Telemelia hooked me up with the Ultramarines movie, by way of some friendly space pirates. I just finished watching it through, and I'd have to say I enjoyed it. I was thinking about picking up the special edition DVD when I have money again (assuming, of course, that Games Workshop deigns to produce more than four copies of it outside of a locked vault miles below the surface of the Earth), but it's going to depend on the quality and breadth of the extras.
The movie itself is nothing really to complain about. It's a generic enough tale, starring some Ultramarines (who are blank-slate enough to serve as a nice gateway Chapter for the uninitiated to 40K) on a sort of mission to help out on a planet where some Imperial Fists are guarding a shrine. Our heroes are some fresh-faced recruits, or as fresh as any Ultramarine's face really can be, who've never faced real combat in their armor before. What is it about the 41st millennium that makes everybody so lumpy? The Apothecary is a gruff badass, so that's cool. I wish there'd been a tech marine, but I always wish there'd been a tech marine. There's really not a lot else to say about these guys. Proteus is impetuous, but he's a newb, so it's expected. Heipax (think I'm spelling that right) is his foil, I guess, being more favored by the Captain.
It's really no spoiler to say that as they find their way across the planet, they find that something seriously bad has gone down, and it smells like something that rhymes with Gray-oss. It turns out the Black Legion are here, and they've left all kinds of cool desecratory goodies strewn about to dress up the otherwise fairly drab, brown backgrounds. These include things like whole Imperial Fists marines crucified on rock faces, encircled by runes of darkness. It's the little things, really, that make an okay thing good.
Anyway, the Ultramarines fight some Black Legionaires and someone has a bad fall, but it's the cool kind like Gandalf and the Balrog, and, shit, the stairs outside the shrine even look like the ones in Moria. In the shrine, they meet John Hurt as a Chaplain of the Imperial Fists, which is awesome because John Hurt is a treasure who also read the big screed about the Imperium over the opening titles. The Fists have a special book, and the Ultras help them get it off-world.
I'm going to end my summary there because it's annoying as hell when reviews are just a pile of summary. Anyway, there's lots of bolter fire, chainsword ripping, demons of the Warp, and some heroic moments. There's a twist and a big climactic battle, and a nice coda piece. All in all, it was generic enough that you could show it to someone who knows nothing beyond, "Bro, those are some hella-big shoulder pads. Is he gonna, like, body-check that demon?" and they'd get on fine.
From a technical perspective, it's got an interesting look. On the one hand, it just looks like a video game cinematic from 1998, but so did Beowulf, and oh, no, that's right Beowulf was kind of stupid. No, it looks nice enough. I was reminded at points of articulated and automated versions of the table top miniatures, which was cool, if possibly unintentional. I think the game-opening cinematics for Dawn of War and Dawn of War II are still cooler, but it's not like they were working with a huge budget here. It's much easier to make something cool that lasts for a few minutes, as opposed to a feature length film. I didn't have any big problems with the way anything looked; it was just a little underwhelming at points. I got major Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within vibes from some of the mashed potato faces for whatever reason.
The sound design was totally spot-on, and really, it's an under-valued thing in smaller productions I think. Lending a tactile reality to what we see on screen goes a long way to selling something like this.
While I hope we might see something more interesting next time around, if there is a next time, I would have to say this is a good place to start from for further Games Workshop animation ventures. The Ultramarines are about as generic as you can get with space marines, so they were a good choice for an introductory feature. Here's hoping for Space Wolves and Orks, or Dark Angels and Dark Eldar in the next go-round.
OTHER CRAP I DID WHILE TRYING TO WRITE THIS REVIEW
+ Talking to Valkyrie at work on AIM, and trading Deviant Art craziness
+ Getting totally sucked into Deviant Art, and finding myself morbidly fascinated with some of the artists we found. There was one guy who, I swear, could have made a killing in the early Image-fuelled boom of the early nineties. It's like he missed it by such a small margin. Well, I guess he'd have to actually finish a drawing for once, but that's small potatoes, right?
I'm holding my tongue on the Ultramarines movie until I get a second viewing in.
ReplyDeleteInstead of DA, check out http://www.pixeljoint.com/default.asp
for some really neat pixel artistry. It makes me sometimes want to design an old school video game to use some sprites from here.