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MeanGreenStompa wrote:Graphics look very poor.

When you consider how sweet this is:


Why is it they can't do something to that level?

That DoW2 supplement trailer is very good, isn't it. I'd seen the fight with the Eldar, but forgotten how beautifully done it is (I guess female elves will continue to be based on Kate Blanchett for many more years to come, but that's no bad thing).

I'm also assuming that making a whole movie with graphics this good would be quite expensive, since (one would assume) if it had been viable to do the Space Marine movie like this then they would have done it - they could presumably have sought Relic's cooperation.

MajorTom11 - that was a useful explanation of some of what's involved in producing one of these films. I think your comment about Star Wars needs qualifying though. When they first came out, the original Star Wars films' effects were pretty much cutting edge (although the first film was done on a relative shoe string). Now, they're regarded as primitive (the limitations are really starting to show in Episode 6) - yet the 3 original films remain by far the strongest despite looking cruder than the prequel trilogy. The reason is simple - story and character. These can overcome a low budget. If this Space Marine film has a strong narrative and strong characters ('Moon', for example), and avoids the cliches that cripple most sci-fi films ('Mutant Chronicles' anyone?), then it will be worth seeing even if the animation is so-so. It's really hard to tell from the trailers.

$40 for a 70 minute, outdated cgi quality niche movie? This looks about as thrilling as the Digimon movie.

Tizz wrote:$40 for a 70 minute, outdated cgi quality niche movie? This looks about as thrilling as the Digimon movie.

It's not $40; consider reading the thread.

If you're in the US and you purchase the Collector's Edition, with shipping it is $40 ($39.98 including delivery to US). Link. If someone can prove it's less, let me know because then I must have been overcharged when I purchased it.

Tailgunner, absolutely agreed bud! I just meant that the effects can really take something to the next level. They can't be seperated from the overall movie story too. Granted, star wars (esp empire strikes back) is exceptional stuff. It sits in my golden triumvirate of Aliens, T2 and ESB

I guess for me personally, I am a big reader, usually 2-3 books a week. I look for my stories and characters there. When I see a movie, I want immersion and spectacle. This is not to say I want things blowing up left and right the whole way through (although that has it's place but I do not want shoddy production to remove me from the experience. To make me stop watching the movie and start looking for mistakes. It's distracting.

Story is king, everything else must maintain the integrity of the story. Actors, effects, sets etc, if these things take away from the story, then they have harmed their own purpose in my humble opinion.

This thread is turning into a good excercise in justifying strategy and quality.

burning_phoneix wrote:
I don't really blame GW for not taking a risk on dumping millions on this project. More likely than not, they're testing the waters to see if there is a market for 40k movies because let's face it, tabletop gaming is a niche hobby.

Who's even going to know about this movie other than people aware of it because they're already interested in the 40K world? It's a direct to disc movie in a limited edition run that doesn't seem interested in promoting itself to a wider audience, ie sci-fi and action fans. I truly hope the dvd will be available on its own at some point but it doesn't look good, I'm certainly not buying this over priced product as it stands. GW is not a charity and does not need my money to make better products in the future, it gets my money if it makes something worth spending money on and frankly, this is not even feature length and I wonder how good a movie plot you can get with such a short film.

I hope the story is good, and I hope that this is a success so that they can make longer and better films with good quality animation.

MajorTom11 wrote:NELS1031, I detailed some factors in play with quality levels before. Pixar and ILM are at the Zenith of CG production, they have facilities and finances (and experience) blur can't even touch. There are many technical aspects, but the biggest differences you will see are size of settings, detail of objects in those settings, and amount of camera movement within them. Now, if you are smart, like Blur has been..

You can certainly do a lot without all the bells and whistles of 3D if you choose your style carefully.
Initially that's what I thought they were doing, looking all grim and gritty, but those bland backgrounds are a dead give away that they didn't have a plan beyond '3D Animation'.

While they could have done well with key framing, this trailer was pretty painful to watch and going whole hog with body mo-cap might have saved them some grief. It's not a cure all.
The Barbie movies are in the same production bracket in many ways, and they can afford a mix of mo-cap and keyframe.

They can also manage to make their characters look at each other and the action and have weight, anticipation and overshoots.

To me the animation looks ok and so far from the trailers i've been pretty happy with the sound of it.

Ok so maybe the animation and actual look could be better but at the heart of it i'm just happy that they finally produced a movie.

People have wanted one for ages and when finally one does come out, people aren't happy.

Can't please everyone I guess

As per usual another over priced GW item. All I can say is [edited by Mod] is your friend

Something tells me that promoting piracy on a public forum might be a dumb idea, lol...

Also, kinda off-topic but anyone notice the GW website today? The advertisements on the front page for the new Dark Eldar models, complete with the cool little tabs on the side in the shape of an DE rune, are gone and replaced with Ultramarines propaganda now. Can you believe that, DE aren't even formally released yet and already they've taken the spotlight off of them to push more Marine gak.

...so yeah, advertising Ultramarines to coincide with the movie release?

ordered a copy straight away

Sidstyler wrote:

Something tells me that promoting privacy on a public forum might be a dumb idea, lol...

I don't think Pirates are to bothered about this ... yarr ...

...lmao, it's early okay?

To be fair I did have the bad-touch space pirates on my mind.

