Post by Harkovast on Dec 16, 2014 1:12:34 GMT
In the grim darkness of the far future there is only war.
So goes the tag line for Warhammer 40 Thousand, a table top model game by Games Workshop.
It tells the story of a future that is dark, grim, violent, dark, gothic, grim and above all dark (and grim.)
The most iconic symbol of this game is the Space Marines. These genetically enhanced super humans walk around in giant suits of armour with bigger shoulder pads than a power dressing 80's business woman and dole out righteous death onto aliens, heretics and mutants (and they have a pretty slim definition for what doesn't count as one of these three groups.)
The popularity of the games setting inevitably led to its characters and imagery leaking into other genres.
This unfortunately, led to the movie Ultramarines.
This film is entirely rendered in CGI, which is a point against it from the start. But this is no ordinary CGI, this is unbelievably shit CGI.
The characters all look approximately 200 years old and have as much ability to show expression and emote as the keyboard I am typing this on.
But the main problem this movie runs into (and it has a lot of problems, believe me) is that the very source material is simply not suited to making a movie.
Now I am sure a load of 40K fans are about to burn me for heresy, but allow me to explain.
Space Marines are dogmatic, brainwashed space fascists who kill anyone who does not agree with their world view and religion.
They don't ever take time off from fighting and training...ever.
When they fight battles they are not dreaming about the girl back home. They live in weird, sexless monasteries with just other men who do nothing but train and pray all the time.
Now one could emphasise with these guys!
Its like making a movie about the brown imps from Doom. Yeah, Doom was cool and I liked blasting at those imps...but they are not exactly compelling characters from a story telling point of view!
They are not like people. They don't do the stuff normal people do...ever!
Perhaps you could do a story of a space marine trying to rebel against the evil system that controls him and rediscover his humanity. But that wont EVER happen because these guys are the biggest money spinner for Games Workshop and so can only ever be portrayed in the most two dimensional, boring way possible.
So who are our characters?
A bunch of these powered armoured wankers.
There is the captain, the old medic guy no one likes and the main character who is called Proteus.
This is another one of those occasions where is might seem like I am selling the film short by not explaining it properly, but this is seriously as much characterisation as any of these fuckers get. One of them has a flame thrower...does that count as a personality?
The shitty characters become even more pointless as when they actually go on their mission they all wear their all covering power armour.
The problem here is that this means all the characters look identical!
Imagine if in Star Wars all the good guys dressed in all covering Storm Trooper uniforms for 90% of the movie.
All covering, identical uniforms are what you give the faceless bad guy minions...NOT THE HEROES!
Their suits of armour are even the same colour! These blue bastards are faceless, have no personality and are impossible to relate to.
In the same way that the Space Marines organisation and nature worked well for a game but fails for a movie, the same problem occurs with their equipment.
The sad reality is this-
When you scale Space Marines up to full size and actually have them moving around.... they look silly.
Their guns are laughably enormous, like the Space Marines go into battle using super soakers. Their armour is so bulky that its hard to believe they can move in it. In the film the Space Marines are tremendously agile, giving no sense of weight or substance to their armour. This gives the feeling that the armour is made of light weight plastic. Instead of battle armour, they feeling like children's costumes. Even when they put on their helmets, it feels wrong. The armour doesn't seal together, or making a hissing sound when you open it or any other cool stuff. They just plonk the helmet on...like it is an empty plastic toy helmet.
Also, rather amusingly, the armour never actually helps. These suckers all die one hit like the losers they are. Shots even go right through them and blast out the other side of the armour! Why do they wear this junk? It never saves anyone's life, ever! It both feels and acts like plastic!
So what do our heroes do all day?
They walk.
They walk a long way.
Slowly.
Fifty percent of this film (no exaggeration) is just these guys wondering through an empty, blank, featureless wilderness.
Initially I was thinking someone must be watching them, about to attack. I was wrong.
There is no tension, no threat.
Just the Space Marines walking.
They don't really talk (what the fuck do these guys have to talk about? Killing? Praying? Hating stuff? Maybe its better they seem quiet to avoid sounding like even bigger assholes), they just walk.
When the bad guys appear (bad guys about who we learn nothing about in the movie), three of them attack the heroes and are killed.
It was at this point that I began to realise that in the far future there is only war...mainly because everyone is so INCREDIBLY bad at fighting!
I mean these fuckers just suck at it!
The heroes have a squad of ten men, one of whom, carries the flag.
That's right, during the battles the holds a large banner with both hands. Yes, during gun fights!
The space marines stand around in the open, not seeking cover or trying to conceal themselves, all the while in their brightly coloured "armour".
These are tactics that make sense if you and the other side are only armed with muskets and there are several hundred guys a side.
Ten man squads with high tech weapons?
NO! That is fucking retarded!
After the initial fight our heroes stop to do rituals for their dead. At this point I was thinking "Are they insane?"
The guys that attacked them will surely have called for help and armies of them will be on the way.
But it turns out that the bad guys are just as dumb as our heroes.
So after doing their rituals, the heroes set off again....for more walking.
WHAT THE FUCK?
This is so god damn boring it blows my mind.
There is nothing here I care about, nothing that makes sense, nothing that holds my interest.
The movie left me drained and tired.
It would put you off anything 40k, Space Marine or Games Workshop related.
It is like an anti-advert!
But from what I have seen the mindless GW fan boys loved this hunk of nob cheese, apparently demanding nothing more then space marines and some infrequently, poorly staged battle scenes.
The shows not even true to the game (giving people magic powers they don't have in game, making their armour not do anything etc) so an actual fan should be pissed off by the inaccuracies!
It is a sad statement on Games Workshop fans that so many of them seemed actually pleased to be fed such bullshit.
