Nine Divergences: Star Wars Visions 2
Jul. 26th, 2023 08:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerSeveral of the animated-in-Japan shorts bundled together as “Star Wars Visions” left me thinking I could watch them again; I haven’t found the time for even that much, though. It still got my attention again anyway when I saw announcements animation studios now from around the world would be contributing shorts to a new Visions series. The thought “man cannot live by anime alone” creeps back to me every so often, in between watching yet more anime anyway. I was conscious again of “animation” remaining what’ll get me to take in even a little bit of the “post-sale stuff” I’ve otherwise checked out on altogether. It took a while for me to get around to it, however. Even if the shorts might not be “canonical,” I was aware some of the previous ones had just happened to reiterate odds and sods tossed into the “Disney Space Movies.”
Things looked interesting enough to begin with in “Sith” from El Guiri Studios, even if I latched on to the detail of “Yellow lightsabres? Definitely a thing now.” I’m aware I might just be expected to think back to how the first good-guy action figures had yellow lightsabres (for all that those accessories disappeared years before most of my figures did when my family moved), and aware too “Mace Windu’s unique violet blade” was just fine with me, but I’m also stuck thinking about it now being a last-second addition as if to go straight from “the lightsabre, see?” to “still important.” The short also wound up with me pondering whether it was implying someone could drop away from the dark side for merely personal motivations.
“Screecher’s Reach” got my attention for being credited to Cartoon Saloon. I did get around to ordering a box set of some of their feature films, but haven’t found the time to watch any of them yet. The short was distinctive-looking “drawn animation” (while still tempting me to name past titles from others), but left me latched on to the detail of “all you have to is get determined in a crisis and you, too, can wield the Force.” After that moment, though, I was at least able to notice some subtle signs this might not have been altogether a good thing for the young protagonist. “In the Stars” from Punkrobot Studio looked like stop-motion animation; I was willing to suppose there was a bit of “other schools of the Force” mixed in with one more clutch performance, but that was after “not just the good guys but now the bad guys are diverse” and a considerable amount of “stormtroopers are terrible shots.”
The title “I Am Your Mother” might have looked a bit obvious right from the moment I saw it, but on seeing the short credited to Aardman my mood improved a bit. In a familiar claymation style it presented a comedic race of pilot cadets and their parents, and it did have a cameo appearance from Wedge Antilles. At this point I have to admit to counting the shorts and wondering about past impressions of the most compelling past Vision just happening to be where “everyone knows” the “best” Episode sits. “Journey to the Dark Head” from Studio Mir looked “anime-esque”; I recalled that studio having worked on the Avatar animated series. It also stepped away again from seeming to fit into “the storyline as we’re now supposed to know it,” even with Jedi and Sith warring. The story involved a member of what might have been a third Force school supposing destroying “the head of the evil statue” might save the day and being offered the aid of a brooding young Jedi (which actually got the point of “a young woman and a young man” at last); even if the way things weren’t as simple as she’d imagined bearing a shadow of “good and bad just keep going around and around” everything still added up to a certain appeal.
It wasn’t far into “The Spy Dancer” from Studio La Cachette before I was stuck wondering again about “the bad guys are just as diverse now as the good guys” and if this had something to do with “making sure anyone can identify with any side” regardless of thoughts from any direction at any time about “moral lessons”; the “drawn animation” did look distinctive in its own way. “The Bandits of Golak” from 88 Pictures looked a good bit like the computer animation of The Clone Wars without actually being it; more than that, I did get to thinking there was a lot of India to be seen in it, and ready to be interested in that. At the same time I had the impression there was a lot of “as things now are” underneath the design details, and a certain unfortunate dose of “if this kid who’s figured out how to use the Force apparently all by herself can’t figure out there are problems demonstrating that in public, well...”
“The Pit” got my attention for being credited both to D’Art Shtajio and Lucasfilm Ltd. itself. There was at least a trace of “anime-esque” look to its art, with apparent slaves ordered by stormtroopers to dig in the middle of nowhere and unearth crystals until they hit bedrock and, all of a sudden, are abandoned at the bottom of their pit with no clear way back up. However, a city just happens to have grown nearby. Things lead to “inspiring collective nonviolent resistance.” Every once in a while I’ll wonder whether we could use stories that involve and “sell” that. In this context, though, I’m just not sure it could escape unpleasantly smirking reactions.
As I wondered just how things would end this time, “Aau’s Song” from Triggerfish had another sort of stop-motion look to it, with pleasantly stylized alien characters. It also happened to involve crystals, called “kyber” crystals in non-crawling text, familiar enough from early drafts, fan knowledge for years, and something that’s kept creeping back into spinoffs ever since. The short just happened to have someone “more powerful at one particular thing with no apparent training than any Jedi,” although this led to a take on “having to say goodbye and go on to bigger things” that had me wondering about fan interpretations of how things would “obviously” go on and the tension between that and comments from George Lucas himself in the recent “Star Wars Archives.”
