Ultramarines: The Movie review

This Saturday Theleadhead and I watched the Ultramarine movie at his place. I really wanted to love this movie when I heard about it. The inner nerd was ready to see the marines kick some heritic butt. After reading some of the other reviews online, I ended up walking in with a healthy set of low expectations. I wasn't disappointed, but that was mostly due to me expecting it to be terrible. The movie wasn't terrible, but by no means did I think it was great either. For a direct to DVD low budget movie about a table top miniatures game, it did fairly well...




   **NON Spoiler Review**

   The screen play was well written and the story wasn't bad. Where the movie fell apart was the character animations and sound effects. I want to be clear that I am not knocking the quality of the CGI, I am knocking the way the marines (and other things) moved. It was unnatural and stiff, when it didn't need to be. I didn't expect the quality of CGI to be more than it was due to the budget the movie had. In fact I think for the budget the CGI looked great.

   The sounds effects were bad enough that they prevented me form being able to get into the movie. It was very disappointing. The story was good enough to where I wont say it was a waste of my time, and I have seen WAY worse. In the end I will more than likely buy a copy so GW will make another. I am certain with more budget and time most of the things I disliked would have been a non issue. The action is slow to build and you can tell they cut a lot of scenes as there are just things missing or added that are not explained.

** Spoiler Review **



The action is painfully slow to build, and when it does kick in, the marines don't seem to able to take any damage. What worse is they have an apothecary that basically doesn't do very much. The bolter visuals and sounds effects are poor at best. There are several walking scenes that don't add much story wise and they don't take the opportunity to do anything visually stunning either. It really felt like cheap filler to make the movie longer. To that point the movie felt very short as well.

The Chaplain uses his Crozius in a way that is very odd... Its not even close to what its supposed to do. I was waiting from the moment I saw the chaplain for him to tear things to shreds in close combat. This you DO NOT get to see. It was a big let down. The Chaplains death mask is very nice looking however. The huge combat scene as they are leaving the planet is anticlimactic and not what I was hoping it would be. I wont be too nit picky, but certain things could have been done better, even on a low budget. The demon prince was cool and the whole premise of why the marines were brought there was great. They managed to keep up the fluff with only a few mistakes (most notable is the chaplains Crozius thing) I think with more money and more time, the next one will be great.


I guess in the end I would give it a 6/10.