I think a lot of the problems people are having with the movie is due to over-hype, mostly from ourselves as fans of the universe. But that's to be expected, especially when you have a large group of people who feel so passionately about it. That's not to mean that those critisims made by many against the film aren't valid, particularly those regarding the quality of cgi, but to be fair should we have expected DOW2 when no one had really heard of the production company? Getting excited about a project should not be discouraged, but I guess we'll approach the next film (if there is one) with a little more caution.
Myself, well I like what I have seen. The graphics could have been a lot better, but they could have been soooooo much worse. The action looks fluid and the blood has not been left out. Fingers crossed the story is as good as Abnett's previous 40K books or 2000AD work and it should be a great film. I'm a sucker for collectors edition dvds so I will be forking out £26 to pre-order it.

The one critism I think is unfair is the one that Ultramarines are boring. I totally disgree, they have a long and proud history, particularly against the Tyranids. Blood Angels, Space Wolves etc... are all very exotic, but that's not really what the Space Marines are about. The Ultramarines are the best example of what any space marine chapter should be, plus they have established background unlike another unknown chapter that conforms to the codex. They also have the honour of being pretty much the first chapter GW came up with back in the 80's, so there's a lot of fan history there. Perhaps it's just people feel they are overexposed?

cadbren wrote:

burning_phoneix wrote:
I don't really blame GW for not taking a risk on dumping millions on this project. More likely than not, they're testing the waters to see if there is a market for 40k movies because let's face it, tabletop gaming is a niche hobby.

Who's even going to know about this movie other than people aware of it because they're already interested in the 40K world? It's a direct to disc movie in a limited edition run that doesn't seem interested in promoting itself to a wider audience, ie sci-fi and action fans. I truly hope the dvd will be available on its own at some point but it doesn't look good, I'm certainly not buying this over priced product as it stands. GW is not a charity and does not need my money to make better products in the future, it gets my money if it makes something worth spending money on and frankly, this is not even feature length and I wonder how good a movie plot you can get with such a short film.

I really don't see where you're disagreeing with me?

They should of done two versions, with a movie on it's own being £10. Concentrate on shifting the movie first and foremost, then offer up the deluxe package. IMO it's better to get people to purchase the movie and them complain afterwards when you bring out a deluxe version out. The deluxe expensive version is likely to put people off, including casual buyers, from buying it. They should be appealing to the Sci Fi fans, not the smaller number of 40k fans.

CGI looks like it went to the lowest bidder and the lion's share of $$$ went to voice talent. I am disappoint.

"How do you recognize heresy?"....Look for the spikes dude hahaha.

But seriously why are they fighting in some sort of shotty looking dust bowl the whole time lol.

the planet is a desert planet.

go to some deserts and they look very much like that.


granted, they did cheat by picking such an easy terrain to construct with CG, but i can't say i blame them. Terrain is a to animate, especially if it changes with every scene, needs a large level of detail, and lets be honest is in the background.

this will change with future releases.

They barely did terrain. The put blurred out aftereffects dust clips playing at 10 frames a second. I lived in the desert for a year. You can generally see more than 10 feet away. And there are you know, rocks and junk.

Were you involved in futuristic space battles in said desert? Also, was there a lot of Warp-Spawned sorcery afoot?

I also lived in the desert, for much longer than a year, and there were times that things looked exactly as shown in the trailer.

Chaos would naturally stir up dust storms to cover their approach.

they need those 4+ cover saves


I am sure that not all the scenes are dust storms, there seem to be plenty of fighting among rocky outcrops and over steep canyons

Well, the new trailer looks alright I suppose, not the best. Very easy to tell they keyframed everything instead of using any mo-cap.

I was hoping for something on the level of DoW2, but if GW didn't throw any money at the production studio, I can imagine why it doesn't look like DoW2.

Will still buy, and hope for better products in the future. Also, hopefully Dan won't let us down with story, and hopefully that great cast won't let us down with the acting. I suppose I can take some shoddy gfx if it is a good story with decent acting.

I hope this movie is decent. I'm still not very impressed with the 90's cgi.

Think I'm going to wait for some reviews first.

I want to support them for future films, but I just have an odd 'smash and grab' feeling with this whole set up.

Don't really want to reward some company on doing a half arshed job, just because its got a Space Marine on the box.

tbh I'm not really impressed so far. I feel like the motion of the characters just doesn't seem real enough, I don't know how to explain it, but they captured it much better on the DoW II trailer. I feel like they don't do justice to how massive and bulky space marines and their equipment are supposed to be. For example, to give an impression of how massive and awesome a bolter is, I think it should look heavy in the hands of the user and have a lot of recoil to indicate "this is a big freaking gun!" What I see in the trailer annoys me because they are flailing them around like they're little water pistols. pew pew! Also I think its funny how in the trailer their power armor doesn't do crap against bolter fire

Monster Rain wrote:Were you involved in futuristic space battles in said desert? Also, was there a lot of Warp-Spawned sorcery afoot?

I also lived in the desert, for much longer than a year, and there were times that things looked exactly as shown in the trailer.

AS A MATTER OF FACT I -.... um no :S

Point conceded lol.

I thought everything except the faces looked pretty good. Which is ok since most people will have a bucket on their head. It might might be one of those movie you see for curiosity's sake.

Wait, are they actually going to release a standard edition of this movie?