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NOTE please try to keep talk about the plot to a minimum as not to spoil it for those who haven't seen it yet.

I personally enjoyed it. Impressed generally. I thought personally it would be the plot that lets this film down but really I was more concerned about the slightly ridgid animation perticulaly towards the start of the film. However once I started getting into the film abit more and the blood started to fly, yeah it was good!!

Did think it could have been more complex a story line but I suppose it being the first one they tried to keep it simpler to ease people into the universe maybe. That being the case they might have gone a little less on the "And we shall know no fear" chanting but there you go. And telling the different space marine apart by only their voices and small armour details was hard, hence the reason why they had their helmets off for as much of the film as possible I suppose.

But anyway these are all small things really, generally impressed.

Haven't seen it, probably won't, but so few big-studio movies have anything even remotely like a complex story line that I think it's forgivable for a small film like this no to have one either. =]

A friend got it so I got to see it today. It was alright. But the "We march for Macragge.. And we shall know no fear" was used a bit too much.

I liked it, story was a bit silly, but it was a 40k movie!!! come on!! how awesome was it to see some Marines on the big screen!

n0t_u wrote:But the "We march for Macragge.. And we shall know no fear" was used a bit too much.

I guess even Ultramarines need to remind themselves that they have the rule; after all, if you forget and throw the dice, you can't go back for a re-do!

My only real complaint was the way the Captain, Apothecary and such Vets looked so Incredibly old and decrepit.

n0t_u wrote:But the "We march for Macragge.. And we shall know no fear" was used a bit too much.

You know what happened last time marines stopped saying who they're fighting for? The Horus Heresy happened, that's what.

I thought the cgi was better done then i was expecting. The only time it looked awkward was twice, when they were just walking down halls - it looked weird.



The part where they fired and it was in slow-mo was awesome, as that effect nearly always is. That's a hard one to bung up.

I enjoyed that they explained absolutely nothing: if you don't know what The Emperor or the Warp is, you may not enjoy it as much.

There was a part where you see one of their foes 2-gunning it. I enjoyed that since, I've posed a few of my guys that way, even if they can't actually do that in game.

I saw it, it was better than I thought it would be, but considering I thought it would be a steaming pile that isn't saying much.

Overall -

Story: Basic but servicable. However, I really felt a lot of it was out of character, UM's being bratty and pretty much insubordinate does not sit too well with me. I also felt that they could have been a bit more explicit with some backstory elements.

Graphics: Some spots were actually pretty servicable if the lighting was right! Others were pretty horrendous. Transformers: Prime CGI was better and more consistent. Major problems included overall texturing, especially on skin and rocks, lighting glitches and low detail on many objects.

Worst part of Graphics: The 2D compositing was horrendous. The fire and smoke effects were overused and visciously cropped and poorly blended into the scenes. 2 or 3 parts had me really wondering how the hell they let it through like that, I know how to do this stuff, fixing it would NOT have been that hard, a few hours work, literally.

Voice acting: Overall very well done. Not gonna lie.

Voice Scripting: If they said 'And we shall know no fear' one more time I was about to hurricane kick my screen. Overall, not too bad either, although I had problems with a lot of it not because it was inherently bad, but because it didnt fit my idea of how marines would speak and interact based on my years and years of Fluff and BL fluff. That's just me though.

Niggling things that bugged me - Bolts did not explode. No noises when helmets were put on, 12 man squad with company standard? huh? Black legion were a faceless and wasted enemy for me. Captain possesed, but how? Doesnt seem consistent with Daemon fluff to me. Complete lack of outside characters, would have liked to have seen some more non-marine people running around. Wtf was up with the 'spell' the chaplain cast with his crozius, am I missing something? Apothecary and Captain looked too damned old. Faces were not particularly muscly or enhanced human looking, as mentioned in most fluff. Power Armor did not seem to make noise or enhance the users much, any hit shown pretty much pierced the armor and gibbed them.

Despite what may seem like an overwhelmingly negative review, I think most 40k fans will probably enjoy the movie (and pretend to like it more than they did though), with a lesser but not insignificant proportion despising it (and not pretending at all).

Favorite moment:

After the DP cored that UM's brain out of his head, along with the entire back of the skull, and the Apothecary examines him and says 'Head Wound..."

