(L-R): Quinn, Baython, Daal, and Keena in a scene from the “STAR WARS: VISIONS, Volume 2” short by Cartoon Saloon, “SCREECHER’S REACH”, exclusively on Disney+. ©2023 Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All Rights Reserved.
Star Wars Visions: Volume 2 is Lucasfilm’s second set of animated shorts. An international theme with this set follows last year’s dream of Star Wars Anime, with animated shorts from animation studios from countries worldwide. This gives Volume 2 a surprisingly fresh amount of variety. I’ll go over some of my favorites –
“Screecher’s Reach” is by Cartoon Saloon and Director Paul Young. Cartoon Saloon is famous for animated feature films Secret of the Kells and WolfWalkers, among others. The story is of a young girl and her friends who work in an Empire labor planet and their adventure to see a haunted cave. You can see the beautiful style we’ve seen in their features of the last decade, and the story makes you feel for these characters. The color palette of cold grays and the use of solid silhouettes, as they are in the cave, portray the stakes nicely. In addition, the story has a wonderful twist that really makes it one of my favorite new Star Wars tales.
“I Am Your Mother” by Aardman, the studio famous for Wallace and Gromit, Chicken Run, and Shaun the Sheep, got to play in Star Wars, which made me dumb and happy. Seeing their comedy and visual Claymation style play in the Star Wars universe was a surprise. It’s the story of a teen girl in a rebel alliance school who doesn’t enter the school parent/child ship race because of her embarrassment of her mom. It’s a pure YA sure-shot story here. With all the humor you’d expect from a spaceship race from Aardman Animations. This is one I’ll probably watch the most over and over.
“Journey to Death Head” is by Studio Mir and is the one that will probably pique the interest of the Anime fans and the folks who really loved the first volume. The studio famous for The Legend of Korra, Voltron: The Legendary Defender, and Young Justice: Phantoms, this South Korean studio is renowned for its skill at doing amazing action animation that rivals and can exceed some of the bigger Japanese studios. This story is a pretty straightforward one with Young Jedi and Sith and a young woman who has an idea to change things. This adventure is fast-paced and has fantastic character designs. And as I said, the action set pieces here are top-notch and are one of the many of these that could be explored further, but they also don’t have to.
While I’m not going to review all of these, each short was fantastic and beautifully realized. The amount of stories that focus on women characters throughout. Each one is different and shows more shades of the galaxy, the ideas of heroism, and the force. With how well they could continue this concept, I really look forward to how LucasFilm might continue the Visions series in the future.
Score: A
