Crossing of Fate is a modest tale about two brothers who get trained by a Jedi guy named Kubak (Mickey Dastoli). One of them, Garek (James Dastoli), is really angry when he fights, so he decides to turn to the Dark Side of the Force. Then his brother, Evar (Robert Dastoli), goes to turn him back. I think the story is phenomenal in that it's simple, original, and extremely accessible. Reading the script, I was very impressed. Especially after reading the less good first draft. But the movie has a few problems.

1. In the flashback scenes, when the two brothers are padawans training with sticks, they don't have the padawan braid in their hair. Now, I'm no Star Wars fan. I watched the original trilogy as well as Phantom Menace all in one day so I could go see Attack of the Clones in the theater and not be lost. But even I know that padawans have a braid in their hair, so that people will know they're not official Jedi, like a waitress with a sticker on her shirt that says, "Hi, I'm a trainee." I also know that the Dastolis know every little thing there is to know about not only the Star Wars universe, but also the expanded universe, which is like the Star Wars universe, except it's with different characters and you have to read all these novels and comic books. So why didn't the Dastolis put a braid in their hair? Did they not feel this movie had to be perfectly accurate? Did they not realize? Or did they decide that the character of Kubak would not make them wear braids in their hair, because of some personal cultural belief of his?

2. Do Jedi train with sticks? In Attack of the Clones, Obi-Wan Kenobi goes to a class being taught by Yoda, and there's like this five-year-old girl swinging a lightsaber around blindfolded while a flying robot shoots lasers at her. And everyone's acting like Yoda just asked her to do a math problem on the board. Maybe Master Kubak could not afford lightsabers to train the padawans, even though he lived in a giant house on his own planet, so he made them train with sticks. Or maybe he wasn't really a Jedi, and didn't even know about the braids or the flying laser training robots. What kind of Jedi school is this? Maybe it was the equivalent of an inner city public school with no funding. But that doesn't make sense, because later the brothers get to meet Emperor Palpatine, which is like meeting the President.

3. At one point, I can't hear what Garek is saying because just as I had trained my ear to hear over the insane crashing waves on the beach, this Earth seagull comes flying out of nowhere, screeching all over his dialogue. This could be the fault of my computer speakers, or perhaps the sound editing. Or maybe it's the fault of the boom operator. In which case, not to worry. This won't be the first Dastoli Digital movie singlehandedly destroyed by Jake Nabel.

And not only that, we see the same seagull later in the movie when someone is about to get killed, and it's not making a sound. Probably the seagull doesn't want to also get killed for making noise.

4. The lightsaber fight that would have been invaluable to both the action content (and thus, watchability) and narrative of the story was cut because the Dastolis supposedly couldn't work with the terrible quality of their VHS footage. If you ask me, they probably could have done something with it, but, seduced by the glamour of the Dark Side of the fanfilm Force, chose to compromise the good of the film for a more timely online premiere. This is poignantly reflected in the ending of the movie.

Here is what the Dastolis have to say about Crossing of Fate:

ROBERT:

"Crossing of Fate, being a quintessential first fanfilm, was always supposed to be about the lightsaber fight. That's the reason it existed (initially, as the CG aspects continued to grow and evolve later). The reason we cut the lightsaber fight was for technical reasons that looking back on it now, could have been dealt with given a lot more time. While you can see the choreography in the Behind the Scenes, that's not enough to prevent me from feeling a tad incomplete having never completed a lightsaber fight (The Vorzyd Gambit is a different scenario of course). But what I think is most remarkable about Crossing of Fate is the drastic changes to narrative elements that were done so late in post production. I mean, we literally made a 180 degree shift there."

JAMES:

"I'd rate it as my number one regret: that we never did a lightsaber fight. Its also strange to think that the concept of us ever using CG was non existant until almost half a year into pre production for Crossing of Fate."

Which reminds me. I almost didn't even mention the CGI, because these days, it's so often overlooked. But it really is an excellent start for two kids from Stamford working with nothing. Incidentally, Robert is disarmingly evil as Emperor Palpatine, and his simultaneous portrayal of the passive Evar smacks with tasty irony. The real life Robert is also delightfully mad. The one thing I WILL overlook in this review is Dan Wiznitzer, the executive producer and pretty much catalyst for the entire project. He means nothing to me.