Anyone see this, it has a nice grim-dark 40k feel. If anyone did any recomendations for similar movies?

I've seen it and unfortunately it sucks. Especially considering the diverse source material the producers of the film had access to, they could have done the MC universe better justice than that.

However I still hold on to the hope that someday we will see a Warhammer 40.000 movie (or preferably an epic trilogy), that wont be half bad.

Unrequested Remark: After the opening sequence, this (MT) movies declines into "noneworthyness"

Similiar movies:
Under the assumption that "everyting as good as MutantChronicles" is welcome, I would like to recommend "Casshern"

It features
- a hive like mega-city as the "backdrop"
- a regime you could find on any given imperial world (if you add "Hail the Emporer!")
- a lot of warmachines that are similiar in style
- a very "grimdark" ambience

Hello!

I wrote a review of the movie on my blog.

altdorfer.blogspot.com/2008/12/fal-review-mutant-chronicles-movie.html

Summing it up: it's an ok flick. Nothing spectacular.

/Magnus

MagnusSeter said:

Hi Magnus! I think I've run into you at rollspel.nu once or twice! (im a Swede too )

To cite your review:

At the same time it ignores a lot of the powerful imagery and plot mechanics present in the source material. The Dark Legion is only represented by some kind of machine and a bunch of identical mutants, and the diversity of the legion's threat to mankind, both from within and without, is ignored. It also feels like a wasted opportunity not to use the first encounter background from the game, and instead invent a much weaker plot vehicle to move the film along.

This was what made the movie a total turn-off. The Dark Legion in MC was to me equally diverse as for example the Chaos Legions of WH40K. They could have included so much more about the Dark Legion in the movie, but instead they opted for an army of identical necromutants with spikes for hands. It's like they tried their best to make the enemies as boring as possible for the viewer.

Now to be perfectly honest, I was never a big fan of the Mutant Chronicles RPG, but if there is one thing I've always thought its that MC could be used to make a pretty good sci-fi flick (with its huge concentration on big guns with the mandatory rotary barrels and even bigger shoulderpads), something in the line of Starship Troopers but with hellish daemons and undead trench soldiers instead of Tyra... *cough* "Arachnids".

But sadly the result was much less satisfying. Then again the film didnt convey a very "high-budget" feeling. Perhaps if the filmmakers had a bigger budget we could've seen more of the horrors of The Dark Legion...

The visuals of the ship in Event Horizon , especially the engines, had a WH40K feel to them.

Hell, Event Horizon could be a part of 40k canon (in the same way as Jack Yeovil (Kim Newman)'s Dark Future trilogy* are sorta part of 40k canon)- mankind's first experiments with warp travel, sans Gellar Fields.

In terms of other film recommendations: Dune (the one directed by David Lynch) is my major inspiration for generals feels for the setting (it helps that it was one of the major sources of inspiration for Rick Priestley et al ), especially at 'high society' levels (like Rogue Traders, Planetary governors and Inquisitors). Especially the sequences on Giedi Prime (although the opening sequence on Kaitain, and the Atreides training room on Caladan also work wonderfully).

*If you haven't read these, try and get hold of them: Krokodil Tears, Demon Download, Route 666, Comeback Tour. I know, that's 4 books, but one is arguably only a novella. You can sort of think of them as an extreme prologue to 40k (sort of cusp of Dark Age of Technology).

LOL, I just saw Mutant Chronicals. I'm not sure why I bothered to keep watching, as it got bad fast and kept getting worse. I was cooking dinner and the TV was in the kitchen, and all the other channels were showing Michael Jackson being dead 24x7.

The best bad moment for me was when the group of "heroes" that existed to get whittled down was down to two survivors. Anyways, we get a lot of shots of just those two, taking the "bomb" to the center of the machine. Then they walk to the last set piece battle, and a third survivor is there, as if she had been with themall along. WTF?

