25 December 2010 | sebpopcorn

Watchable but not great

It was nice to see a 40k based movie but I found Ultramarines a bit disappointing to be honest.



The voice acting was good but the CGI ranged from good to very poor. Close up shots of the faces looked especially badly done but the vehicles looked good and for the most part the marines did too.



In terms of story it's pretty basic. There's no real introduction to the setting, probably because most viewers are going to be familiar with it but I thought this was a missed opportunity to explain the background for a few minutes with some nice sweeping shots of Terra and maybe the golden throne, that kind of thing.



There's no really good pitched battles, enemies appear in handfuls so you never get a sense of a decent fight which was a shame. There were also a few oddities which don't really seem to fit in. For example the captain is commanding a squad that's never been in battle? That's a command squad of veterans that's never had a battle? Good one. I can see why they did it for the plot but it makes no sense in the 40k universe. Nor does ripping on the apothecary for being a coward. In the 40k universe he is one of the most important marines in the chapter and certainly outranks a bog standard marine that's never been in battle by quite some way. By the way all those first timers would be scouts not full marines..and I could go on and on but of course none of this really spoils the movie at all but for a film made for fanboys it's a bit slack.



Overall it's worth a watch if you like 40k. Hopefully this is the first in a series and they will improve. A better storyline and animation would be required though to appeal to a wider audience.