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GT - oops, had a brain fart and mentally swapped the BB and SC tags around in my brain.

/self flagellates for that mistake.

Terminus - "traditional" animation a) costs more - as it physically takes longer and b) doesnt really exist. Most "hand drawn" has a few fraes with a computer guessing the intervening frames and filling in. Makes it quicker but can look...awkward.

For what they wanted to do CGI makes the most sense - mainly as they now have a lot of "stock" models that they can reuse and improve on for the next one. Very difficult to do with cell animation.

GW cant really afford a movie. Best they could do was essentially licence it out fora pittance and provide studio help (watch the extras for this ) to Codex to help make sure the fluff was right.

As has been pointed out everything is explainable "in universe" with the exception of the CHaplains power. Maybe the thought of trying to scream Litanies of Hate would be too much for the actors

i came up with an explaination for the Cruxious.


it's an old artifact from shortly after the Heresy and contains not only the power field in all power weapons, but also is able to let loose a powerful burst of radiation. the power burst drains the Cruxious of power for an amount of time before the powercells can regenerate.

I have to say after watching the movie i was thouroughly satisfied with it. It being the first ever attempt at a Warhammer 40k movie along with a very limited budget it actually turned out better then i thought it would. The script, written by Mr. Dan Abnett was great and he really helped move the story along with the tension buiilding moment that started almost from the immidiate get go and he captured the (in my opinion) religious fanaticism that the Space Marines have in regards to almost everything.

The only things i would change in the movie would have to be more action! Suspense is all well and good but with only one big battle between the Marines and Chaos Marines it left me wishing that there was alot more fighting in the movie itself. Other then that, forget the Marines for the next movie, the need to do the IMPERiAL GUARD! Better weapons such as the lasgun (according to the Commissars anyways ), Tanks and i feel would personality to the characters.

In order to better asses the impact the movie had had on the community, an extensive survey has been created. The idea is for as many people as possible who have watched the movie to fill it in and a thorough statistical analysis will then be performed on the collected data. The results should give a pretty solid impression of how people reacted to the movie and why. The information could also prove useful in order to improve any next W40k movies, if there will be any.

More information here:
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/340985.page#2348136

I'm just concerned that they'll only do Space Marine-focused movies. Thats not fun to watch.

Hilarious comic, Curis. I watched the film and thought it was absolute pants! Some concise points, comparing these to actual good action films:

Piss-poor animation all through, but I realise they were on a budget. I will mention it where it affected other things.

Badly paced, took far too long to get off the ground without building any tension (Predator, for example, had tension - we were shown scary things afoot before shooting started)

Script didn't really work, things were badly explained, the characters lacked fire and whined and hesitated in a completely unfitting manner. Dan Abnett is a very competent pulp novelist - maybe they should have hired a professional screenwriter instead though.

Characters were unimpressive, I got no impression that these were formidable special forces/champions of mankind. They were a bunch of scrubs. No tactics or training on display, little fanaticism, slow to react, bantered amongst themselves in a way that made it plain they had no idea about what the mission was or why they should be in the army! Animation hurt here - there was no sense of scale of the Space Marines, and there was no sense of physical power in their movements. Predator or 300 or any slickly made action film, the central badasses look hard. They have powerful physiques, they move and talk with energy, they are shown acting in a militarily professional manner. The Space Marines just ambled around, talking very slowly, showing very little heat and no military movement whatsoever.

I know the film was aimed at people who knew the background already. But in a very few lines they could have explained that SM are rigorously selected, they're the elite of a huge Empire, the huge empire is full of war and problems, Chaos SM are traitors who worship dark gods. As is they spouted some super-vague guff about SM being hard and there being lots of war. When Chaos showed up, any non-WH40k player would have been mystified! "So who are these guys?" "Why have they sacrificed all those other soldiers?" "What are a load of demons and devil-worshippers doing in the far future?". Any good action film has to give you some idea of what the bad guys are trying to destroy and what the good guys are fighting to preserve. It only takes about 2 minutes FFS! Could have used some of that walking round the desert time . . .

Final complaint, poor sense of the universe' scale and what was going on. Why are some marines off investigating a desert world on foot? They had a massive warship that was only carrying a dropship, 12 men and a small flying car? Why should I care? You need to give the audience a little more than "it's a relic, people have lost contact". Example, Event Horizon, a great horror film and in some sense a '40k prequel': the rescue mission is built up. You get an explanation of what's at stake, there's obviously something scary going on, the people who go in are aware that things are important and act accordingly. As was, first things were just dull, then some random faceless motivation-less enemies were fighting the motivation-less good guys!

