Fan Film - One Day I'll Become (Review)

  The first of a couple foreign fan films I'm planning to review, One Day I'll Become is of Czech origin. (Well, technically English films are foreign for me too, but I'm so fluent that I don't really consider them foreign.) I absolutely love the artistic cinematography, the musical score, and I've always found the Czech language to sound very nice. It gives us the story of a young boy on a desert planet, plagued by nightmares of the future.

  It opens with one of these nightmares; a blurry shot scene where you don't really see anything bad happening, but you know because of the interruption of the boy turning frantically in his sleep. It's a good scene and it conveys precisely what was intended. Then he wakes up and their service droid tells him his mother has already gone out, and gives him a (very cool looking) glass of water. I also like how they're able to save on production costs by only using a mechanical arm. When he goes out we see him walking through an old battlefield, with lots of broken droids and star fighters from the Clone-Wars. I really like the gritty feel this shot has, and it gives us a little insight on what happened, or rather didn't happen, after these battles: cleaning up. A transport leaves, and he stares after it much alike Luke Skywalker on Tatooine's sunset. But unlike Luke he is afraid of the future, shown by a little snippet from his nightmare.

  Then he sees a boy he presumably knows scavenging parts to build a spaceship, and he asks him if he ever has nightmares. Then he tells him he's gonna grow up to become a knight, and the other boy walks away, telling him he's got a lot of work to do. In the next scene we explore his nightmare more, with an Imperial Lambda shuttle approaching a planet, and a blurry figure with a red lightsaber encountering a Jedi with a blue lightsaber. Boy is turning in his bed again. This time the sequence is longer, and features a full lightsaber battle. And at one point the Sith Force-chokes the Jedi, and here's some speculation: will the boy grow up to be the Jedi, or the Sith?

  We never get the answer, which is how it should be, but it's an intriguing question to think about. After this nightmare he leaves the glass of water handed to him by their service droid half-empty (if you're drinking from it, it's half-empty, if you're filling it half-full). The contrast to yesterday tells me he's coming to terms with his future, but I might be thinking to much into this. Then he sees the other kid again, and this time we get an answer for the rude way he left before: he's forbidden to speak with the boy. And then we see a couple more flashbacks from his dreams, indicating this kid will grow into the other guy in his premonition.

  This night a Star destroyer visits the planet, and he has a different dream. The Millennium Falcon flying, TIE fighters, Stormtroopers, AT-ATs, AT-STs, and eventually Darth Vader. Especially the appearance of Vader solidifies my feelings that he will in fact be turned to the Dark Side. He leaves without drinking any water this time, too much in a hurry to see the events taking place. And when he sees the things from his dream unfold before his eyes, he knows his nightmares are in fact visions of the future. He realizes he has the Force, and goes back to test his abilities on the glass of water. And we see him breaking it. This is a fantastic piece of art, combining beautiful shots with a story that we can draw different conclusions from.

Article by: Joel "Mith" Storms