Ultramarines the Movie the Review!

"Is there something on my face?"

SPOILERS

I spent my Saturday going to the free showing of Ultramarines at my somewhat local Movie Studio Grill, I only passed 5 others along the way but that was just fine with me. It was Ultramarines, a movie about a game I've been playing for over a decade now, what wouldn't you do to see this thing for Free!

Now let me be honest, in real life I'm a 3D Modeler and Computer Animator, so my opinion might become a little biased. So I'm going to start off my review with Appearance and follow it up by Story, Entertainment Value, Dialogue, and Fan Coolness. Let's get this review started.

Appearance
Let me just say that just looking at this movie turns me off. The Models are great and true to the Universe but the textures are the first thing that start to fail. Why is it that the marines look like they're undead? Then it get's worse when the marines start to move and jump around. Since when does a 8 foot tall man wearing a freaking tank not shake the ground but look as if he is wearing ballet slippers.

Then we get to the compositing and editing. About 70% of the movie is hidden is dust effects, hiding almost the entire environment and most of the action that takes place in the movie. The editing is also quite bad, leaving pauses in dialog and between scenes where the characters simply stair at each other.

Story
The story leaves something to be wanting. If felt very much like a hack job of Aliens 2. Let's take a small group of novices out and pit them up against some bad guys and watch them all get killed while we bring the alien (demon possessed) infected guy back on Board and have him kill the rest of us until he gets beaten by a hammer. Sure there was foreshadowing but does that make it any better. No not really.

Entertainment
When you start trying to figure out how long the movie has been going so you know when it'll end you know something is going wrong. Like I mentioned earlier the movie had some really weird editing that continued to pull you out of the story. Every once in a while it would break the 4th wall and put you into what felt like a First Person Shooter experience. Does anyone remember that in Doom, did you remember like it, exactly.

There were a couple of bits that were interesting to see, but again the graphics of the movie got in the way. It was either to dark, or there was dust in the way, or something else. Much of the movie just distracted from itself.

Dialogue
So the voice acting was one of the higher points of the movie. There wasn't much I could complain about here other then how some of it was edited. Long pauses between words in a sentence to add emphasis was a common trait of the movie and really stole the moment by making me actually laugh out loud. "It must be.... Chaos" Yeah dramatic little quarks like that, and you just have to laugh.

The script was a little off putting to me too, I understand that you would want to use terms and the like from the game, but hearing them say in unison "And we Shall Know No Fear" again and again and again just got cheesy. If you're going to do that in a movie, don't make it a motto, make it a chant. Jarhead did this very well, "This is my weapon, there are many like it but this one is mine..." Yeah it worked there, but no in this movie. And maybe it didn't work for me because it's the name of a game rule, it'd be like if everytime I got punched I yelled out Feel No Pain. Or When I come back to life, We'll Be Back. Make me smile thinking of Arnold saying that everytime he is shot down and stands back up.

Fan Coolness
If you enjoy seeing the toys you play with on the big screen then this will probably get you going. I've got to say it was cool seeing guys in power armor and Bolters with the shells doing the rocket thing. Are thunderhawks cool, hell yeah, would I have loved to see it do more, hell yeah. It is worth seeing once just because you play 40k... maybe.

Overall this movie met my expectations of no expectations. The graphics were just as bad as they looked in the trailers, and the flow of the movie was just as bad too. Other then a couple good one-liners and seeing Space Marines on the big screen I don't think I would've wasted my time with this movie. I give this movie 2 out of 5 Aquilas.