Bullet Points: Interstellar Civil War: Guardians of the Future

There is no shortage of sci-fi films that have taken their cues from the Star Wars films. Who wouldn’t borrow from the multi-billion dollar franchise when trying to create their own universe. Interstellar Civil War: Guardians of the Future does a bit more than borrow from George Lucas, but again, not blaming them. What they take from the crazy-successful franchise is the political/religious intrigue and the galaxy-hopping adventure of some rough and tough troops. That isn’t the thing that makes ICW a difficult watch, though. My biggest gripe with Interstellar Civil War is what they teased but just didn’t show us enough of; space action!

Synopsis: The Imperial Empire is attacked by an Alliance of rebels led by fanatical mystics. The ruler, Empress Nobu, the 8th generation of her family, wants to execute a bold plan to rescue a cyborg, Leah C6, trapped on the battle ravaged planet Endor. The Empress believes Leah C6 holds the secret to destroying the Alliance of Rebels before their insurgency can kill millions of citizens of the Empire. She recruits her heroic fleet commander, Lord General Luka Raan and asks him to gather a team from the Empire’s elite soldiers, the Star Warfare Rangers. Raan assembles the team in the ruins of Endor which was attacked by depraved Rebels and outlaws led by, Kindo-Ker, a fanatical mystic in Dark Energy. The Star Warfare Rangers begin a desperate search to find and rescue Leah C6 before the Alliance Rebels can.

• Let’s Begin: The story of ICW isn’t what drags it down. The plot, as it is written above, actually sounds pretty fun and exciting. The biggest issue with ICW is that there is far too much talking and far too little fighting. There is a civil war (SPOILER) and the “Resistance” and the “Imperial Empire” duke it out for the entirety of the movie while we’re bounced around from the present time to the days and hours before the war started. I was super confused. To be fair, I was drinking lot of rum so it could be that I wasn’t in a perfect state to watch the new film but even sober Chad would have struggled through some of this movie.
• When the World Goes Down: Anthony Riparetti has a cool sounding name and is a frequent collaborator of Albert Pyun. He handles the music duties on Interstellar Civil War and does what I would consider a great job. There is a song that plays several times throughout the movie which I assume is called “When the World Goes Down”. Sometimes it works and other times it feels out of place but kudos to the team for the knockoff AC/DC sounding song.

• Sign Me Up: The Star Warfare Rangers are called “undisciplined sociopaths” by a member of the Bu-Tess. Oh, by the way, the Bu-Tess are the all-female Jedi who are part sorceress and part politician. They are pretty much controlling everything that is going on in this movie and they are annoying as all hell! The Rangers are described as being crazy but they bring the good Captain “Starslayer” Burk to lead a crew on the rescue mission for the cyborg LEAH-C6 and he’s the straight-as-an-arrow kind of leader that takes no shit from any of his troops. We get a few brief glimpses of the Rangers in combat but it’s not nearly enough for the audience to gain an accurate representation of the group.
• So Much Rape: There is tons of talk about both people and cyborgs being raped by others. It’s a little different from Star Wars in that way because I don’t remember them every mentioning that time that Leia spent at Jabba’s Palace where that little monkey dude was fondling her up. In ICW, they specifically talk about some of the characters being raped, tortured, and killed. The grisly details aren’t really shown but they’re talked about enough to make you cringe a bit. It shows the brutal effects of the war on the non-combatants but it most of all, brings back lot of memories of the Vietnam War.

• The Visuals: I really enjoyed the visuals of the spaceships floating around but there were no space battles to speak of. The combat ranged from some missiles being fired to people fighting it out with light-sticks and Halo-inspired laser blades. I wish we could have seen more of the Rangers fighting it out with the rebels but instead we got probably 85% of the movie as dialogue against a green screen. There is a reason that the Star Wars films always had people clamoring for more Han Solo and gruff smuggler action and not for Jedi Council meetings. It’s the same reason that the History Channel can show World War 2 footage constantly and C-SPAN can’t get 4 people to watch some boring ass House deliberations. No one wants to see the boring shit…give us grizzled veteran killers with laser sticks f*cking people up!

Ready for some Bonus Bullet Points:

• The film is set in the year 8789.
• It’s not a “Star Destroyer”, it’s a “System Destroyer”!
• The Imperial Empire is all about promoting their officers. Lord General Kazan is introduced in the early minutes of the movie and then briskly forgotten. She’s only 24 years old, though, and obviously got fired because she was still a millennial.

The Verdict: I was present for the World Premiere of Interstellar Civil War down in Cincinnati, Ohio and saw what kind of problems the film had been going through. Director Albert Pyun has been dealing with serious health issues and the movie suffers because of the editing issues that comes along with his condition. Most sci-fi movies can survive on their action enough to overlook the erratic writing and story difficulties but ICW doesn’t let its action take over enough to pull it through. I would have loved to have seen the Rangers on a real rescue mission and not just used as filler to tell the story. There was way too much dialogue and I was super confused by the end of the film about what the hell was going on. Most of the movie was told out of continuity and it was hard to piece it all together because it was all dialogue and there wasn’t much in the way of big action scenes to piece everything together. It’s definitely a world that is interesting but it needs more gritty action and less Bu-Tess blabbering.