And Visions of Star Wars Danced in their Heads

Does this look like the face of mercy?

Being a Star Wars fan is a truly wild ride. Every time a new piece of Star Wars media comes out, you have to wonder if it’s going to hit the dizzying highs the series is capable of, or the pitiful lows, or just tread water somewhere in the middle (and never mind that most fans can’t agree where any of the movies and shows fall on that spectrum).

I’ve never pretended Star Wars is high art, and I don’t think anyone else should, either. It is, when it works, a finely crafted piece of entertainment and food for the imagination. It’s not likely to give you any profound statements on the meaning of the universe that you couldn’t find elsewhere, but it will tell you a story and leave you with a message that you care about because were genuinely excited by the ride.

Enter Star Wars Visions. As Disney attempts to take a franchise of vastly varying quality and turn it into pure, unadulterated profit, they decided to hand off the franchise to some Japanese animation studios and just see what they do with it.

As you can expect, the results were mixed. But when it comes to what works, and telling a story you care about, the first episode (“The Duel”). Is a beautiful example of what Star Wars can be.

The story takes heavy inspiration from samurai stories and Akira Kurosawa’s films (which were themselves a huge inspiration for the original trilogy).

A wandering “Ronin,” a hyper-competent adventurer/swordsman with a funny beep-boop robot arrives in a remote village that’s beset by faceless bad-guys. Mercenaries attempt to take back the village. An enemy in dark robes opposes them.

In thirteen minutes, this short film delivers most of what we love about Star Wars: thrilling action, a beautiful score, and characters who are more than they seem. It’s stylish and exciting, and most importantly it does what the original movie did way back in 1977. It leaves the audience wanting more, wondering where the story began and where it goes from here.

I haven’t finished working my way through the rest of Visions, so I’ll probably come back to some of the other examples. But like The Mandalorian, I found myself so excited to find a version of Star Wars that GETS Star Wars that I had to write about it.

“The Duel” is awesome. Go check it out.