Mutant Chronicles (2008)
The darkest age is yet to come. Have faith.
Time for another spin down “thought I did that” lane. You can thank it coming around on streaming and me just finishing putting together some space marine miniatures for this one - well, that and when put in the line up there was a majority vote to watch this over the other options - other options that were all good by the way. A bunch of actors you would recognize in a movie that plenty haven’t ever heard of based on a tabletop role playing game made in Sweden. Do I have your attention yet? Get the party together, there’s a menace machine with some evil machinations, and the only way to beat it might just be held in the Mutant Chronicles.
I sort of summed up the plot there in my lead in, but we can do better than that. A thing comes from the stars with the purpose of remaking humanity to the image it wants, and a hero rises up to defeat it. By defeat it, we mean the classic hero defeat situation - it’s not really dealt with, just buried and sealed off where surely it wouldn’t be a problem - except the hero and their followers weren’t that dumb and wrote down a great prophecy about a new hero rising up in the future to really deal with it. Cut forward to humans doing what they do best - war. In a world run by for corporations strong-arming each other for resources, it would just so happen that some trench warfare has opened up right around the great seal - and a dang artillery gun blows that seal away. Thus breaches out the mutants, killing and dragigng the corpses back to create more under the will of the great machine. Humanity is loosing the battle, and one of the followers sets out to gather a squad of heroes to do exactly as the book foretold.
Honestly it’s a pretty great setup for an role playing game. Actors are folks plenty would recognize, and for better or worse perform as one would expect. Largely, this could be labeled as good enough or good - but then you also get a few where it’s a bit off. I can’t say as to what extent there was feedback on the line deliveries, if it was requested or if an actor just felt like their character needed to have a quirk and ran with it - but largely it’s all pretty good. Hammy, perhaps at times, but it feels like things aren’t getting phoned in mostly and sometimes there’s even some nice character bonding done just through looks and body language.
Admittedly, it can feel a bit weird that characters bond as quickly as they do coming from such diverse sides of both character and the corpos they work for. There is some driving force for some of the characters, mostly in a tell don’t show manner, but at least one of the leads gets to have some form of background scenes to pad them out in the character department. To harken back to the role playing bit, it feels a bit like if we missed the first session where everyone dropped all their characters back story, were given a quick little reason for being there blurb, and then get to watch it all play out from there. The bad guys are effectively zombies with how they work, so you could dabble some into “maybe there is something there” but largely their motivations are go out, kill material, bring material back, make more and repeat. Could there be more? Sure, but it doesn’t really get into it.
War never changes - until the mutants come out.
The setting is neat, and presented in a fun way. You could argue that perhaps everything is a little bland all washed up in grays or browns, but the mood of the movie is in tone with that and it’s apocalypse stuff. We get plenty of varied spots - mountain top monasteries, war torn cities, old and abandoned cities, wastelands, no man’s land, and even the machine area - so don’t let the somewhat same-y color grade fool you into thinking it’s boring to look at. The general setting also feels very steampunk world war one, but then you’ll flip to a pretty modern looking or futuristic looking city to go along with the space-capable steam ships. It’s wild, really. Costumes give plenty as well, from the colorful pop of the red robes to the tweaked soldier atires - it’s plenty easy to tell characters apart from one another.
Effects are probably the widest bag of mixing we have here. It largely looks good in my opinion - if perhaps a bit dated. The ships are cool, and they take a bunch of effort to show off various levers and engines and pipes and all of that to make it really feel like it’s a thing. The mutants look pretty good for the most part, although perhaps the hands morphing into the claw looks a bit dated morph style. The violent bits all look pretty good as well, although some of them do start to fall into the green-screen element feel that a lot the of backgrounds of the movie have. Some folks will find it more distracting than others, but it’s there so I’m going to point it out. There’s probably only one mutant shot that i would call egregious looking, but it’s on there for a frame or two before an explosion happens and it’s no longer a problem. At worst, it feels like a movie that was a little bit rushed and could have had a bit more cook time and at best it feels like a budget flick pushing the limits of what it can do with it’s allotted effects budget.
Audio is fine. Balance is there, and I don’t find it hard to hear anything as I’m watching. I did have a brief stint where my audio was acting up and I kept having brief moments of silence after a clicking noise - but the watch crew did not experience this, so it was something on my end beyond the movie’s fault. Music is there, but I don’t recall any of it outside of background audio. Sound effects are good for the guns and the likes, making them feel a bit more powerful than they look - with the exception of one machine gun in a tight space that sounded remarkably quiet. Line deliveries are largely well done, and feel like folks wanted to try with their characters instead of just phoning it in. Mostly. For the thinking folks, I guess we can say prophecies, faith, respect, and perhaps not judging character by the cover. Someone better equipped could probably pick out more - I’ve seen this movie like four times, and I don’t think I’ve ever really spent much any time thinking about it.
Knights of the round pedestal.
It might not be the best movie around, but it’s still entertaining. Some might benefit from having a crew to watch it with, but the setting itself is somewhat interesting and those who like the feeling of a D’n’D group on a suicide mission to save the world will probably appreciate the overall feel of it. The setting also provides some cool props to look at, and the green screen background for better or worse do provide the movie with a bit of stylized look that works really well in some shots. It’s also got a bunch of folks you’ll recognize from movies - one of which it took me until this - the fourth time - to realize i recognized his voice from Dog Soldiers. Who would have guessed I’d be learning something new re-watching a movie for movie night, right?