Wow, that turned into a bit of a rant. My point is, I started the film with low explanations and they were fully met. Animation/budget only explains part of the problem, I cannot imagine how they thought the pacing/structure, characters, enemies, combat, or anything in the film were up to snuff.

I thought it was bad for so many reasons.

Several > 1 Ton marines walking over wooden bridges.

The English writing should have been in Gothic

There were only 12 marines onboard the whole Strike Cruiser?

Space Marines were dropped so easily by Bolters

A Spacemarine hitting a wall and getting knocked out

(nit picking) I don't even know if a Daemon could survive being on a ship with if its Geller Field was running

I dont know what you guys are complaining about, i geuss you were expecting Avatar. The movie was good, i enjoyed it.
The only thing wrong with it was the bolters killin the marines so fast like obsidian said. On to the other points, you dont know what kind of wood that was, or if it even was wood, its a random planet, its the 41'st milenium im pretty sure they found diffrent kinds of wood by now. Did you guys see the whole strike cruiser? No. I was expecting more... epicness and a large battle, but it was still a good movie

Uh...

First of all....Space Marines have rhinos. No reason for them to be wandering across a desert to develop characters.

Second, and worst of all - every fluff reference to Space Marines has them with deep, bass, growling gravelly voices - not prissy british voices. Anyone ever seen the movie "Underworld?" The huge lycan black guy with the ridiculously low voice - that's what I expect Space Marines to sound like.

Yea, guys with a space ship, and a drop ship, and a landspeeder, land away from their objective and walk there?

Uh what?

Totally agree with the rhino comment.

I've watched it twice. I thought it was good. Not great, but good.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

eZieweZie wrote:In order to better asses the impact the movie had had on the community, an extensive survey has been created. The idea is for as many people as possible who have watched the movie to fill it in and a thorough statistical analysis will then be performed on the collected data. The results should give a pretty solid impression of how people reacted to the movie and why. The information could also prove useful in order to improve any next W40k movies, if there will be any.

More information here:
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/340985.page#2348136

Good survey. I hope they take this into account. It was hard choosing who should be the protagonist, but I definitely wanna see some nids! Maybe a temporary alliance between two races?

I say the movie is ok because it didn't leave me with the same feeling movie adaptations of video games do. You know the feeling of "DID THE DIRECTOR EVEN PLAY (insert every video game that has a movie here)!?"

so emperor gave that book when IF Chapter was founded?
while being in golden throne?

Devastator wrote:so emperor gave that book when IF Chapter was founded?
fail

What failed?

legion vs chapter?
emperor was 20 years in throne before chapters were even created

I was so disappointed by the film.
Here is a link to a review. It's an honest review that doesn't make excuses and holds it up to the standards set by other films.

http://filmstodatemysisterby.blogspot.com/2011/01/obsequiousmelon-went-to-see-smurfs.html#more

What I want to see is a Imperial guard based movie with space marines. Like how would guardsmen work with space marines in the first place? I mean certainly you would have to design special trench systems that could work for both. Also being a regular human and getting your ass kicked constantly but still standing just makes good stuff.

Dashofpepper wrote:Second, and worst of all - every fluff reference to Space Marines has them with deep, bass, growling gravelly voices - not prissy british voices. Anyone ever seen the movie "Underworld?" The huge lycan black guy with the ridiculously low voice - that's what I expect Space Marines to sound like.

Come on, the new guys just haven't hit Pubes yet

besides, if they made them all deep and gravely we might have had trouble understanding them.




as to IG with SMs: definitly coming eventually. they probably will have some in the Sequel.

I hope this was STRIKE CRUISER SHORT BUS, because their commander, and everyone on board really, was a complete idiot. Probably why there were only 12 marines, 1 thunderhawk and a landspeeder.

I believe the Ultramarines movie accurately depicted the new Chaos codex fairly well. I mean it took like 50 chaos marines to kill 2 Ultramarines before the Thunderhawk came to save the Ultramarine from a battle they were winning!


Must have been over a thousand chaos marines to take out a single company of Imperial fists.

Devastator wrote:so emperor gave that book when IF Chapter was founded?
while being in golden throne?

As Imperial Fists were an orignal legion I think they'd still consider the original founding to be theirs rather than when they were reorganised into Imperial Fists, Black Templers, and Crimson Fists

I personally prefer those smaller live action movies they mad. Sure they look pretty bad nowadays, but damn it felt more like 40k. The Dark Angels/Inquisitor one was awesome.

I saw that DA one, it felt too stiff to be 40k. that or the French are just horrible actors. and the English translation was up.


and BTW, those are unsanctioned Fan movies.

Hehehehe, I saw that one on your page a couple days ago xD

What pissed me off the most about the plot was the millenia old chaos warriors falling like leaves D=

Everything else was covered up I think, in the comic pages.

