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After reading about Ultramarines only deploying to battle with a few dudes, I checked out the film Ultramarines: A Warhammer 40,000 Movie to learn more about Ultramarines.

Ultramarines 2nd Company Captain Severus (who becomes a Knorne Daemon) only heads out to visit a world where an entire company of Imperial Fists bought the proverbial farm, with 13 guys and what appears to be an empty Battle Barge.

So, it's apparently standard operating procedure for Ultramarines to send a Captain and a Squad to investigate highly dangerous situations.

The more I think about it... the Codex is just old episodes of Star Trek.

Step 1. Send the Captain and some support staff to investigate first.

☆

A couple questions though.

1. Why does the the Chaplain's Crozius Arcanum shoot lasers?

2. Why is 2nd Company Captain Severus not mentioned elsewhere?

3. Do battle standards typically glow when daemons are around, or is that just an Ultramarines thing?

4. When someone asks if they have ever made a Warhammer 40k movie, should I lie and say, "Nope" ?

Good observations. However, the Ultramarines movie isn't some polished piece of cerebral handling of 40k background. Eisenhorn or Shira Calpurnia it is not.

But more importantly, it commits the cardinal sin of being boring and empty. What the hell?

A Warhammer 40'000 movie should not be boring. It could deal with Inquisitorial investigations or administrative rigmarole or Rogue Trader dynasty intrigues or whatever, but let's lower our expectations to dumb and fun action alone.

A 40k movie is fine if it's shallow and filled with speedy action and dumb fun. But this is a dumb movie that is empty and boring. Yawn.

Also it's probably not worth picking up background clues from it, but I like your sharp eye here.

1. Crozius Arcana do not shoot lasers, that's artistic license but let's assume this particular Crozius Arcanum is specially crafted by some artificer to do that. It's not beyond the realm of the reasonable.

2. As to Captain Severus of the 2nd Company, assume that he is a predecessor to Captain Cato Sicarius, in effect this must have happened a while back. Captain Severus is not mentioned elsewhere since he was invented for the Ultramarines movie, and apparently no writer thought it worthwhile to develop further with future references as far as I know. Most of 40k history is essentially empty of details between the Horus Heresy/the Scouring and late M41, and there exist no list of captains through the ages.

3. Battle standards do not typically glow when Daemons are around, but let's assume that this particular battle standard has some unusual blessed history that makes it glow in Daemonic vicinity. That kind of thing has plenty of precedent sprinkled throughout the background, even if there is no special connection to Ultramarines in this regard. Blood Angels would have been more of the usual suspects for their vendetta with Daemons.

4. Never lie. It's a 40k movie. Just don't recommend it if you found it to be bland. It's a surprisingly boring 40k movie, and shallow at that. Ultramarines the movie fails to meet low expectations indeed, and that's all there is to it. It could easily have been halfway decent with lots of more action. Hell, even C.S. Goto could have whipped up a more exciting draft, even while playing fast and loose with the background. Cutting down the runtime and concentrating on the action would have salvaged the movie without demanding more resources.

And as to small troop deployments of Astartes, assume these to be the results of game format or movie budget restrictions rather than reflecting how things usually work. Still, small kill teams do get deployed like that and a single Space Marine is effectively a walking tank, so let's not brush it all off. The Star Trek comparison is apt. Sure it could happen, especially under the pressure of limited resources and recent casaulties. Deploy what little is available, gun hard for the objective, and trust in the Emperor.

Cheers