Review: BATTLE STAR WARS (2020)
Well, I have to give The Asylum credit, they’ve managed to rip off two popular franchises just in the title of Battle Star Wars. You can just imagine what the film itself is like. Better yet, don’t, it isn’t worth it.
Commander Corbryn (Luke Fattorusso) has somehow discovered a naturally cloaked and undetectable planet. He dubs it Haven and decides to create a refuge from The Empire, I mean The Coalition. However, his partner the pirate Ajax (Aimee Stolte) decides to scrub the mission. Corbyn’s ship is destroyed with great loss of life and he barely escapes. Years later he has occasion to deal with Ajax again, and of course, she betrays him to save herself.
Not that things are all roses for The Coalition. It’s leader Lord Malaster (Justin Berti) has just suffered an embarrassing defection. His daughter Astera (Alyson Gorske, 616 Wilford Lane, Jungle Run) has fled with the help of her helper droid Helper (Alissa Filoramo). Even worse she frees Corbryn and joins the rebels. It seems she has some connection to Haven by way of her deceased mother. Now their fate rests on the legendary Jedi, I mean, Paladin Denz (Benedikt Sebastian). He’s the last of his kind and has been in hypersleep for years.
It’s like writer Jeremy M. Inman (Monster Hunters) and director James Thomas threw the Star Wars franchise in a blender and tossed the results on a page and called it Battle Star Wars. There’s a scene where Helper projects a miniature hologram. A character with Lando Calrissian’s development arc. Ancient orders with mystical powers and a final battle with badly outnumbered rebels taking on the might of The Coalition’s galactic fleet.
Battle Star Wars also features some of the worst physics in the history of film. The core of a planet is ripped out by a ship’s tractor beam without destroying the planet. It later gets put back in with no apparent damage. That’s only slightly less believable than the idea that even a long time ago in a galaxy far far away young women still wear soft boots, ass hugging jeans and cropped shirts. Denim must be a universal substance.
I will say Battle Star Wars does have some good spaceship effects. It also has some really awful ones too. And most of the fight scenes are poorly choreographed. There’s even some very noticeable editing in a couple of them. I was hoping that Battle Star Wars would turn into a Battle Beyond The Stars type treat. I should have just watched that instead.
Battle Star Wars is available to stream, and a sequel Haven is already in post-production. Personally, I think The Asylum should stick to releasing other companies’ films. The Young Cannibals and The 6th Friend were better than anything they’ve made in years.