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Hey everyone, I saw this a few days ago and thought that despite being a tiny bit predictable, it was really stylish, cool looking and true to the 40k universe. Just wondered if anyone else has seen it yet and what they thought?

The marines looked amazing, the weapons looked and sounded bute, and the face-sync looked spot on.

I'll tell you, the story was amazing.


Totally surprise ending too.

Trailer looks interesting, not paying $40 for an animated movie though. I'll watch it if I can find it for free

it should be out in another couple of months as just the DVD.

probably only $20 then.

The movie was quite good! My only gripe would be that it should have been longer, but it worked fine at its actual length.
The animation was fine, and didn't detract for me except for one split-second shot; .
I really loved the sound and music! If anyone can find the sheet music or even just the words for the credits song, you should post it.

Has anyone else experienced a 15-17 second freezing of the movie ? The package has a warning that the film might pause at a certain point. Is this a common error?

i had a little freeze after they kneeled before the hammer, but that was it.

Yeah I'm the same about paying for the limited edition box set. Once it comes out for a more reasonable price I think I'll get it.

There were plenty of neat bits. The heavy bolter looked (and sounded) amazing, the landspeeder was neat, the baddies look really nasty and it's actually quite a well drawn out, tense movie in parts.

The only thing I thought was that it was a shame it wasn't more 'epic' in scale, as it centres around quite a small collection of marines. Hopefully they'll make more of these movies and include an epic battle.

Overall 8/10 I'd say

They are planning a sequel.


i would be surprised if they didn't include more Marines, perhaps the entire 2nd company.




I just can't figure when the time frame is.

they have aready encountered Tyranids, but Sicarus isn't the Captain. surely it is after the battle for Maccragge as there is alot of Tyranid motifs.

The Captain Severus is NOT the same Captain Severus of the 1st company who became Captain of the 1st after the Battle for Maccragge.



So, either this is sometime in the future and Cato is either dead or, Holy Terra, Calgar is dead and Cato is chapter master.

Grey Templar wrote:it should be out in another couple of months as just the DVD.

probably only $20 then.

ill wait for it then

I just got back in from vacation yesterday to the boxed set.

I popped it in excitedly, poured a tall glass of beer and settled in to enjoy it.

..I thought it was pretty bad. It didn't seem to coincide with the lore that I've come to enjoy over the last 8-9 years reading black library books.
I'm not an absolute lore buff but they appeared to have been on an astartes battlebarge. Why were a paltry 12 marines aboard? There should have been multiple companies.

The manner in which they encountered the enemy was baffling. A lone chaos marine. Followed by a small horde of berserkers who went down like flies. I found the dialogue to be acceptable at times but for the most part it was just "FOR THE EMPEROR" "FOR MACCRAGE" "WE SHALL KNOW NO FEAR". There was little to no character development.

Even with the level of animation that was available to them I do think more could have been done. Perhaps I'm expecting too much from the budget, but just more exposition and a more complex plot would have done wonders for this attempt in my opinion. But I suppose with the budget they had they really had to condense it?

Also : why did their standard continue to burst into wychfire? Since when are astartes standards attuned to 'detect' the presence of deamons? Perhaps this is an Ultramarine bit of lore I was unaware of?

It really pains me, but I found the movie to be an absolute disappointment to me. Hopefully following attempts will have a larger budget and can invest in a more complex story like all of the ones I've read over the years. As I've read a lot of notable books I've thought "Wow, this would make an amazing film." I can always picture in my mind how the scenes would play out and how impressive they would be. This movie was more like 40k porn, just something produced so we could see spays muhreens moving and fighting. Explosions everywhere. I just don't think that this first attempt did 40k any sort of justice in my mind. It just came off as very, very goofy to me.

Here's hoping for better in the future. :/

It was a fine attempt IMO. I wasn't let down much because I managed my expectations knowing that it was a small company on a tight budget so don't think you're going to see Avatar with Ultramarines. It told a nice condensed story and they were good at building up the tension but there were definitely some weaknesses and gripes.

The Good

The voice acting especially from Stamp and Pertwee was spot on and excellent. John Hurt as the Chaplain was very good too because he gives his character a sinister edge to his voice without going overboard and who can't love "BURN HERETIC!" as he releases the power of his croizius. BTW I am a relative noob to the fluff but I thought the Crozius was simply a power weapon. What weapon effect did he release on the Black Legion in that scene?

The battle scenes were generally well done. I liked the military precision of the SM when they fought in discpolined ranks and seeing how hardy they were with shots going into then, chain axes flying into shoulder plates and they were still fighting. Dug the bolter sound FX.

The story was simple and easy to follow however there were some weaknesses I'll get into.

Nice twist ending (though it was telegraphed and I saw it coming way before it happened)

Good character development for Proteus. All along I thought that he was going to be the weak link in the chain and turn to Chaos with his eagerness and headstrong character.

Loved the character design of the Chaplain. That skull helmet with all the runes was awesome.



