RISE OF THE EMPIRE
Web site

review written 2/22/2003

An Episode III trailer. We see a lot of those. We do not, however, see too many of them done with Legos.

I was the head animator on a three-minute Lego short (Have You Seen This Man?) last spring, so I know what it takes to get a Lego man to even walk around convincingly, much less have a lightsaber duel. Needless to say the animation in this impressed me, as did the general look of the flick—hey, not everything could just be bought off the shelf, even in a world of ready-to-assemble Star Wars Legos.

The film starts with perhaps the best-looking “The Following Preview” screen I’ve seen in fan trailer history. We rack focus (a funny thing to do with Legos!) on a shot paralleling Anakin’s stances on the balcony in AOTC and the bridge of the star destroyer in ESB. And look at that—the director even remembered to give him a glove. Nice lighting, too.

And then a character speaks, and the whole thing goes to hell. With a few exceptions, the voices don’t really sound like the characters we know and love. The beautiful shots are ruined because the voice actor doesn’t really sound like anyone in particular.

Coming back to the positives: One thing that really makes this trailer work is that it would be just as good live-action. Some nice ‘cinematography’ at work. Cool shot here, cool shot there. I love the Star Destroyer shots at 0:39. Anakin’s close-up at 1:15. And the duel? Nifty stuff, at least as much as is allowed by the physiology of the Lego man. We have a mix of locations ranging from the spartan hallways reminiscient of the OT to bustling Coruscant to a dark fortress thingy of some kind. Familiar locations like the Chancellor’s office, the Jedi Council Chamber and the place where Yoda and Mace hang out together in AOTC are recreated faithfully.

It is obvious that a lot of care was taken in this film, and it really is a shame about the voices. It doesn’t seem to have hurt public opinion, though, seeing as it won an award at a Lego movie competition and was mentioned in Will Brooker’s “Using the Force” book (available at the store).

Give this flick a watch (and read the often-interesting account of how it got made at the Web site!)… There’s a lot of fan fiction out there calling itself “Rise of the Empire”, and more than one fan film has probably tried to lay claim to the somewhat generic title. But for me, there is only one Rise of the Empire, and it’s the one made frame-by-frame with Legos and love.