I don’t normally like to invoke the same franchise two days in a row on FCT, but there’s no ignoring the whirlwind buzz surrounding Eric Poulton and his series of drawings envisioning a Steampunk Star Wars universe. (And what is Steampunk, you ask? Picture modern, attitude-laden Sci-Fi written way back when by Jules Verne or H.G. Wells; alternately, you can check out Wikipedia’s typically unweildy definition.) Poulton’s art is undoubtedly impressive, coming across as both brittle and yet lush, capturing all kinds of nuance and detail. There’s even a few laughs as it depicts familiar characters and settings if they’d been developed—and in some cases, over-engineered—a century ago. They’re also great art in that the more you look at them, the more intricacy there is to discover; it’s great stuff.
Poulton, to his credit, notes on his site that he’s not the first person to explore this concept, having originally been inspired by this effort to build a steampunk lightsaber. Likewise, Star Trek fans have had a site devoted to Steam Trek for a few years now. Even so, Poulton’s drawings are so damn cool that more than one comment on his site consists of people begging for an animated version of his vision, bringing his unique take on that familiar galaxy far, far away to life.
To some extent, that’s already happened. While no one’s gone as far back as the potential Steampunk era of the Victorian Age, there’s still a few Star Wars fan films that evoke days gone by, such as Star Wars 1937, which recasts the series as a 1930′s Buster Crabbe-type serial episode. Taking a flying leap out of the “logic” of the real movies, this four-minute UK production merrily mashes together characters and elements from the original trilogy (Leia, Darth and the Emperor) with things from the prequels (Jar Jar and those cool trooper robots that were the only good thing about Phantom Menace—other than the arrival of the end credits).
While they get the ultra low-budget look and costuming right, the story itself is a muddle, requiring repeat viewings to make any kind of sense. Plots for the serials were models of simplicity, and while this invokes many of the usual scenarios (the inevitable trap, the goofy monster, the eager yet stupid sidekick, the girl who won’t stay outta trouble, and so on), they don’t really gel into a movie. It’s a shame, because a fair amount of care and effort went into this flick. There’s green-screen work, used to replicate the chintziest, old-fashioned special effects possible, carefully designed costumes (the site includes wardrobe drawings), and plenty of purposefully poorly acted lines—or at least I choose to see them as done on purpose.
But the film never creates a sense of cohesiveness, just a sense that friends had a good time hanging out for a few afternoons, shooting this while munching potato chips behind the scenes. If that was the case, it’s an absolutely legitimate reason to make a flick—after all, fan filmmaking is supposed to be fun first and a viewing experience second. Still, given the unique idea, it’s natural as a viewer to wish they’d done more with the idea or at least refined the concepts they had. The thought of “un-building” Star Wars, reducing it back down to the genre of movie that inspired it, is an incredible concept, which makes this attempt kind of a bummer, really.
Another moderate disappointment is the film’s website, which has the movie as a download; a short, indecipherable gag reel; and a few preliminary sketches about the movie’s look. There is, however, no text about how or why the movie was made, making for another missed opportunity.
These aren’t the only black and white Star Wars fan films; for instance, there’s a few movie edits on YouTube (, and ) that illegally use clips from the original films and reworks them as various silent movie (and for the record, movie edits don’t really count as fan films).
Then there’s also the epic silent film trilogy, Silent But Deadly, by Jeff Cioletti and Lou Tambone. I’ve shown the first film in the series at many fan film programs over the years and it always gets good laughs; the others, well, less so, but nonetheless, the whole enterprise is a great example of taking an idea and running with it to its logical conclusion. Is it Steampunk? Nope, just a little punky, but sometimes, that’s all you really need. Plus, the first one was shown at the Cannes Film Festival, thus making history as the first time the phrase Howard The Duck was ever invoked on that hallowed ground.
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