TV Review: A Young Girl Must Transport a Prince In "Star Wars: Visions" Volume 3, Episode 7 - "The Smuggler"
Today saw the release of Volume 3 of Lucasfilm’s animated anthology series Star Wars: Visions, and below are my thoughts on the seventh installment from this third batch of short films, entitled “The Smuggler” from Studio Trigger.
“The Smuggler” starts off with a young girl named Chita (voiced by Emma Myers in the English dub) who owes some money at a local cantina on a run-down looking planet. Outside, she is approached by an elderly woman named Gleenu (Judith Light) who offers her a job for 10,000 credits, but it involves sneaking two passengers past– herself and a young boy– past an Imperial blockade. Pretty quickly the young boy turns out to be a Prince named Arluu (Tanner Buchanan), and SPOILER ALERT we learn that Gleenu was actually a Jedi Knight until she swore fealty to the royalty of this planet after they helped her survive this timeline’s version of Order 66.
Along the way we become attached to Chita as a plucky and daring adventurer even though at 15 minutes “The Smuggler” clocks in as one of the shortest entries in Visions Volume 3. Plot-wise, of course, this story resembles the original Star Wars film (AKA Episode IV - A New Hope in the larger saga) with Chita taking a more central Han Solo role, Gleenu playing the parts of both Obi-Wan Kenobi and Luke Skywalker, and Arluu basically standing in for the droids that must be delivered to the Rebel Alliance… yes, these characters end up in a location that’s very familiar to Star Wars fans before the short comes to an end. But similarities aside, there’s a lot of fun to be had here in the brief amount of time we get to spend with these heroes. I particularly liked a shot that depicts Chita’s ship escaping an Imperial star destroyer at an angle we haven’t quite seen before, and there’s more originality where that came from on display within this tried-and-true structure.
Star Wars: Visions Volume 3 is now streaming in its entirety, exclusively via Disney+.