Reelworm Speaks!
Reelworm Speaks!
Ultramarines: A Warhammer 40,000 Movie
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Behold the Reelworm! Where the Culture dives into the world of the Big Screen and review’s the various stories told among the cinema.
Let us begin the journey with Ultramarines: A Warhammer 40’000 Movie.
The Story: Captain Severus of the Ultramarines Chapter receives a distress signal from the Imperial Fists on the planet Mithron. Severus, responds taking a only ten-man squad of newly promoted Astartes, leaving the bulk of his company on Algol, to continue the bitter campaign against the scourge of Tyranids. On the merciless surface of the red planet, Ultima Squad discovers the aftermath of wretched battle. Mithron's Imperial shrine has been desecrated, and abominable atrocities unleashed.
The Good: What is good about this movie is the fact is that it allows fans of Warhammer 40’000 to see, for lack of a better term, real-live Space Marines, when most of the time we are forced to only visualize epic battles of the Adeptus Astartes. The same goes for the world as well. Its very nice to see a visualization of the Warhammer 40k universe such as strike cruisers, Thunderhawks, and servitors, all being rendered in detail.
For a universe known for its guts and glory themes, a lot the story is very ambient. There is a great deal of atmosphere on the planet and it does a good job of building up the suspense and dread as the Ultramarines squad marches through the desolate landscape. It does make the viewer eager for what happens next.
The voice acting is hit and miss but on the perks of this movie John Hurt’s character of Karnak the Chaplain of the Imperial Fists. Reelworm has little experience with John Hurt, but in what has been seen, he has been superb. He is one of those people who just has an awesome voice. There is just this presence about him, like a old oak tree or a cliff, a sure and steady figure with great strength lurking beneath the surface. He fits the profile a grizzled Astartes Chaplain perfectly. Reelworm hopes that the lackluster response to the film has dampened his spirits to Warhammer 40k in the future.
The Flaws: The biggest flaw of this film is in its presentation. The computer generated imagery, while impressive on a few occasions, is very limited in many others. This film was made in 2010, the same years that the computer animated show, Transformers Prime, debut but it looks more like the Reboot cartoon of the late nineties. It is reasonable to assume that Games Workshop did not have the highest budget when creating this film, but it if that indeed was the case then they should have gone a different direction and made the whole film look more cartoony than the uncanny valley realism of its current form. Ironically, the Space Marines look more life-like with their faceless helmets on rather than off. In the end…the studio tried too hard to make it real.
While not known for their deep and complex personalities, the Space Marines are very much blank slates in regards to their characters which is to the story’s detriment. Most of the squad are pure redshirt material. Only there to be killed off. One or two characters are interesting but even then we are not treating to great deal of time exploring their characters. It creates a very simplistic story that is more boring than entertaining. Most viewers would fast forward through any dialogue scenes to get straight to the action.
It should no surprise that Karnak is the only character that Reelworm can recall with any clarity and it is probably more due to John Hurt than anything else.
As mentioned above, a strength of this film is the atmosphere but it backfires in several places as it takes a long time to build up the plot but the execution is poorly…well…executed. Too much is crammed into the last act and it is not even all that good. For any fan of Warhammer, its primary audience, the whole climax is pretty predictable.
Final Verdict: If you are a fan of Warhammer 40k, check it out because a few parts are kind of cool, but if you want a better version of real life Space Marines with a better story and visuals, check out a play through of the Space Marine Video Game.
Two out of Five Stars.
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