Someone on these boards was mentioning the movie "Priest" the other day. I haven't seen it, I must admit. But the poster was pointing out how it seemed to have many 40k features about it. I have to say, I'm intrigued by this idea, and I wonder if anyone else has started to see signs of concepts and tropes from 40k penetrate wider popular culture?

It's something of a game among 40k fans to look for signs of how popular culture (and sci fi in particular) has influenced 40k. The influences aren't hard to spot: Dune, the Foundation novels, any military archetype from human history... the list is virtually endless. 40k is a magpie setting, gleefully and shamelessly stealing concepts from whatever popular work of fiction is available.

But what I think we might be starting to see is the balance tipping in the other direction: signs that memes from 40k are starting to influence writers in other mediums.

Take videogames for a second: can anyone really doubt that Gears of War is basically a conceptual rip off of 40k? Huge, musclebound super-soldiers armed with chainsaw bayonets fighting an army of genetically tampered aliens. Er...that's the battle for Maccarage, isn't it?

I do think that despite their geeky reputation (or perhaps even because of it) concepts that appear in tabletop and roleplaying games make it into wider culture, often in surprising forms. Look at the (tedious) glut of vampire movies over the past few years. OK, vampires are a perennial cinematic favourite, but the specific form they've taken recently (angsty, clannish, sexy vampires, with their own societies and culture, invariably fighting werewolves) seems awfully familiar to me as a roleplayer. Twilight and Underworld clearly owe a huge debt to Vampire: The Masquerade.

And when you think about it, this does make a kind of sense. Successful "creatives" (writers, directors etc) are often highly imaginative geeks - exactly the sort of people drawn to RPGs. I would be willing to put money on a lot of the younger members of the current crop of Hollywood screenwriters and directors have huge collections of RPGs secreted away somewhere. Maybe even 40k.

And perhaps I'm going mad, or reading too much into this stuff (I do that) but I think I'm starting to see 40k imagery seep into wider culture. Movies like "Sucker Punch," "Mutant Chronicles" and "Priest" DO seem to have a suspiciously 40k "look" and "feel" to them, even if they're set in totally different universes. AM I going mad here..or has anyone else seen this?

Art influences art. It wouldn't surprise me in the least - especially now that 40k has become more popular ... for better or for worse*. Just as the creative people behind the very first edition of 40k have let themselves be inspired by popular media, I have no doubt that other people will in turn get inspired by 40k simply because it has now attracted a wider audience and is more prevalent in modern day culture. In part this is because people have grown up with Warhammer and still remember it, and in part it is because GW has been working hard to appeal to even larger demographics. Added to this come a host of books and computer games, and the latter in particular (the MMO as well as the Space Marine game) are drawing a lot of attention in the internets. Whereas it may have been just a basement hobby yesterday, today's generation simply know what Wh40k is. Even if they may not be aware of its roots (I still nerdrage about people thinking that Relic made up the Sororitas just for the DoW expansion).

*: As franchises grow, they seem to have the ugly quality to aim for the lowest common denominator to attract new customers, potentially sacrificing what made them great in the first place. Wh40k has changed a lot over the past years, too, and currently seems to imitate Hollywood Michael Bay movies. "Epic" is suffering from a massive inflation these days.

In general I tend to find most things as conidences. When they make it obivous sure, but to be fair not all of these idea's are exactly new. Vampires were depicted as sexy long before White Wolf got ahold of them. And the idea of supernatural monsters not getting along isn't new with WW. On the other hand something like Gears of Wars could be inspiried by 40K, or it could not. It's not like the idea's that populate 40K or Gears of War are fresh idea's.

If you look at any medium you can draw comparisons and say this was inpsired by that. So I'm sure if we look around we can find plenty to say "Yeah that has 40K written all over it" with out it even really being true.

For instance while you could say that Underworld and Twilight owe a debt to WoD it could be just that WoD made it more likely that people would watch it. I tend to think that some of the creative people out there really don't need to borrow idea's from other sources (though nothing is wrong with that) and thus don't spend to much time trying to figure out if they got the idea from somewhere else.

Sometimes you'll be amazed at what inpsires someone and while two things may look similar may come from two completely different wellsprings of inspiration.

If there is one setting that W40K is magpie-stealing from, it must be H.P. Lovecraft.

Nameless horrors in an uncaring universe, mankind struggling with entities which they cannot understand, dark tomes corrupting the readers, even the extent to which the threats are explained - namely: only vaguely, leaving most to the imagination.

