CHALLENGE OF THE SITH
Web site

review written 2/23/2003

The title made me nervous. Oh, that "of the".

The file size didn't thrill me either, but it downloaded quickly from a strong server.

The opening crawl font (particularly the "Star Wars") is a bit off, and the promise of a truly epic plot from the crawl worried me. Would the film deliver?

During the crawl, I noticed that something in the sound mix had emphasized the cymbal crashes. And I kinda liked that.

And I kinda liked the music that accompanied the pan-down—never heard that before—and the stylized blue planet (I do like use of colors!) we saw. The lens flares from the approaching ship interacted nicely with that colorful planet.

A forest in which a ship lands—and that's a good-looking ship, I might add. Photo-realistic, or at least so it seems in the Web compression, which might have actually helped this film.

A beautiful staircase location—and extras! Extras in decent costumes!—and then lightsabers used against a not-at-all-clichéd soundtrack, Luke's intro theme.

A nice camera move combined with good effects work on the rock levitation. Another camera move into the pavilion thingy.

This was promising.

Finally, four minutes in, someone speaks. The story and atmosphere have been completely visual until now. Nice touch. (And where the hell did they get all these extras?)

About another minute later, we get some more dialogue. Expositional dialogue, and not very good stuff at then. We are not eased into this dialogue the way we were everything else. These guys are reciting opening crawls, and not handling it well.

(And I'm getting annoyed enough with the film to notice that a Jedi's wearing a bandanna for no good reason.)

Here come the Sith, bringing little of note save a nice explosion at 6:47 and a well-done jump at 8:00. The rest is saber fights, which never amount to anything better than stick-banging.

Things pick up again when we get into space. The set looks good, and I like the somewhat stylized POV shot of the green laser bolts heading for the ship. But the dialogue is still poorly delivered!

The hyperspace tunnel effect looks neat, as does the rack focus on/off the sleeping Jedi. But again, I can't stand to hear people talk—until we meet a space mechanic, who brings a little character to his, well, character, and a 'retired' Jedi with a sad story to tell.

Things happen. Eventually, out come the lightsabers. And again the locations are very impressive. Yes, it's a forest. But it's a forest with a river and a bridge and rocks and a shot at 46:11 that will make you smile.

This is a very ambitious film. The production values are particularly good for fifty minutes. Unfortunately, the acting drags it down quite a bit, as do the lackluster saber duels. But TBX Productions, it's clear, has their act together and aren't too bad with a camera.