No Gak Sherlock LOL

Garbage , terrible plot , even worse animation especially the walking was hysterical, stereotyped acting, the pacing was non exsistant,
the colour and environmental art was nice and some still shots of the characters were straight out of wd but overall , it was a huge let down, i think the cutscenes in the dow are 100% better for naimation, action and even story. worth a rent but thats all..tsk tsk tsk gw ..you can do better iam sure of it !

though the worse aspect of it was the depiction of flimsy armour and weak minded sm. they didnt at all come accross as the saviours of humanity just stupid aholes waiting to get killed by hoards of badly rendered csm.

I liked it. Yeah the animation was lacking and the plot was simple. But the action was good and it definitely fit the 40k theme.

MajorTom brings up most of the things that bugged me. In addition: I didn't like how the inconic bolt guns were implemented. For starters they were HUGE! Not the heavy bolter mind you but just the regular bolt guns the Marines carried. They were just immense. They looked like they were being wielded by normal humans. Also, some of the sound editing was out. Some scenes had marines firing salvo's from their bolters and a torrent of casings flew out of the ejection port. So far, so good (never mind the whole bolter rounds are caseless debate). Unfortunately the sound effects added in were a simple two or three round burst (I was expecting more of a braaaaaaapt! and not a bam..bam and a dozen casing go flying). It seems like a small issue but it really detracted from the action scenes for me.

In order to heighten the drama at the climax of the movie the marines need to kill the Daemon in under 5 minutes before the ship warps home to McCragge. Ummm...hey how about you call the bridge and tell them to hold the engine start countdown until this whole Daemon thing is cleared up. It is your ship after all! And where are the rest of the marines / servitors / imperial fleet troopers while this Daemon rampages through the ship? How come our two or three main characters are the only one dealing it?

Lots of little quibbles but like I said I still enjoyed it.

I believe that the graphics were just nowhere near what was to be expected from a studio. The intro to DOW 1 & 2 was at least three times better. I believe the budget (although low) was spent too much on some named British actors to do the voices. If less time was given to such actors, I am sure the money could of been spent better else-where.

I am not a 40k hater by a long shot, I love everything about the 40k universe. It is just tough when so many other media outlets (i.e. video games) have depicted the 40k universe so well! I am definitely looking forward to Dark Millennium as well as the Space Marine video game. Even pre-pre-beta (pre-alpha?) shots of each look quite a bit better and more believable.

Also why were their helmet lens black? I would figure they would light up when the helmet was put on. Definitely a big pet-peeve of mine!

It should be in a $5 bin considering the graphics are comparable to the 90's Transformers: Beast Wars series (Which was AWESOME....for its time).

i saw it this weekend at a friend's and i was certainly glad i didn't plunk down the money to buy it. the animation was par for the course for a videogame in 1998-2000 but, outside of a couple of shots that would have made nice stills for a computer wallpaper, was definitely subpar for current times. i've seen better animation and physics on xbox 360 games in the actual gameplay let alone the cutscenes some of those games have. gears of war campaign looks and feels more appropriate to the 40k universe than this movie did. they overused the smokey/stormy backgrounds to simply save time on animation (as well as several overly dark scenes) and it was pretty obvious. the weapons other than the heavy bolter never felt right, especially the chainsaw. again, the gears of war lancer chainsaw animations IN GAME were of higher quality than the ones in this movie. the marines had very leaden movements most of the time that felt unnatural and their phsyics just seemed off; either they were too heavy (like the scene where they're jumping across a ruined bridge) or they're skating over a frictionless surface while walking. the plot was mediocre at best and full of holes which i can't describe too much without getting into spoiler territory. why exactly is a battlebarge chaufering around a single squad of rookies and a captain in space? does the apothecary feel smarter when he looks at a marine with half his skull MISSING and declares "head wound" to everyone who also is seeing the same damage? why does the BBEG just stand there practically unmoving when the "hero" picks up the uber weapon at the end and just wallops him with no resistance when before he moved with the speed and grace of a gazelle hyped up on amphetamines? (sorry, not trying to be specific/spoilerific with the details) about the only good thing i can say is that the voice animation for the major characters was pretty good with the cavaet that the rest of the more minor characters all sounded the same since it sounded like each of the main voice actors did multiple roles in the same squad. while i'm glad someone made a 40k movie of some sort, i get the feeling from the trailers that i will be immensely more satisfied with the upcoming space marine video game than this film (hopefully...).

ps. from the intro.. the ONLY thing standing between the xenos and chaos and humanity are the space marines? i'm pretty sure the trillions upon trillions of guardsmen have something to say about that, lol. and don't get me started on the ultras being the best of the marines...