After Lovecraft comes Dune

The Laughing God said:

After Lovecraft comes Dune

I'd also add in an honourable mention to Clive Barker when it comes to detailing the terrible forces from beyond human imagining... and our all too terrible human desires which cause them to manifest. 40K like a lot of fiction tends to be a bit of a amalgam of influences over time, it'll be interesting to see what becomes of its influences over time as GW has dropped the ball a couple of times in regards to making it mainstream- thinking mostly the licencing gone awry in such games like WOW and Starcraft.

Lightbringer said:

Yes, I can and do doubt that 40k had much, if any, influence on Gears of War.

The concept of big burly soldier types ("marines," if you will, though they may not be officially connected to the US Army) fighting in outer space or on other planets (so, "space marines") is not a concept that's unique to 40k. I doubt that 40k was the first to come up with that particular idea, so it seems silly to give them credit over any other setting involving human space soliders. More to the point, I don't recall any references to genetic engineering or even performance enhancing drugs in Gears of War, so it seems to me that the cogs in Gears have about as much in common with 40k space marines as any solider in any war story ever told. The fact that these men are unrealistically ripped is a stylistic choice on the part of the design team, and not a terribly original one in video games OR war stories, either. In fact, with the predominance of southern accents and general redneckery, the marines in Gears seem to have more in common with Starcraft than with 40k, in my perview. Not that I'm claiming that as a substitute for 40k in your proposal, of course.

Space marines use chainswords, yes, and I agree the lancer bayonet is very similar to that concept. I would be willing to concede that one detail may have been taken from 40k, but I also wouldn't be surprised if someone else could cite a sci-fi source that used modified chainsaws as weapons and predated 40k.

Lightbringer said:

I think what you're seeing is gothic archetechture and imagery in a number of recent "dark action" movies. Gothic imagery heavily influenced 40k and seems to have heavily influced the movies you name (and Gears of War, too), but gothic imagery and architechture has been a staple of dark, moody storytelling since long before 40k came along. It's possible that the writers of these movies were inspired by 40k, but it's also possible (and IMHO more likely) that they were inspired by the untold hundreds of movies from the past that used similar imagery to evoke this sort of atmosphere, just as 40k did for its setting.

I'm not saying you're completely wrong, I'm just saying don't get too excited. 40k may have been your first introduction to this kind of gritty, dark setting, but it's not the first one ever. It was itself inspired by many sources that were part of the mainstream back in their time.

Steve-O said:

Starship Troopers comes to mind. The original novel from '59 had power armour for the Mobile Infantry.

By the way, I've just seen the 1989 sci-fi movie "Moon Trap" - click

14.000 year old monolith-shaped base with green lights on the moon, egyptian-style architecture and hieroglyphs, killer robots wearing human skin ... For some reason I couldn't resist to think of Necrons.

As an aside I tend to think of RPG's and gaming in general as not likely sources for a lot of these movies. The gaming market is so small in comparison to other forms of influence that it's rare that I think that something I see in a movie or game first got it's start somewhere else. The simple truth is that most RPG's were inspired by other things so it's not like the source material for say Vampire couldn't have inspired someone writing the script for Underworld.

Taking a look at some of the movie examples given.

Priest was based on a Korean comic of the same name. The author of said comic said he drew inspiration from a video game called Blood.

Sucker Punch on the other hand has a lot of things in it but most of that is easily seen in anime and the idea that if you stick hot girls in interesting outfits and give them a sword nerds will buy a movie ticket. The directory of the movie says it's mostly Alice in Wonderland with machine guns.

And well Mutant Chronicles is based on an rpg. The rpg itself could have been inspired by 40K but it's themes are pretty common themes to start with so who knows.

I think the statement about dark gritty gothic themes is more accurate.

Mutant Chronicles was certainly influenced by 40k. As a 40k player from when it first came out, it definitely seemed to try to ride 40k's popularity. Not that they didn't put their own unique ideas into it, but the designers of Mutant Chronicles had to be very aware of 40k.

deinol said:

Riding their popularity is not the same as using 40K as your inspiration. Much in the same way that being aware of 40K at the time doesn't mean that they borrowed from it.

Steve-O said:

More likely the British Royal Marine, as the game originated in the UK. Especially given the elite status of the Space Marines.

