Ultramarines: The Movie: crap or not crap?
Well this was something. By that I mean it was an actual, literal thing and not a concept. I don't know how seriously I can take the Warhammer 40k universe, but it still appeals to the 12-year-old inside. Things are more grimdark than they were in the old Rogue Trader days (the first edition of 40k) which was quintessential British goofiness. These days, it's Very Serious, and that's a hard sell when you're dealing with Space Orks and Space Elves.
It's a CGI film about Imperial Space Marines fighting Chaos Space Marines. There is no deeper plot, and anyone who tells you that there is any character development is a lying fanboy. The script was either written by a teenager or a computer algorithm that randomly spat out phrases like "we shall know no fear" and "kill the heretic" onto a MovieMagic Screenwriter doc.
Running time is 76 minutes, and it feels like they stretched every second. This could easily have been a 22-minute TV episode. That's all it warranted. They stretch out the length with the following formula: characters walking, walking, establishing shot, walking, walking, establishing shot, 2nd establishing shot, more goddamned walking. And the walking...oh, the walking...is not animated well. They sort of glide-walk. There is no weight to their steps. At least in Machinima films you know what you're getting, but this is supposed to be actual cg animation.
The animators don't seem to have a full understanding of how light works in regards to light sources and shadows. It's sometimes good, sometimes ad hoc.
The lip syncing is mediocre, but (other than the walking mentioned above) the CG isn't too bad. It's serviceable. Opening movies for most video games are better, but I didn't mind the look of this too much. I do, however, think they would've done better if they had just animated it more stylistically in Flash than go for realism. On the other hand, they did a great job with the Thunderhawk and Land Speeder. (Yes, I'm embarrassed that I know the names of the vehicles.)
The action scenes that punctuate the walking scenes are poorly directed and choreographed. It's B-movie stuff (I guess that's okay considering this is a B-movie).
I won't ever watch this again, but I didn't hate it (the opening cinematic to the original Dawn of War is lightyears ahead of this effort).
What disappointed me most is that unlike the Dawn of War game, this movie actually made Space Marines look like shoddy scifi design. Back in the 80s, SM started out as sorta British camp, but this movie takes its cue from the modern reinterpretation that This Is Very Serious. So they don't look like exaggerations of scifi, they just look silly. The weapons are insanely huge. I had to look back at the models I have to see if the proportions were off. The models themselves are in heroic scale 28mm (instead of true 1/72 25mm), but they don't look nearly as ridiculous.
I didn't come into this with high expectations, and if it had been a 22-minute short, then okay. But to stretch this shred of a premise of half an idea to 76 minutes is stupid. It's bad writing and it leads to bad editing. The pacing is atrocious.
For kicks, this is the Dawn of War intro cinematic from 2004 (where the pacing is the opposite of atrocious):
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