DUALITY
Web site

review written 2/22/2003

The irony of it all. This film, more than any since Troops, put fan films on the map. The Internet went nuts for it and proclaimed it revolutionary and amazing and perfect and better than anything.

And on the flip side, because of it, everyone wanted to make a special-effects lightsaber extravaganza.

This may be the Star Wars of Star Wars fan films. It made the whole thing popular, then inspired a load of imitators. Before 1977, special effects and action and blockbuster quality just wasn't the thing. Now, everyone's gotta have a lightsaber duel. (Did I mix something up here?)

Duality opens with lovely typography (I love fonts!) revealing a title with a neat hidden pun—remember that Duality is the follow-up to Duel. We see a 3D world. Before this, we didn't have bluescreens all over the place and CGI environments everywhere you looked in a fan film. Show some respect. :)

The "set" design, costume design and overall look of this flick never ceases to amaze me. Even before a lightsaber comes on, you gotta give credit to the Crew of Two for putting us in a nice-looking environment. This ain't no forest, and you're not gonna find a store-bought costume around.

Then the non-existent plot happens. Fighting occurs. Something I've never been able to figure out happens wherein they both die at once. Blah.

Comic relief occurs with our pal the floating droid (don't you just love the reflections in his red half-sphere-thingy?) Then the credits, which play not to splashy music, but to stillness and wind—a very classy thing.

And we see the names Mark Thomas and Dave Macomber, who I wish could get together again and make a fan film with a plot.

Poor Duality. Made us cool? Ruined us? Who knows. But you can't deny that fan films are a different place because of it. Duality gave us press coverage, nerd street-cred, prestige. Heck, they played the movie at my college engineering building's information kiosks. For no good reason. It had nothing to do with Northwestern University, or engineering, or anything. But someone thought it was cool.

They did something wonderful, this Crew of Two. But it's ironic how they kill both Sith apprentices at the end—because the characters really are expendable. When they died, I didn't care. If one had lived, I wouldn't have had any different reaction.

My biggest emotional reaction was the mid-credits gag of seeing the droid fall. It's genuinely funny, and the lightning that comes after is well-timed. I think I might have gotten most emotionally attached to the droid—who never spoke a word of understandable language. Koo joo, hwankee, indeed.