Star Wars: Origins (2019) User Reviews

Not bad, kid.

[shortecrx · 6/10 · 25 December 2019]

Visually this was on par with the actual movies. Plot-wise it was interesting and funny. The dialog though... could have done without all the recycled quotes. Aside from "I've got a bad feeling about this" the rest are all way too cliché, and took away from the movie as a whole for me. The same goes for the newer movies as well.

A Faithful Homage

[albertaguy · 8/10 · 1 December 2021]

Viewers will appreciate the care and attention to detail in pace, cinematography, humor and music. An interesting and entertaining blend of Indiana Jones meets Star Wars.

Nostalgic, epic excellence.

[FrancescaLWhite · 9/10 · 20 March 2020]

'Star Wars: Origins' by Phil Hawkins is hard proof that short films can be just as high quality, epic in scale & attention grabbing as feature length films. From the stunning colour palette, the John Williams-esque score, the brutal & incomparable location of the Sahara, the gorgeous 'Star Wars' blockbuster rivalling cinematography, and evocative, poignant script. I was fortunate to catch this film on the big screen at a film festival and it was my favourite film of the festival. The sheer amount of detail in every single shot, incredible. This team fully deserves the praise it's earning, and the blood, sweat and tears were certainly worth it. I'm a bit of a sci-fi nerd, so I loved every 'easter egg', every nod to films like: 'Star Trek', 'The Mummy', 'Jurassic Park' and 'Indiana Jones' as well as the Star Wars Universe itself. My personal favourite shot being the 'origin' of the scrolling text, so well-known from the series, referenced in a similarly moving close-up of a beautifully drawn, hand written journal. The 'cave'/'pyramid' artwork & candles flickering is another personal love; this film is aesthetically pleasing as the story is moving emotionally & wistful. Highly recommend a watch! Nostalgic, epic excellence.

It is bad

[gy-att · 4/10 · 4 November 2021]

This is far far away from an epic masterpiece. The cinematography is great, and the film visually looks really good. Respect to props and set dec. But the acting is very bad, the Indiana Jones look is cute but unnecessary, the plot is stupid. I mean why would anyone paint stills from the story in a cave on Earth? No one was there at the whole unless it was painted by 3CPO :D The quotes are very lamely forced ("that's no moon", "Far far away", I've got a bad feeling about this", "never tell me the odds" oh man, they are soo badly represented), and guys I felt embarassed when I saw her using that clumsy lightsaber. And what was that Nazis running up and down scene? :D :D.

Too much for this runtime and thus no satisfying elaboration

[Horst_In_Translation · 4/10 · 12 March 2024]

"Star Wars: Origins" is a British English-language live action short film from 2019, so this one has its fifth anniversary now and the writer and director here is Phil Hawkins and there are two other writers credited and these come right from some of the biggest film franchises in history. So these over 20 minutes, over 21 actually, are a fan film and in the title you can see already the name of one of the franchises. That's right. It's Star Wars, the series that brought out more fan films that any other perhaps or I don't know. Maybe Batman has more by now. Anyway, Batman is not the second Franchise, but Indiana Jones it is. Actually, I saw it this way too that it looked very much like Indiana Jones at times without knowing that they gave actual credit to Kaufman. There is pretty much a clean cut. The two protagonists are in touch with each other, but they never share the screen. It is always either Indy or Star Wars with Star Wars having more screen time and therefore probably also the mention in the title. I would say I liked this film at the beginning, but the longer it went, the less impressed I ended up unfortunately. The strengths of the film are probably the locations, the costumes and also here and there the effects. They had to get in the light saber part of course. The story was not great at all, however. The American girl getting away from the camp would have been enough superhero material already for the entire 20 minutes, but well, she also manages to take out the villain gang later on and for some reason they just stand there with all their guns when she kills their leader. Totally randomly, a huge army of Nazi soldiers shows up as well then and they are disposed of even more quickly. Not sure what this was. Perhaps this should have been a 100-minute movie, so it would have made actual sense with all that Hawkins stuffed into these 20 minutes.

The film ends again with a special effects sequence involving the sky. As for the Indiana Jones parts down in some cave or so, they were not particularly interesting. I never shared the male protagonist's joy and delight there about what he found. What made things even worse was that he had a really rough moment of overacting in one of his first scenes. Or well, the actor did. I will spare you the names of the cast as you probably have not heard of any of those unless you know them personally. It's a fan film we should not forget, so no big budget and what they had, clearly went into other areas than the cast or the story. Hawkins should have gone for another writer and stayed with the direction only. I also did not like the film's politically correct messages at times, like if we take the brave fella who is killed early on. Or if we take the mention that there is no religion to the gang of antagonists here. Well, look at them and you may think differently. I know I did. This is not a Star Wars film that includes Yoda or any characters that resemble animals or are just aliens. Everybody in here is pretty much human. If it wasn't for the mask found down there that maybe connects the two franchises this is all about, I would not even have seen the Star Wars reference really. Could have bee Dune too. You watch, you decide what is dominant here. Or better don't watch. It may be an above-average short film, but in general it is simply not good enough for a positive recommendation. Skip.

Amazing and pointless

[oldvicar · 5/10 · 18 January 2024]

The family and friends reviews aren't exaggerating - this really is box office movie standard sound and vision. Some of it was apparently on location in Morocco and the special effects are indistinguishable to the amateur eye from what was filmed. I'm just not really able to work out what the point was. For example the most risible bit seems to be a woman driving a jeep through countless miles of desert being pursued by baddies who are unloading mounted machine guns from a few vehicle lengths behind. Then, apparently unable to land a single bullet amongst the thousands that have been fired at nearly point blank range they fire a rocket launcher at her when are within ramming distance. This isn't a spoiler because there's really nothing to spoil. What a waste.