The Bad

Chaos? Really? Don't you think we could have had more fun with the repelling of an Ork Waagh or having to recover a holy relic from Ork held territory. I think Chaos as a villain choice requires a little too much exposition and you really need to know the universe already to really uinderstand what is happening. I watched this with my wife and she was confused about what exactly are Chaos SM and what is the difference. Initially she thought they were facing zombies. Orks on the other hand are pretty easy to exlain and would have added a nice comedic touch to the constant grimdark. Hell, it could have been Necrons too. A simpler villain that stands out from the Ultramarines they are fighting. As it stood you really had fights between two different colored marines.

The character animation was a little off in some scenes especially when they were walking. It sometimes looked like their feet were not touching the ground and many of the fight scenes were repetitive. How many times does the demon at the end slam a different SM into the same pillar in the Reclusiarm? The same flaming brazier stood there and I was half expecting the demon to dunk one of the Marines into that brazier but instead we have the same motions but different marine in its clutches. A lot of the character movement was not as fluid as I would have liked.

Characters appearing out of nowhere. Especially apparent in that final fight with the demon. How many times did one of the random marines, including a moribund apothecary just step in to interupt the demon. The fight chorerogrpahy was very limited and dull.


The Ugly

"That tome is a warp gate - it can destroy Macragge." UGH. Really?! The old only we can stop the world from being destroyed gag? I'm sorry but one of the cool things about the 40k verse is how tiny everyone is in respect the the million world Imperium but these three guys are going to stop Macragge - not any other random million worlds of the Imperium - from being destroyed. Yuck. No.

Some of the animation was really ugly. In particular the doors opening when the Thunderhawk departs looked really bad, some of the closeups of the faces and especially the scene where the marine loses the back of his head is poorly animated.


Stupid Chaos SM. The whole charge like idiots into hails of bolter fire kind of flies in the face of what I imagined Chaos SM would fight like. These were not Khorne berserkers but Black Legion. And I get that they wanted the SM to feel like they had just escaped with their lives but that could have been done with long range fire from all angles. Why are they charging like morons into a prepared position with automatic weapons? These are supposed to be as highly trained warriors as the SM brethren instead they were acting like Orks with riod rage. Silly.




Overall I liked the movie for what it was. It was really cool to see 40k on the screen. It was cool to see the action and the dialogue but there is so much potential here that I want to see more of and I hope to follow up with hopefully a bigger budget and larger story.

Merkmon,
I'm sorry you didn't like it. A quick thing: Abnett loves to have things react badly to Chaos. His charactors will get sick just by hearing one of the names of the gods. The banner reaction was a similar thing.

Stravo,
Croziuses are power weapons. The blue aura of death was made up for the movie. It's not a bad thing, but it's not prior fluff.
Yes, the Chaos Marines were silly.

I certainly hope this takes place with Cato as the chapter master, as I reeeeally think that that would redeem the Ultras.

Hope the sequels much better.

Grotzooka wrote:Croziuses are power weapons. The blue aura of death was made up for the movie. It's not a bad thing, but it's not prior fluff.

yeah, what was that???

it was pretty cool though.


new Chaplain ability in 6th?

Grey Templar wrote:

Grotzooka wrote:Croziuses are power weapons. The blue aura of death was made up for the movie. It's not a bad thing, but it's not prior fluff.

yeah, what was that???

it was pretty cool though.


new Chaplain ability in 6th?

In the Grim Darkness of the Far Future... Neutron bombs work as advertised?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_bomb

I have to say I am extremely dissapointed with this movie.The CGI was very average to the point where I felt I was watching a cut scene from a game and not a CGI motion picture. I had visions of glorious vistas of Maccrage amid a cast of thousands to illustrate the insignifigance of man in the 40K universe. Instead I got alot of walking through sand, rock and bog standard ruins…
The story was woeful. Im not sure exactly what influence Dan Abnett had on this movie but I just cant belive he was responsible for the shalllow plodding piece of tripe we ended up with. The banter between the marines in particular was terrible as they seemed to just squabble and demean each other rather than show the bonds of respect and brotherhood I would expect from Astartes.
I do understand the production company didnt have huge gobs of cash to throw at this movie but I would still expect at least a half decent plot to go with it.
At the end of the day the jokes on me as GW have extracted another pound of flesh from my wallet but I do mourn for what could have been here.

Codex pictures /= GW

For the 1000th time.

GW and codex are not the same company.. yep we all know this. But GW gave the go ahead for this movie, this total lack of quality control seems to be the norm for GW.
We are told that GW gets daily approachs(SP?) from the big hollywood companies, having seen this movie i feel this is a blatent lie, if it were true then over the space of 25 years we would have had a decent movie.

in short this movie is terrible, im not a fanboy but i am a fan of 40k AND films, this is a shoddy take on 40k and a shoddy film.

I watched it just after Christmas, overall opinion, it's good but not fantastic, the animation reminded me of Max Steel, story wise it felt like the pilot episode to a series, anybody else?

I'm surprised at how easy some of yall are on this movie. To the extent that I question we watched the same movie. The voice acting was excellent. Past that there is not one memorable thing about this thing. The story was less than stellar, the animation was so horrible I was left wondering if it was some sort of substandard game trailer and fluff-wise...good lord if it weren't for the fact that Dan Abnett was attached to this film I would wounder if anyone was actually aware of previous 40k fluff at all.