Grimstonefire:
So finally I bought this and it’s surprisingly good actually.
I wouldn’t say it was a great film, but considering I thought it was fighting orks it was a nice surprise!
Skink:
Eh, do you think? I don’t know… The movie was ok. Nothing to say on that. But WHY has it ALWAYS got to be Space Marines vs. Orks vs. Chaos? It’s always the same thing even in videogames…
Admiral:
I watched it with my brother and a friend of mine. All agreed it was too slow, to dull, too boring. It is very well possible to make thrilling and intrigue-filled 40k movies of some depth (Inquisition-style), but a 40k war movie should be intense, with lots of bloodshed and enemies falling, preferably in interesting areas such as trenches filled with razor wire, tank traps, vehicle wrecks and smoking craters, or in ruined cities, inside building complexes or aboard ship.
It should be detailed, intriguing, action-packed and atmospheric.
What Ultramarines provided us, sadly, is grey emptiness, slow speed and dull boredom, with a very limited number of Space Marine characters and little else. Not everything was horrible, but I can’t call it a good movie even if someone bribed me to do so. At best, I would call it a neat framework, but in dire need of an actual structure built on top of it.
A 40k movie should be something very much in the style of this Lord Inquisitor trailer.
My current hope, in the absence of a Lord Inquisitor resurrection, lies with Blizzard’s Warcraft movie being a well-crafted film that takes the best of a fictive universe and makes an epic story out of it, with intense action and lots of things going on in the background. Then, perhaps, GW can take note and follow in their footsteps.
As someone who have always been interested in stories, comics, books and movies, I swear that it is possible to make a great movie based upon a fictive universe like 40k or Warhammer. But you need good script writers, who loves the setting, understands how to make it appealing to non-fans and most importantly knows how to make the most out of it in an intriguing way, without shallow platitudes. Take The Hobbit movies as an example: They’re one book for children, but stretched out and refined in a remarkably well-crafted way that is in every way true to the spirit of the book, but surpasses the original in the same way as a polished story surpasses a draft.
I wish Games Workshop will look in that direction and give us something thrilling and engaging in the future, something well worth the price. Give us an Eisenhorn or Shira Calpurnia movie, and you’re on the right track. “Spess Mehreens” are all too easily rendered in an entirely uninteresting way, especially when all they encounter are also clad in power armour.
Peace out. :hat off
Admiral:
Eh, do you think? I don't know... The movie was ok. Nothing to say on that. But WHY has it ALWAYS got to be Space Marines vs. Orks vs. Chaos? It's always the same thing even in videogames...Because of a boring "mainstream" take on the 40k universe. Give it a kick of Inquisition, AdMech, Arbites and weird Imperial organizations, Chaos sects and whatnot. Give it a wrench of Necromunda. Give us something reflecting the baroque and bizarre Imperium, and suddenly any appearance of Space Marines, Eldar Orks or CSM can be rendered in a convincing and very cool way.
Skink
What GW needs, is to look past its "mainstream" core product, and focus more on the very interesting outlier bits which are well-wrought in so many ways, and can help enhance the "mainstream" bits.
Hell, a Horus Heresy take on movie or game could probably work well. There you have Space Marines portrayed in interesting ways and with some very good and even mythological story arcs.
Dînadan:
Take The Hobbit movies as an example: They're one book for children, but stretched out and refined in a remarkably well-crafted way that is in every way true to the spirit of the book, but surpasses the original in the same way as a polished story surpasses a draft.Really? I found the Hobbit films to be drek and vastly inferior to the book. The first seemed like action scene after action scene for the sake of having an action scene. I only saw the second because it was on Netflix and have yet to see the third (and don't particularly feel like I have the incentive to even though that too is now on Netflix). If they had been generic fantasy films in a setting of Peter Jackson's own devising, or maybe even big budget D&D films, maybe I'd see them as mediocre action flicks, but as adaptations of the Hobbit, they fall far short of the mark he set with LotR (that's not to say his LotR films were perfect, and there were numerous deviations from the books, but they still largely retained the spirit of LotR).
Admiral
zobo1942:
I love the LoTR movies - I probably watch the trilogy at least once a year - but I thought ‘The Hobbit’ movies were pretty lousy.
Admiral:
I’m obviously in a minority here. 
Granted, I didn’t appreciate the over-the-top theatrical features and some of the goofiest bits of the third movie in particular (or that dwarf-elf romance), but overall found them enjoyable. The original Lotr trilogy will live on better as a classic, while the Hobbit trilogy seem to be hit-or-miss, in the sense that either you like it, or you loathe it. One reason I like it might be that orcs-dwarves-elves is the kind of fantasy I like best, even though I by and large prefer the style of the Lotr trilogy over the Hobbit one. Also, eye candy like Weta Workshop’s marvellous take on Erebor sells.
Very well, my taste might be poor, but are there some good movie adaption of a fictive universe that you’d like to point to as a model for how GW could approach another 40k film? It need not be so much story as atmosphere or pacing. Ultramarines could have been more than it was without a substantially increased budget.