They could have done a better job on it, i found the plot really poor and not only this but I was expecting something way better. It was good to see that tho.

Honestly, I expected a better plot from Abnett, but I'm not sure about the timeline's he was given, and how that interacted with his ilness and the making of Prospero Burns.

What I've heard, but I can't confirm it, is that Codex took one year to make the movie, and that alone explains, for example, the "all MK7 helmet" (I am Space Wolf Spartacus!), while other movies, say, How to Train your Dragon took 2 years in the making if we only counts voice acting and animating.

All told, it wasn't terrible. There were certainly issues but, despite my expectations, not once did I fly into a foaming nerd rage, gnaking on furniture and cursing exsitence itself for being here so such a crap movie could be made. Unlike the Resident Evil movies, where I wanted to kill people upon viewing.

The problem, bar animation straight from 1990' kidshow ReBoot -

Yes. Anyway. The problem for me was the schziphrenic nature of the Chaos forces. One part has a subtle plot to allow the Ultramarine squad into the fortress, aquire the book and a possesed Captain, and get out so the Daemon can make his way to McCragge and wreak some havoc, maybe possesing a Primarch corpse to walk around in. I admit, I'm somewhat guessing, but that's the only reason i can think of for why the Ultras were allowed to walk in and out. And by subtle, I am talking 40K subtle.

On the other hand, most of the Black Legion were apparently Khorne worshippers who have forgotten they have guns. And there armour has turned to tissue. In my opinion, the movie would have been a lot more interesting if the enemy was essentially a Black Legion counter part squad led by a Aspiring Champion, with a little character to them. It would have made the battle much more engaging and showed that Chaos are as good as Ultramarines. As it stands I have no idea what was going on. Throwing away a bunch of over mutated dribbling idiots to futher the plan, maybe?

On the whole, though, despite the occasional screw up of details (a Captain and Apothacary leading a single, fresh squad? A Strike Cruiser apparently carrying said squad all alone with no other, veteran marines onboard?) I felt it captured a lot of the spirit of 40K. Maybe could have had a few more skulls.

Next time, I would like to see some lesser known forces involved though.

First time poster, long-time lurker... not so much into the wargames any more (too expensive!) but have been a fan of GW's books and RPGs for a couple of decades now. Currently spending my time with Dark Heresy.

Anyway, introductions aside, I thought the film was rather well done for what it was supposed to be, the budget it had, and its goal to explore the viability of similar projects in the future. Some aspects of it were a bit off from the fluff, sure, but this was not, I think, to the film's detriment. A squad of perfect Space Marines doing everything by the Codex perfectly the first time forever would have made them, basically, cookie-cutter, inhuman characters. I liked the fact that, for all the tactical doctrine and such that we are told in the fluff SMs go through, they are still, at heart, human, and subject to all the psychological foibles and frailties that that includes.

I think they could have spent a few minutes re-capping what the lead-in comic revealed, explaining why there were so few Marines aboard the cruiser and why they were just jumped-up Scouts, but I think they did a good job capturing the "first battle" attitude of the glory-hounds and wannabe-heroes. That said, I'm not sure additional dialog explaining how "this should really go" would have served any better to differentiate between this emergency, slap-dash deployment and an actual mission of a Space Marine squad. I did like a bit of the banter between the Apothecary and the Captain, which I thought did well to illustrate strict adherence to the Codex vs interpretations of the Codex.

The animation was a bit sketchy in places, sure. Then again, I read a quote that this film's budget was $12 million. 300, by comparison, had a budget of $60 million. Pixar's Toy Story 3 had a $200 million budget. Avatar had a budget of $237 million, and involved the creation of a new technology in order to film it. Animation ain't cheap, and it really is a matter of "you get what you pay for". Incidentally, budget figures for Relic's Dawn of War 2 are not available, but PlasticWax (the studio that created the DOW2 intro) reportedly spent 3 months on those, what, 4 minutes? We'd be waiting until 2012 if Codex had gone that route. Hmm... maybe the prophesied Mayan apocalypse is actually an Exterminatus event...

Overall, I really liked it. For being the first WH40K film, I think it did what it set out to do, which was make a movie for fans of the franchise. This is definitely a movie for fans. It skips past a lot of "filler" info on the universe and setting that, had this been made for a wider audience, would have bogged the film down in exposition. We all know what a Space Marine is. We all know what a boltgun is. We all know that, in the grim future of the 41st millenium, there is only war.

8 out of 10, would watch again. Plan on making my Dark Heresy group sit through it tonight, before they begin their investigation of the Cold Trade and the possibility of a new xeno threat in the Koronus Expanse...