Kael said:

"And so did the Dark Legion descend upon us, howling with lust for destruction and corruption. Snarling and barking, the degenerate wolves bared their teeth, smelling the blood and carnage that lay ahead. Hordes of Heretics were whipped into an evil frenzy by the Dark Apostles and they marched under cursed banners towards the light of our Brotherhood."

The Dark Legion always sounded a lot like Chaos to me. Flipping through the book, it definitely feels influenced by 40k to me. Or it could be that they were merely influenced by the same things. I'm not saying that it's a copy, just that there are hints of influence. And a definite awareness of 40k and its effect on the sci-fi RPG community. There's probably quite a bit of Rifts influence as well. And there's nothing wrong with that. Space Hulk is clearly inspired by the Alien/Aliens movies as well. Warhammer Fantasy has roots in Tolkien. Early Warcraft took inspiration from Warhammer too. It's hard to draw hard lines, but cultural media has influences on other media of its time. Even subconsciously to the creator.

Early WarCraft WAS Warhammer. But then the agreement with Games Workshop didn't work out, and Blizzard needed to re-brand.

I bet someone at GW have regretted that business decision...

Same for Starcraft and 40k

Epic mistake here, for sure.

deinol said:

I see stronger paralles with Tolken and Christan based writtings with that than with 40K. Dark Legions and Heretics marching against the light of a Brotherhood has more Christian overtones for me than anything else. I'm not saying that it can't possibly be the case that 40K inspired or influenced the work. But unless it's obivous (as is the case with say Starcraft and Warcraft) I tend to just think of them as concidence. It's kinda like when the anime Basalisk came out. And a lot of people would go on and on and on about how it was inspired by Ninja Scroll or that it ripped off Ninja Scroll despite the fact that Basalisk is an adapation of a book written during the 1950's.

Theres some blending to be sure. All things considered Rifts and Shadowrun look a lot alike for instance. I'm just not one to jump up and say that 40K is mainstream or that it's a mainstream influence now. I meet more non gamers who know what the D&D mini's are and Hero Clix but have no idea about 40K. And being that there is nothing new under the sun (and the popularity of dark gothic in current movies in general) and I'm just not swayed to think that the 40K line is all that big of an influence.

Blah double post

Generally any sci-fi, fantasy, or horror trope found in any modern production can be traced back to writers from before 1960. The 1920's - 1960's in particular is a hot bed for brilliant sci-fi that has been plundered mercilessly by modern writers because they know few people have read any of these works.

E.E. "Doc" Smith and Robert Heinlein both have stories involving heavily armored troopers, genetically engineered in the former power armored in the later. "Space Marines" are nothing new or original.

When I look at 40K and modern movies and TV all I see is a lot of older and better sci-fi, fantasy, and horror from the early twentieth century that has been mangled and shoehorned together.

My Two Thrones,

WH40K has influenced and been influenced by many sources over the years. As the writers for Games workshop and FFG have interpreted the setting, they have drawn from current and past films, novels and comics, as well as other RPG's to fill in the largest gaming universe, that has everything in it, monsters, demons, aliens, super soldiers, billions of people, and all manor of tech. As for Mutant Chronicles drawing from 40K it used to have a table top RPG itself that was written in the early 80's.

To respond to the OP: the answer is yes.

Have a look and tell me this isn't Rogue Trader:

www.youtube.com/watch

Alex

ak-73 said:

Uhm, was that Robin Williams as a Guardsman?

*shudder*

I feel very ... conflicted about that video

ak-73 said:

Or this...

Darth Smeg said:

More Robbie Williams than Robin Williams.

Luthor Harkon said:

Surely it has a Warhammer 40k nuance but also too many "japanese animation" excesses. I don't like them.

As for the original question, as others have observed, I think that the resemblances here and there movies and, at greater length, pop culture seem to pay to Warhammer 40k are just coincidences: this is what audience looks for and this is what productions give them.

Warhammer just came first and reached both a better development and a more consistent setting/universe: though, as these things go, it did sponge on many previous sources and systematize them in a consistent way.

I think this is what makes the Warhammer universe so appealing: it is believable, it is solid, it is verisimilar (as a fictitious setting); the "grimdark" thing is just a frill that helps create the flavour.

ak-73 said:

That's one way for a Rogue Trader to land on a planet and show to all he's so badass, the planet's leaders better trade with him rather than some less crowd pleasing mook.

Darth Smeg said:

Just to clarify: it's not my type of music, I just came across the video while zapping through TV and thought "Hey, that looks familiar."

Alex