CONSPIRACY
creators' Web site
Web site for downloading @ TheForce.Net

review written 2/23/2003

A lot of people criticized Conspiracy because they hadn't seen the source material, an HBO movie about the Nazis planning the Final Solution.

To me, this is unfair. My issue with Conspiracy is not one of confusion (I haven't seen the HBO movie), but of boredom.

It's almost an experiment: Can a Star Wars fan film survive without action and special effects? Not that there aren't some nice visuals here—one in particular, a camera move in a CGI hangar, blew me away. I like the green liquid in the funny-looking decanters on the shelf (is that what I'm looking at?), and the costumes are good. The title design is stylish.

But ultimately, we get twenty minutes of a bunch of guys sitting around at a table.

Even when the guys at the table are doing their acting well, which often happens, it's still just guys at a table.

Granted, the source material presumably involved guys at a table...

This is what I think TBX Productions should have done—spread their wings. Left the HBO movie behind, treating it as inspiration rather than source text. Seeing the Empire plot its horrific deeds that eventually unfold in the OT is an interesting idea and deserves to be covered. But couldn't we have seen more private moments? Cutaways?

Something?

Conspiracy is a lost opportunity. While I applaud the filmmakers for trying something different, I wish things had happened differently. Perhaps handed the script to someone who'd never seen the HBO movie, and not even told them it was based on the HBO movie.

Issues of adapting a second text into a Star Wars fan film are occasionally tricky. It's been done with Macbeth, "Crocodile Hunter", Lola rennt, The Princess Bride, the list goes on. Conspiracy, I think, just didn't want to go that way.