As a reminder: DakkaDakka does not advocate or support IP piracy. Please keep ant acts of IP piracy that you have committed to yourself and do not encourage others to engage in IP piracy. Thanks.

one other thing i forgot to mention in my review above was the strange WTF care bear power the crozius gives the chaplain. wtf? since when does a crozius has an ap3 flamer template equivalent death ray????!?!??

I was impressed that it conveyed the scale of the 40k universe, the ship and the 'cathedral' was well implemented.

the action , I was a bit of a fan boy when I saw the Heavy Bolter , but meh to the other stuff.

The marines movement, well , lets say I thought when they were climbibg I was watching Toy Story , and that would be quite in keeping.

Vocal acting , I liked it , a bit corny at times but Stamp and Pertwee were ok.

** from me , but still a 40 K movie , can't complain.

It was not bad for what it was, What iu dont understand is why they did not just animate it linstead of using CGI. It would have been a lot better visually and then they could have spent the CGI budget on better sound affects and a longer story.

The voice acting was spot on, ~Yes i agree the "we march blah blah bla" was annoying.

the way the marines acted was just childish and brattish bordering on insubordination and this was not what i expevted from Ultramarines. Especially since it starts with "and the greatest are the Ultramarine" well poke me sideways with a bolter, if thats the greatest of the cmarnine chapters I hate to think what the worst would be.

Well, the worst? thats obvious....Spacewolves!

Not being funny but I think a lot of people are slating it from a biased point of view. I've never been a fan of GW's marketing or their prices, in fact I tend to steer people away from the hobby unless they're happy to spend the cash or do a lot of work refurbing ebay rejects.

Read pretty much all the threads and comments on here and other places about the UM movie and still decided to buy it because I absolutely adore the fluff behind 40k and warhammer fantasy (even though some of it is quite clearly plagiarized), so yes I went in not expecting much from this film at all.

I was more than pleasantly surprised. For any true fan of GWs fluff I think this film is a must have. People that are here predominantly for the gaming side will probably not appreciate the film as much. The studio that produced this was on a low budget and received no help from GW financially, so taking that into account I think they did an amazing job. I'll not lie, I did groan when it first started due to the "poor" visuals but that soon got overridden by the quality of the voice acting and the storyline - which, although as mentioned above is basic, is very pure 40k in my opinion.

To the person that said they shouldn't have spent as much on the voice acting... you sir need to perhaps sit down and watch some classic movies. Visuals are NOT the be all and end all. I will honestly say that it was the voice acting and the story that saved this film for me and made it a minor cult classic in my eyes. I genuinely hope that they make another, but I believe that because so many people are blinkered these days by nice visuals and hollywood cliches that there will too much negativity aimed at this effort.

Am I a fanboy of the fluff? Yes.
Was this film 100% accurate to UM fluff? No.
Was this film disappointing due to visuals? Yes (but this ought not be counted due to the budget constraints).
Were the negatives made up for by other means? God yes.

Every fan of 40k lore should see this film, some will love it, some will hate it. Isn't that true of every film released about "popular" fiction though?

Edit: Just thought I would add this note. Watched through a large screen TV with full digital surround sound and I felt that the audio was brilliant. Bolters sounded nice and meaty, chainswords sounded properly mean. The soundtrack was spot on for the atmosphere of the film.

Gijouhei wrote:
To the person that said they shouldn't have spent as much on the voice acting... you sir need to perhaps sit down and watch some classic movies. Visuals are NOT the be all and end all. I will honestly say that it was the voice acting and the story that saved this film for me and made it a minor cult classic in my eyes. I genuinely hope that they make another, but I believe that because so many people are blinkered these days by nice visuals and hollywood cliches that there will too much negativity aimed at this effort.

I must disagree. The actors may be good at acting, and I will not say that they did not add to the movie. My only arguement is with a $9 million budget, less money should of been spent on the named Brits, and more in the visual department. That includes both the movements and visuals, which were very old in their own right. I have done a bit of computer graphic work myself and have seen much more detailed and "realistic" graphics done with the simplest of hands.

I also believe that being a visual actor and a voice actor do not go hand-in-hand. Meaning that if you watch some cartoons (i.e. Batman Beyond, Justice League...etc) you will see that the voices clearly intone their characters reactions quite well. These actors, although good as actual visual acting, weren't the best for the money in my opinion. I am not knocking them, as I clearly just think if they had chosen some professional VOICE actors, they could of achieved the same if not better quality at a cheaper price. I am sure there are also some good British cartoon's that have some great voice acting, as all my references would be to American actors.

