Xtemplar Featured, Reviews Film Threat
TORONTO AFTER DARK 2023 REVIEW! Xtemplar is unfinished. Though it lives in a thoughtfully conceived world and has solid attention to detail, Paul Furminger and the team at Fish Flight Entertainment have bitten off more than they can chew with their first animated short.
The film follows a single soldier in his struggle against the Soul Eaters, a race of psychic creatures that have waged war against Earth. After 60 years, humanity has learned to harness the power of religious relics as weapons against the Soul Eaters. Finally, the tide of the war is beginning to turn.
It’s a smart and quite interesting framework that can be used to create many equally interesting stories. The Fish Flight team brought their sci-fi and medieval world to life with a striking art style that resembles an acrylic painting. In addition, they enriched their world with countless meaningful elements, such as the soldier’s armor, which featured a red cross like a Gregorian knight. But for all the love the team showed towards the film’s larger context, the film’s story itself remained non-existent. Xtemplar serves as something of an introduction to a full feature, but within that introduction, very little happens that could be understood as a short film in its own right. So disappointing and basic. As such, Xtemplar is more of a proof of concept than an actual short film. This shows that Fish Flight has potential but has not yet found a way to turn its ideas into tangible manifestations.