Admittedly, most of the orginal group of 20 gets killed off screen (so why bother with all 20 to begin with?). Anyway, if you're stuck seeing this, watch for hero A meeting hero B who somehow survived and then five minutes later, hero C is helping out, no comment.

SyFy changed their name to get away from being associated with science fiction. It's working.

When did they show it? Is it showing again?

Why are they calling it a Sc-Fi Original? Anyway, I loved it only because of what it inspired. Is it a good movie? Not really, but it was a visual treat for me (I love steampunk), so I enjoyed it.

TalkingMuffin said:

Because sci-Fi bought the film. All "sci-fi originals" are just movies that Sci-Fi bought for a hell of a lot more money then they were worth. They aren't movies that Sci-Fi sat out to make, they are movies that the producers take to them in the hopes of getting six figures for a movie that cost 5 figured or, in some cases, in an attempt to recuperate incredible losses.

But Transformers was "good" (no insult to those that liked it). Hollywood, more often than not, makes crap. But, we all know that.

I liked the MC movie.

Ok, it's low budget film, but I liked the characters and the spirit of the world.

After watching the movie I searched for the RPG and found a free site with the core rules, all sourcebooks an many adventures.

And the adventures are fitting perfectly for Warhammer 40k RPG

atm I prepare the "Venusian Apocalypse" for my players ]

Odium said:

Yeah some of the adventures are actually quite fitting for Dark Heresy (although some of them might be better suited for Space Marines rather than acolytes). We've actually played Operation: Kirkwood as a Dark Heresy adventure. (although im not sure that it was released for Mutant Chronicles or the previous swedish incarnation called Mutant R*Y*M*D, but the settings of the two games are pretty much the same anyway).

Agent.0.Fortune said:

I was dissapointed...

It was a pretty good movie for Scifi channel, don't get me wrong, but they had some pretty decent actors in there; Ron Pearlman, Thomas Jane, Devon Aoki and a cameo by John Malkovich.

I have seen good writers do a lot more with alot less.

This had great visual effects and good acting for a film of this budget. The dialogue was reasonably well written, but the story was poor. It fell into the whole disaster movie formula where a character must sacrifice themselves to get the group past each obstacle.

Also, there were some characters I would have liked to see instead of the ones they used...other characters used better...

Then, yeah, the Mutants themselves were fairly lame...I was expecting some Necro-Mutants and maybe a big Ezoghoul at the end.

It was reasonably well done, but for the talent, background and effects they had going for them, it seems very dissapointing that the story was their weak link.

BlkSabbath74 said:

See, this is what I think led to the bad result. They seem to have spent most of the budget on these really famous actors. I mean Ron Pearlman, Thomas Jane, Devon Aoki and John friggin Malkovich? Sure, one of them might have accepted a pretty low paycheck just because they liked the idea of the movie, bu all of them? Not bloddy likely. In my own, not so humble opinion I think the director and producers should have used these parts of the budget to incorporate more visuals that the audience expected to see from a Mutant Chronicles movie (like something more than the same stupid mutant monsters with spikes for arms) and spent som time scouting out fresh and rather unknown acting talents instead.

They way this movie comes off is like this:

"Great now we have the famous actor John Malkovich in the bag as well!"

"Okay, fine, let's go do some CGI. I was thinking of maybe having this scene where a Praetorian Stalker bursts its way through a brick wall spearheading a legion of necro-mutants"

"Err... We can't do that, we dont have enough money left. *whispers* Mr Malkovich wanted a suite at the Hiltons during the shoot, and we couldn't really turn him down. He's famous you know."

"Aww, shucks. Then I guess we have to re-use that stupid spiked arm mutant thingie for THE ENTIRE MOVIE AND BORE THE AUDIENCE TO DEATH..."

I can't beleive im actually saying this, but here's a movie that could really benefit from MORE spiffy CGI effects and LESS actors (at least less expensive high-end actors like John Malkovich, who barely got to say any lines in the movie at all anyway)