In short, it was a nice start even though it was graphically lacking, and I have already decided to make the purchase of the movie in order to do my part to encourage another, hopefully better, sequel/prequel/whatever.

Not sure if it is just me but I got the impression several times in the movie that the visuals and voice track were a little off-kilter. What I mean by that is, clearly Codex Pictures got their hired help into the studio to record the voices. I feel Terence Stamp probably tipped up one morning, did his track in one take and buggered off. It seemed to me like sometimes the wrong emphasis was placed on the wrong word as clearly the person speaking it hasn't really got any idea of what he is talking about.

I agree that perhaps instead of paying for 'Hollywood' voices, they maybe could have hired people more used to dubbing for CGI/animation and who have an insight into the 40k mythos so they can speak about it convincingly.

The movie itself was OK, nothing more I thought. I watched it with the wife. She fell asleep pretty rapidly. Just as well, as there were some real cringe worthy moments in there, dialogue wise. I thought the movie was too much of a slow burner, slow to get moving and then over too fast and full of quite a number of fairly ludicrous plot holes/inconsistencies. But, after all that, it was still a 40k film, released commercially so it is a step in the right direction, I guess.

Visually Stunning....

Copypasta instant review!



Ok, so just finished watching it. What can I say...

Ok, I'll start with the animation. It is better than the trailer had led me to believe. That doesn't make it good animation, but it's certainly better than what I thought it was going to be. The main problem with the animation is that it suffers from what a lot of 3D animated shows suffer from - a frictionless environment with no gravity. What I mean by that is everything moves too fast, and nothing feels like it has any weight. It's evident right from the start with the sparring session between Pertwee's character and the Captain. Movements are slightly too quick, don't carry any impact, and it feels like everything is floating. This is further exacerbated during the final fight, with Marines flying everywhere almost as if it was a low-G environment,a nd then sliding or clattering across the floor as though everything was covered in oil.

But my main issues with the animation were technical - the lighting for one thing. It was very dark in a lot of places, and that obscured a lot of things. Only when they were aboard the Thunderhawk was there enough light to see anything. They also used too many overlays of fire or smoke to compensate for the animation's quality. The faces looked fine - certainly nothing Blur level, probably... a bit better than Diablo II, if any'a y'all remember that.

The story was fine (even if you can make a dozen parallels with Aliens and half a dozen other stories). I liked the build up of tension, even in the instances where the foreshadowing was obvious (the Thunder Hammer, especially - they were never not going to come back to that) and the pacing was fine. The movie didn't feel short (as I feared it would) nor did it overstay its welcome and carry on too long. I liked the characterisation as well. The Apothecary was especially good, with the two good lines he got "The Emperor protects, but it doesn't hurt to check twice" and "The Emperor Protects, but a loaded Bolter helps". The Marines were suitably "Marine-like", equal parts heroic glory hounds, high-speak spouting knights and deadly primitive thugs. The rivalries made sense, and at no point did I feel like they weren't real (animation oddities aside).

I liked the twist. I thought it would turn out to be the single remaining Imp Fist Marine (seeing the Chaplain as too obvious a Red Herring). When he screamed I thought "ok, here we go, transformation scene coming!", but no... it was different to that. And that's good. It meant that the foreshadowing from the very start - even the helmet smash - all got a pay-off. And that's good.

The Bolters felt cool. Probably the best example of Bolters since... Chaos Gate. The main difference between the Bolters in Chaos Gate and in Ultramarines is that it took about about 10 shots to even crack the armour on a Chaos Marine in Chaos Gate. Here they were shooting HE uranium depleted slugs... how else were they cutting through the Black Legion Marines? But, again, it's not a huge issue - the Black Legion were a means to an end, a distraction and not a real threat, designed to whittle the squad down to the point where the real threat could leave without being discovered.

The Flamer guy... I guess he just liked lighting fires. The amount of times he shot that thing while walking down dark hallways was annoying. And the Landspeeder was awesome! It didn't do much, but I loved seeing one zip around on screen.

