2015, Disney will not screw it up.

Threads of Fate is a far from perfect movie, but still delivers an amusing plot and some fairly good CGI and acting, even though most of them make you cringe. Considering this is a fan movie and a low budget one, this is done very well and I would say this is an amazing attempt even though the dialog and the actors are a bit so-so at times.

I admire that the creators of this movie made this movie and released it entirely for free making no profit of the movie at all, since they spent quite a lot of money for a fan film. This shows that there are passionate people out there that just want to please the fans and express their fandom.

7/10 stars.