In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only total wank.
So goes the tag line for Warhammer 40 Thousand, a table top model game by Games Workshop.
It tells the story of a future that is dark, grim, violent, dark, gothic, grim and above all dark (and grim.)
The most iconic symbol of this game is the Space Marines. These genetically enhanced super humans walk around in giant suits of armour with bigger shoulder pads than a power dressing 80's business woman and dole out righteous death onto aliens, heretics and mutants (and they have a pretty slim definition for what doesn't count as one of these three groups.)
The popularity of the games setting inevitably led to its characters and imagery leaking into other genres.
This unfortunately, led to the movie Ultramarines.
This film is entirely rendered in CGI, which is a point against it from the start. But this is no ordinary CGI, this is unbelievably shit CGI.
The characters all look approximately 200 years old and have as much ability to show expression and emote as the keyboard I am typing this on.
But the main problem this movie runs into (and it has a lot of problems, believe me) is that the very source material is simply not suited to making a movie.
Now I am sure a load of 40K fans are about to burn me for heresy, but allow me to explain.
Space Marines are dogmatic, brainwashed space fascists who kill anyone who does not agree with their world view and religion.
They don't ever take time off from fighting and training...ever.
When they fight battles they are not dreaming about the girl back home. They live in weird, sexless monasteries with just other men who do nothing but train and pray all the time.
Now one could emphasise with these guys!
Its like making a movie about the brown imps from Doom. Yeah, Doom was cool and I liked blasting at those imps...but they are not exactly compelling characters from a story telling point of view!
They are not like people. They don't do the stuff normal people do...ever!
Perhaps you could do a story of a space marine trying to rebel against the evil system that controls him and rediscover his humanity. But that wont EVER happen because these guys are the biggest money spinner for Games Workshop and so can only ever be portrayed in the most two dimensional, boring way possible.
So who are our characters?
A bunch of these powered armoured wankers.
There is the captain, the old medic guy no one likes and the main character who is called Proteus.
This is another one of those occasions where is might seem like I am selling the film short by not explaining it properly, but this is seriously as much characterisation as any of these fuckers get. One of them has a flame thrower...does that count as a personality?
The shitty characters become even more pointless as when they actually go on their mission they all wear their all covering power armour.
The problem here is that this means all the characters look identical!
Imagine if in Star Wars all the good guys dressed in all covering Storm Trooper uniforms for 90% of the movie.
All covering, identical uniforms are what you give the faceless bad guy minions...NOT THE HEROES!
Their suits of armour are even the same colour! These blue bastards are faceless, have no personality and are impossible to relate to.
In the same way that the Space Marines organisation and nature worked well for a game but fails for a movie, the same problem occurs with their equipment.
The sad reality is this-
When you scale Space Marines up to full size and actually have them moving around.... they look silly.
Their guns are laughably enormous, like the Space Marines go into battle using super soakers. Their armour is so bulky that its hard to believe they can move in it. In the film the Space Marines are tremendously agile, giving no sense of weight or substance to their armour. This gives the feeling that the armour is made of light weight plastic. Instead of battle armour, they feeling like children's costumes. Even when they put on their helmets, it feels wrong. The armour doesn't seal together, or making a hissing sound when you open it or any other cool stuff. They just plonk the helmet on...like it is an empty plastic toy helmet.
Also, rather amusingly, the armour never actually helps. These suckers all die one hit like the losers they are. Shots even go right through them and blast out the other side of the armour! Why do they wear this junk? It never saves anyone's life, ever! It both feels and acts like plastic!
So what do our heroes do all day?
They walk.
They walk a long way.
Slowly.
Fifty percent of this film (no exaggeration) is just these guys wondering through an empty, blank, featureless wilderness.
Initially I was thinking someone must be watching them, about to attack. I was wrong.
There is no tension, no threat.
Just the Space Marines walking.
They don't really talk (what the fuck do these guys have to talk about? Killing? Praying? Hating stuff? Maybe its better they seem quiet to avoid sounding like even bigger assholes), they just walk.
When the bad guys appear (bad guys about who we learn nothing about in the movie), three of them attack the heroes and are killed.
It was at this point that I began to realise that in the far future there is only war...mainly because everyone is so INCREDIBLY bad at fighting!
I mean these fuckers just suck at it!
The heroes have a squad of ten men, one of whom, carries the flag.
That's right, during the battles the holds a large banner with both hands. Yes, during gun fights!
The space marines stand around in the open, not seeking cover or trying to conceal themselves, all the while in their brightly coloured "armour".
These are tactics that make sense if you and the other side are only armed with muskets and there are several hundred guys a side.
Ten man squads with high tech weapons?
NO! That is fucking retarded!
After the initial fight our heroes stop to do rituals for their dead. At this point I was thinking "Are they insane?"
The guys that attacked them will surely have called for help and armies of them will be on the way.
But it turns out that the bad guys are just as dumb as our heroes.
So after doing their rituals, the heroes set off again....for more walking.
WHAT THE FUCK?
This is so god damn boring it blows my mind.
There is nothing here I care about, nothing that makes sense, nothing that holds my interest.
The movie left me drained and tired.
It would put you off anything 40k, Space Marine or Games Workshop related.
It is like an anti-advert!
But from what I have seen the mindless GW fan boys loved this hunk of nob cheese, apparently demanding nothing more then space marines and some infrequently, poorly staged battle scenes.
The shows not even true to the game (giving people magic powers they don't have in game, making their armour not do anything etc) so an actual fan should be pissed off by the inaccuracies!
It is a sad statement on Games Workshop fans that so many of them seemed actually pleased to be fed such bullshit.
In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only total wank.