Art of the Saber II
Aug. 30th, 2006 10:42 pmI'm a huge fan of fan films - the idea of them is great and sometimes, just sometimes, you get something spectacular out of them. Like this:
http://theforce.net/fanfilms/fxprojects/artofthesaber/index.asp
It's something I first watched nearly five years ago and rewatching it now I'm just as blown away as ever. It's just...phenomenal. Someone needs to rip out all the fight scenes in Revenge of the Sith and replace them with this one. Someone needs to tell George Lucas you can have a fancy, impressive, awe-inspiring lightsaber battle without it being so fast you can't tell what's happening, or, rather, there being nothing going on except twirling, and then force him to watch this and hire these guys as his fight choreographers.
The use of Hans Zimmer's music, a genuine letter from a genuine civil war soldier who died during the war, and the obvious influence of Hong Kong martial arts cinema works excellently with the backdrop of Sith vs. Jedi. Using such a famous backdrop, it does what good fan works do best, and utilises a shortcut to our emotions, to express something worthwhile and new.
But weirdly, they seem to have gone back and re-edited it. And despite my endless respect for them, I don't like the re-edit. I'll now have to dig out my original copy of the film and see if it was always like that and if my and two other people's memories are just really selective...
What they did that was edit in two shots into the film. A sappy shot of a picture of one of the main character's wife and child and then at the end, that picture lying on the grass. It's cheap, melodramatic and totally unnecessary. It ruins what's otherwise a wonderfully understated monologue in the context of the film. It's doubly ruined because that monologue is real and I feel it's really interesting to listen to - the personality that wrote it. This film does a great job of bringing those sentiments to a new audience and it doesn't NEED to be ruined by melodramatic asshole after-the-fact edits. Assholes. Argh, I shouldn't gripe. The film itself is still INCREDIBLE. The fight scene is just...oh.
So anyway, this is film is awesome. I promise, it's worth it.
http://theforce.net/fanfilms/fxprojects/artofthesaber/index.asp
It's something I first watched nearly five years ago and rewatching it now I'm just as blown away as ever. It's just...phenomenal. Someone needs to rip out all the fight scenes in Revenge of the Sith and replace them with this one. Someone needs to tell George Lucas you can have a fancy, impressive, awe-inspiring lightsaber battle without it being so fast you can't tell what's happening, or, rather, there being nothing going on except twirling, and then force him to watch this and hire these guys as his fight choreographers.
The use of Hans Zimmer's music, a genuine letter from a genuine civil war soldier who died during the war, and the obvious influence of Hong Kong martial arts cinema works excellently with the backdrop of Sith vs. Jedi. Using such a famous backdrop, it does what good fan works do best, and utilises a shortcut to our emotions, to express something worthwhile and new.
But weirdly, they seem to have gone back and re-edited it. And despite my endless respect for them, I don't like the re-edit. I'll now have to dig out my original copy of the film and see if it was always like that and if my and two other people's memories are just really selective...
What they did that was edit in two shots into the film. A sappy shot of a picture of one of the main character's wife and child and then at the end, that picture lying on the grass. It's cheap, melodramatic and totally unnecessary. It ruins what's otherwise a wonderfully understated monologue in the context of the film. It's doubly ruined because that monologue is real and I feel it's really interesting to listen to - the personality that wrote it. This film does a great job of bringing those sentiments to a new audience and it doesn't NEED to be ruined by melodramatic asshole after-the-fact edits. Assholes. Argh, I shouldn't gripe. The film itself is still INCREDIBLE. The fight scene is just...oh.
So anyway, this is film is awesome. I promise, it's worth it.