As much as i like the whole space marines thingy generally, i thought the movie was CRAP. I got bored half-way but watched it all anyway just in case it got better. Nope..
The plot, look, and ambience of the video game space marine campaign is how they should of done it, that was a hundred times better. It was absolutely awful, i actually tried to watch it again recently, to see if it had improved over time, nope the opening scene watching them move was enough for me to eject the disc this time forever.
Nuff said. Joke aside, i mean so much potential yet you just do this. Come on the lore is so deep you can literaly swim in it yet all we see is smurfs. And this is only talking about the smurf part of it. I know plot is not deep etc and i can get yet if at least animations ambience etc was in place i would still love to see it. I hated it. Also a bonus for you tabletop lovers. I was just waiting for a chance to present itself for this link! http://imgur.com/a/mPqQE (sfw includes ultrasmurfs) Edited: Note: I m not the one who did it.
My personal opinion on this movie is mixed; By that there are aspects about the movie I liked and did not like. From a standpoint of the movie achieving the goal of being entertaining and something to watch while eating? A.K.A Popcorn flick? I'd have to say yes it does, just. Does the film fill the goals it set out to do? Yes, but only just. My standpoint on this film is that it's like someone going to an exam, completing it then passing it but not getting a grade or a result worth talking about. The movie was good enough to meet it's budget, was good enough to make Games Workshop happy and good enough to make it to DVD. But it wasn't good enough to be worth talking about let alone worth spending money to go see at the theatre. The pacing in the film is inconsistent, it seems to be an exceptionally long showreel of 'Check out our awesome environmental art talents and our camera angle skills!' with the story shoved into tiny parts between it, it had a good 40 minutes of pointless filler. The character bonds are forced rather than built, they seem to be just "established" between rookies, but though out the film they talk to each other like they just met and it sacrifices established lore (At that time, so can't use lore changing over the years as an excuse) for the purpose of a (never takes into account the source material) script. But the problem doesn't end there, you see other films I have watched had terrible scripts, such as Iron Sky, but the CGI, screenplay, camera angles, acting were fantastic; As well to the lesser extent the comedy wasn't so bad it made me want to tear off my ears. Unfortunately in the case of Space Marine, those factors couldn't make up for it. Seems as if there was zero communication between the writer, the artists and the person who put the whole thing together. The 3D animation was amateurish for the time. Because I don't know about you, but from my small knowledge of 3D animation, it seems to me the people working there came from the school of living under a rock for the past 10 years because the 3D animation looks like it was done back in 2000, before the existence of normal mapping, smooth shadows and lighting, ultra high poly animating and high resolution texturing which have been established norms for a good few years in 3D animated films by this point. To me it seemed more effort was placed in the environmental designs (which are fantastic) than the characters or facial animations and facial design. The whole thing wreaked of fresh armature 3D "artists" trained to do things in 3D but no real artists. I mean no offense or intent to mock towards the people who worked on the project, but this is unfortunately what I and many others observed and read in our minds from watching the film. The voice acting is equally as inconsistent as the pacing of the film. Some of the actors were fantastic while others made my ears bleed and made me face palm from the degree of cheese which they spread on the bread of the film's script. The Script itself wasn't as bad as some low budget films but the story it was made around was rather shallow, in fact bad scripts are to be expected in low budget as well as high budget (usually action) films alike, a lot of films these days seem to have scripts slapped onto them and seems like an unwanted necessary to convention afterthought to the explosions and violence they love to put all their budget into. It's a shame because usually films get judged entirely by the story. In this care the story and how it violated the lore. It is to be blunt, unpolished. Not to mention, being a child of the "Matt Ward allowed to do whatever he wanted" period of time in Games Workshop's recent history it is already tainted with original sin. With that said, other than these faults the film represents a good introduction to Warhammer 40 000, it's a gateway to Warhammer 40 000. Now to justify my opinion I would need to deconstruct the entire film into a critical review, which I couldn't be bothered to do right now, not to mention naturally would contain spoilers. Also would require me to re-watch the whole thing which I'd rather not. All in all this is my opinion, really should clarify my statements with examples from the film. But like I wrote, can't be bothered.
