After his father has passed away, Jack Knight finds a magical item amongst his possessions – a rod that has the ability to turn him into a superhero. We check out Clay Moffatt’s Star Man.
Before Silver Woods and The October Flowers, up-and-coming film director Clay Moffatt created an independent feature film based on a DC comic book hero called Star Man. Now, as Moffatt gears up to create a new feature that is to be similar to his previous effort, he has allowed Screen Critix to watch and review the 2014 fan film.
There may be a fair few of our readers who are well accustomed to the story of Star Man but, even though I personally am a comic book fan, I was not. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that I had never even heard of Star Man before, so his origin story and world was totally new to me. A normal young man, Jack Knight (Mackenzie Clark) has a girlfriend and is trying to come to terms with the recent passing of his father. Whilst going through his possessions, Jack finds a strange rod that, when held, turns Jack into a superhero called Star Man. This magnificent find couldn’t have been better timed, as the city in which Jack lives is desperately in need of a vigilante due to the terror rained upon it by a supervillain called The Mist (gloriously performed in an over-the-top manner by Joe Pacini).
The Mist, whose supervillain costume consists of a checked shirt, shorts, Armani shades and a bit of white paint to the face, is holding the city to ransom and it seems only Star Man can help. If that wasn’t enough to deal with, another supervillain is learning to hone their newly acquired powers – The Shade (Clay Moffatt). Can Jack Knight/Star Man overcome two super villains and save the day? Well, of course he can, this is a superhero movie after all. Moffatt also borrows from some comic book movies that came before them; for example, the love triangle between Jack, his alter ego and his girlfriend. It very much reminded me of the love story between Spider-Man, Peter Parker and Mary Jane.
From viewing the film, it is obvious that Star Man was a hell of a lot of fun to make for all involved. It’s not every day you can act out being a man/woman with superpowers. Moffatt and his team all perform with a joy that only comes when it’s less work and more about enjoying the experience. That’s not to say the team put in a lot of work – they obviously did, as this hour-long movie contains some pretty decent fight scenes and visual effects including a plane crash.
The film obviously has flaws, after all this is a superhero movie made on little in terms of budget. The camera work isn’t great and an on-camera microphone was used for most (if not all) of the audio. I really don’t feel I need to go into too much detail though as I feel Clay Moffatt and his team realised where they went wrong themselves and fixed many of these issues with their most recent film, like the aforementioned Silver Woods and The October Flowers. It’s really interesting to see how far the cast and crew have come in such a short time, they are making big strides as they hone their craft.
Overall, Star Man is an enjoyable yet flawed watch. Moffatt and his team have improved in all technical aspects since, so it’s obvious that their next superhero film will build upon what they learned whilst creating Star Man, making for an even better movie. One that we can’t wait to watch.
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