THE DARK REDEMPTION
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review written 2/23/2003

A fan film good enough (especially for its time) to get Lucasfilm worried. You gotta love that.

We start with an unconventional opener—a scene BEFORE the opening crawl. Mara Jade, played a little stiffly by Leah McLeod, who I suspect was picked for her looks rather than acting ability, is in trouble. Will Zev Senesca (how often do you see him show up in a fan film) be able to save her? And how does Lt. Pol Treidum (Peter Sumner reprising his role from ANH) fit into all this?

One of the great things about this flick is its OT feel. Before the prequels made Jedi super-cool, we had this. Stormtroopers! Blasters! Running around shooting things! A cantina!

Yes, Peter Mether and his group had more money and resources than most people. I don't expect most fan films to have loads of extras. But the feel of this Flash Gordon-style romp proves that you don't need lightsabers all over the place to make a good flick. (In fact, the lightsabers look pretty bad in this.) Today, space scenes and Force lightning and a lot of the cool stuff in this is easier to do than ever.

Storytelling. Half-decent dialogue. Hard work. And—there's no real place to comment on this—I love the original music for this. The crawl music feels Star Warsy without being John Williams, and the Nitocris song "Darkside", while inappropriately chosen, is still an awful lot of fun—I downloaded the MP3, which I listen to often and sing along to. I even tried to use it in a class project, but my fellow group members nixed it.

For some reason, as much as I like what went into making this, I never really feel like watching it. Which is odd. In watching it again to review it, I had great fun. Mara on the edge of the pit at 19:53 is about as good "art" as we see in fan filmmaking. She jumps. And I wanna jump, too, right into this quality film.