Overall the single greatest downside to this film is the completely lack of interest GW has shown in it. Maybe now GW will put a little grunt work of their own to cross-promote these things in the future. They're a company with their own chain of retail stores across the world for feth's sake and they think that their only role in such an endeavour is to collect the cheque at the end for the license rights they sold. If anyone in their promotions and marketing department had even half a brain their most recent issue of White Dwarf would have "Ultramarines - The Movie" as it's front cover, have interviews with the makers, the cast, a look at the film, a special movie-based scenario for people to play with rules for the main characters and - because they are a miniature company after all - a Ltd. Ed. boxed set with a metal model for each of the main characters (the exact same thing they should have done with the HQ's from Dark Crusade). But no, for GW all this means to them is more $$$ with no effort, when even the slightest bit of effort (White Dwarf) would allow them to further increase the sales.

Overall I'm giving this a solid 7/10. It's a 6/10, 5 being 'Average' and 6 being 'Above Average', and it gets a 7 because it impressed me far more than I thought it would.

I'm sad to say so, but the film is a complete fail.

Even if I started watching it with rather low expectations... which makes it all even worse.

Dawn of War movies are far better. They are shorter, yes, because they didn't pad length. But the amount of real action is about the same. Was this plot the best Abnet could come up with? :(

I'm sorry. I really wanted it to be a good movie. I tried to like it. But all the 40k hype aside, this is one piece of crap. Imagine the same plot/graphics/animations/voice acting with anything but space marines in a universe other than 40k and you will see what it really is.

though the worse aspect of it was the depiction of flimsy armour and weak minded sm. they didnt at all come accross as the saviours of humanity just stupid aholes waiting to get killed by hoards of badly rendered csm.

This was especially terrible. In the intro they were established as "more than mere mortals" semigods.... eh.

Sejanus wrote:

though the worse aspect of it was the depiction of flimsy armour and weak minded sm. they didnt at all come accross as the saviours of humanity just stupid aholes waiting to get killed by hoards of badly rendered csm.

This was especially terrible. In the intro they were established as "more than mere mortals" semigods.... eh.

Their flimsy armour and lack of back bone aside they did manage to survive when undoubtably outnumbered and inexperienced, remember they are were new recruits, which I think is why alot of the marines in the story didn't really fit into the "we are the hardest humans that ever existed" nothing can touch us.

I think the characters needed thier vulnerabilities otherwise it would have simply been a case of get the job done - OK sir. Ten minuets of shooting later, job done. Surely that would have been boring.

Look at any of the films that have interesting characters and the characters generally have some kind of personal angsts otherwise they may have well have been robots for all its worth. That would have been interesting in it's own way but not in the slightest bit human and so not in the slightest bit endering.

Edit: Not hoping to defend the plot too much. Still a bit too simple and short and thats to say nothing for the animation and basic rendering.

Aduro wrote:My only real complaint was the way the Captain, Apothecary and such Vets looked so Incredibly old and decrepit.

This. In the minis, the older models don't look nearly so feeble. In the new Calgar mini, for example, he's done up with white hair and all but he still looks strong and virile. These guys just looked...old...

Even the regular Space Marines looked a bit too old. I would have preferred faces like young meatheads, with the huge steroids jaws. This guy, for instance, is supposed to be a Captain.



"Let's go bash some xenos!"



"Hi, I'm fething old"

NuggzTheNinja wrote:"Hi, I'm fething old"

that pic doesn't do him justice as he's got WAY more liver spots evident on profile pics. (unfortunately, i'm NOT kidding...) as for the "inexperienced" tactical squad members, they've all got at least a dozen years of combat experience as scouts making them green for a marine (but the equal of a decorated veteran guardsman) but not the n00bies the film makes them out to be in combat.

So are you guys saying this film was no better than that really old Fan made film from a while back?

The animation was better than the trailer, but still not what it should have been in 2010, or even 2005. The plot was a little better than I was expecting, but the dialogue was vomitous in many parts (as we have come to expect from more recent SM fluff). That said, what really bothered me was the bolters and the CSM's. The bolters rip through power armor as though it they were guardsmen, just punches straight through. The CSM's are brainless minions attacking in unorganized waves, not competent veterans of 10,000 years of unholy war.

Overall, a little better than I was expecting from the Trailer, but not by much, definitely not worth spending money on. It feels like an art students Senior project, not a feature film.



Next time, give us "All Quiet on the Western Front" in the 40k universe, not mediocre 3D Spehse Mahreenz Fanfic.

The fight in the sand storm felt way to much like blew the budget on other parts. Its still worth watching thu.