Cinema Verdict Review: Ultramarines: A Warhammer 40,000 Movie

Ultramarines: A Warhammer 40,000 Movie

OPENING: 11/28/2010

STUDIO: Codex Pictures

RUN TIME: 76 min

ACCOMPLICES:
Official Site

The Charge
For honour, for glory, for Victory!

Opening Statement
First it was comic books, and then came video games and toy lines; Hollywood’s endless pursuit of the next big thing knows no bounds. Enter “Warhammer 40,000”, a tabletop tactical wargame that involves heaping piles of miniature terrain, dice, rulers, and hand-painted pewter figurines. Rather than handing Hollywood the keys to their Rolls, only to see it wrapped around a tree (a’la Warhammer 40K competition, The Mutant Chronicles) the minds at Games Workshop took it upon themselves, with the aid of Codex Pictures (Lego’s Bionicle Trilogy), to really give fans of the series something they’ll enjoy. The end result: Ultramarines: A Warhammer 40,000 Movie.

Facts of the Case
When all contact is lost with a division of Space Marines on the backwater planet of Mithron, Captain Severus (Terrance Stamp) must take a small band of fresh recruits planetside. Homing in on a lone distress beacon, Severus and his men walk into an ambush set by the forces of Chaos. His men are no ordinary Space Marines however; they are Ultramarines, the Emperor’s elite. They must be steel, they must be doom, and they fear no death.

The Evidence
The idea is simple enough; big armoured super soldiers blow the crap out of scary looking armoured zombie soldiers. That’s about the extent of it. It’s a fitting plot that surprisingly takes a solid chunk of time to unfold. The script takes its time, allowing us to get into the mindset of the elite ass-booters that form our team of Ultramarines, or a few of them anyway. Fans of the Warhammer 40K universe will likely feel right at home, while non-initiates might enjoy the feel of soldier crossed with holy crusader that the Emperor’s forces invoke. The sense of design is impressive as well, with giant citadel shaped spaceships complete with stained glass windows, armoured up soldiers who use pages of scripture as loincloths on their battle gear, or wear crimson covered cloaks and wield gigantic chainsaw-swords. Warhammer’s unique aesthetic and mood is captured near perfectly.

No, none of this is rocket science, but the action scenes are mounted well enough to redeem the story of its shortcomings. The highest point of the film undoubtedly comes when our surviving heroes make a last stand against wave after wave of onrushing agents of chaos, pumping round after round into the corrupted creatures of the Warp while awaiting their approaching dropship. If nowhere else in the film, it’s in these moments that i’m sure, fans will really feel like they’re getting a Warhammer 40K flick.

Character is definitely not a strong suit, with the majority of the movie’s focus planted squarely on Proteus (Sean Pertwee), a rookie member of the squad who hits all of the usual rookie notes and suffers the usual disdain reserved for said rookies by the veterans, even when he proves himself more than capable early on. The voice acting however, is anything but rote. Guys like Sean Pertwee, Terrance Stamp, and John Hurt don’t know how to just “phone it in,” and every line these guys spit resonates. Honestly, this trio could be reading from a phonebook and it would still sound awesome. The supporting cast also does a fine job of keeping up, and includes a few veteran actors whose names I haven’t heard in a while, most notably Steve Waddington and Donald Sumpter.

With the good out of the way, it’s time to address the bad and the ugly. The paper thin plot could be considered passable if you can invest yourself into the world whether you’re a fan or just an interested party, however, as an animated feature, Ultramarines fails miserably. The quality of the animation is the lowest of low rent CG, scarcely two steps above the kind of computer generated stuff that graced syndicated television in the late ‘90s. Faces are low resolution models that look strangely alien and plastic, and these 7 foot tall walking death merchants look more like 6-inch tall action figures in the way they move and fight. Everything is soft looking, with low resolution textures that look like something out of the Playstation 2 era. Honestly, there were video games in 2005 or 2006 that had better textured character models than those that are on display here. Even worse are the wretched special effects. Things like fire and muzzle flash look laughably bad. There are animated films out there with better looking rough test animation than the finished product on display here. In spite of the truth paid to the source material, or the awesome voice acting, the visuals make the first impression, and it is an impression of weakness. This is not how you do justice to a legion of followers. The heart is there, but the budget just isn’t.

Closing Statement
Ultramarines: A Warhammer 40K Movie is ultimately a movie for the hardest of the hard core fanbase, a fanbase so ravenous that they make ‘Trekkies’ look like ‘Gleeks’. Sadly, it clearly lacks the significant budget necessary to facilitate the epic scope required for a franchise with three decades worth of background material.

Still, all things considered, the voice acting is great, the script is pure fan service, and the design captures the essence and depth of the source material. When the action hits, it does so with gusto and bad-assery to spare, but it may not be enough for most of us.

The Verdict
5/10