As the animation studios were more wide-spread this time around, there might have been more variety of style than with the original Star Wars Visions. Again, I suppose I might go back to a few shorts from this package at some point; finding the time and motivation for that point remains the problem.
Things looked interesting enough to begin with in “Sith” from El Guiri Studios, even if I latched on to the detail of “Yellow lightsabres? Definitely a thing now.” I’m aware I might just be expected to think back to how the first good-guy action figures had yellow lightsabres (for all that those accessories disappeared years before most of my figures did when my family moved), and aware too “Mace Windu’s unique violet blade” was just fine with me, but I’m also stuck thinking about it now being a last-second addition as if to go straight from “the lightsabre, see?” to “still important.” The short also wound up with me pondering whether it was implying someone could drop away from the dark side for merely personal motivations.
“Screecher’s Reach” got my attention for being credited to Cartoon Saloon. I did get around to ordering a box set of some of their feature films, but haven’t found the time to watch any of them yet. The short was distinctive-looking “drawn animation” (while still tempting me to name past titles from others), but left me latched on to the detail of “all you have to is get determined in a crisis and you, too, can wield the Force.” After that moment, though, I was at least able to notice some subtle signs this might not have been altogether a good thing for the young protagonist. “In the Stars” from Punkrobot Studio looked like stop-motion animation; I was willing to suppose there was a bit of “other schools of the Force” mixed in with one more clutch performance, but that was after “not just the good guys but now the bad guys are diverse” and a considerable amount of “stormtroopers are terrible shots.”
The title “I Am Your Mother” might have looked a bit obvious right from the moment I saw it, but on seeing the short credited to Aardman my mood improved a bit. In a familiar claymation style it presented a comedic race of pilot cadets and their parents, and it did have a cameo appearance from Wedge Antilles. At this point I have to admit to counting the shorts and wondering about past impressions of the most compelling past Vision just happening to be where “everyone knows” the “best” Episode sits. “Journey to the Dark Head” from Studio Mir looked “anime-esque”; I recalled that studio having worked on the Avatar animated series. It also stepped away again from seeming to fit into “the storyline as we’re now supposed to know it,” even with Jedi and Sith warring. The story involved a member of what might have been a third Force school supposing destroying “the head of the evil statue” might save the day and being offered the aid of a brooding young Jedi (which actually got the point of “a young woman and a young man” at last); even if the way things weren’t as simple as she’d imagined bearing a shadow of “good and bad just keep going around and around” everything still added up to a certain appeal.
It wasn’t far into “The Spy Dancer” from Studio La Cachette before I was stuck wondering again about “the bad guys are just as diverse now as the good guys” and if this had something to do with “making sure anyone can identify with any side” regardless of thoughts from any direction at any time about “moral lessons”; the “drawn animation” did look distinctive in its own way. “The Bandits of Golak” from 88 Pictures looked a good bit like the computer animation of The Clone Wars without actually being it; more than that, I did get to thinking there was a lot of India to be seen in it, and ready to be interested in that. At the same time I had the impression there was a lot of “as things now are” underneath the design details, and a certain unfortunate dose of “if this kid who’s figured out how to use the Force apparently all by herself can’t figure out there are problems demonstrating that in public, well...”
“The Pit” got my attention for being credited both to D’Art Shtajio and Lucasfilm Ltd. itself. There was at least a trace of “anime-esque” look to its art, with apparent slaves ordered by stormtroopers to dig in the middle of nowhere and unearth crystals until they hit bedrock and, all of a sudden, are abandoned at the bottom of their pit with no clear way back up. However, a city just happens to have grown nearby. Things lead to “inspiring collective nonviolent resistance.” Every once in a while I’ll wonder whether we could use stories that involve and “sell” that. In this context, though, I’m just not sure it could escape unpleasantly smirking reactions.
As I wondered just how things would end this time, “Aau’s Song” from Triggerfish had another sort of stop-motion look to it, with pleasantly stylized alien characters. It also happened to involve crystals, called “kyber” crystals in non-crawling text, familiar enough from early drafts, fan knowledge for years, and something that’s kept creeping back into spinoffs ever since. The short just happened to have someone “more powerful at one particular thing with no apparent training than any Jedi,” although this led to a take on “having to say goodbye and go on to bigger things” that had me wondering about fan interpretations of how things would “obviously” go on and the tension between that and comments from George Lucas himself in the recent “Star Wars Archives.”
As the animation studios were more wide-spread this time around, there might have been more variety of style than with the original Star Wars Visions. Again, I suppose I might go back to a few shorts from this package at some point; finding the time and motivation for that point remains the problem.