Baggronor:
I couldn’t engage with the Hobbit movies; there was too much cgi, most of which wasn’t necessary or appropriate - it made it feel less real and so you end up not caring. I love the costumes and practical effects in LotR on the other hand. There was material enough in the Hobbit for one long, good movie and that’s all it should have been imo. I think someone made a really good edit of the three films cut into one? It was online briefly iirc. I really want it if anyone has a link?
As for 40k, the mistake they keep making is having Space Marines as the main leads - they are really really boring. They don’t tell dirty jokes, they don’t get drunk, they don’t make mistakes, they don’t get scared, they’re all male, they don’t have sex and they basically all look the same. Making them Vikings or Vampires doesn’t make them much more fun on-screen either. They aren’t relatable at all and they don’t have any depth. Orcs as the bad guys can only ever be the cardboard cut-out baddies who die in droves to show how badass Space Marines are, as Orcs only have one character for their entire species (in both games); hence then Chaos Space Marines, because what could be badass enough to actually threaten Space Marines except other Space Marines (the ones who made more interesting choices with their lives)? Except they’re reduced to cartoonish posing these days too, with all the dark subtlety of the early 40k Chaos material washed away by impractical horns and robot dragons. The main leads need to be Guardsmen or at least regular-ish humans for it to work really, preferably with some Eldar/Tau characters to provide contrast.
Skink:
The main leads need to be Guardsmen or at least regular-ish humans for it to work really, preferably with some Eldar/Tau characters to provide contrast.What about a Tau Fire Warrior as the main lead? Does anybody remember "Fire Warrior" for Playstation? The game was a mediocre FPS, backed by a passable story, which, however, was told in a very interesting way (for 40k standard)! The protagonist was an alien approaching the Imperium for the first time, feeling totally estranged by its strict rules, imposing architecture, and xenophobia. I liked that!
Baggronor
Admiral:
Couldn’t agree more on the points about Space Marines and the merits of Fire Warrior. It was refreshing to encounter humanity in the guise of the rotten Imperium through the eyes of an alien. The story was otherwise quite a run-of-the-mill one, but the way it was told was memorable.
snowblizz:
I'm obviously in a minority here. :DI'm convinced you watched a totally different movie.:hat off
Admiral
There's literally nothing in the PJ adaptation that made it better than the original.
I'm fully prepared to accept that some things won't work as well in a literary work as in a movie (and vise versa) but when PJ adapts something it's taking away interesting scenes and filling up the void with trite. The barrel in river scene was at least half an hour too long and lacked any kind of suspense. It's the second movie out of an announced three. Was there anyone expecting anything to happen at all other than everyone surviving.
Dînadan:
Well someone who hadn't read the book might have thought some may have died to emotionally drive the rest onwards into film three.I'm obviously in a minority here. :DI'm convinced you watched a totally different movie.:hat off
Admiral
There's literally nothing in the PJ adaptation that made it better than the original.
I'm fully prepared to accept that some things won't work as well in a literary work as in a movie (and vise versa) but when PJ adapts something it's taking away interesting scenes and filling up the void with trite. The barrel in river scene was at least half an hour too long and lacked any kind of suspense. It's the second movie out of an announced three. Was there anyone expecting anything to happen at all other than everyone surviving.
snowblizz
I think the only thing the PJ film did better was that all the Dwarves started out armed rather than implied to be unarmed until Thorin calls dibs on Orcrist in the Troll cave which may have worked when it was a stand alone book but made less sense considering how LotR developed Middle-earth.
Close second, although only because of the medium, was having the Dwarves fight the trolls as a group rather than wandering up one by one and getting nabbed.
Edit: talking of useless additions I think one of the most confusing was the inclusion of Azog. I can understand wanting a visible antagonist to keep things moving, even if I think it doesn't add anything to the story, but why Azog who was supposed to be dead? Yeah there was the whole wanting revenge on Thorin thing, but why Azog, why not his son Bolg? Especially when you factor in that in the book Bolg was explicitly named as the commander of the Goblin-Warg alliance that fought at the Battle of the Five Armies; it wouldn't have messed with canon too much (considering his actions prior to BotFA aren't documented) and it'd have added an extra dimension to the orcs showing that they aren't AlwaysChaoticEvil and that they care about their families.
On the other hand, at least it wasn't as stupid as making Radagast a stoned wizard riding a bunny sled -_-
cornixt:
The Hobbit movies were okay, not great. The addition of new stuff wasn’t as bad as the way it substituted so much else that was in the book. It was as if they wrote the script based on some random person’s vague remembering of the plot, who gets it mixed up with another book. They are movies about a hobbit, not movies based on the book. The LOTR movies did it right, nowhere near the amount of care and attention was paid on the Hobbit.
Grimstonefire:
What do you all think of this btw
Admiral:
That’s a very accurate actor wishlist for the Primarchs, so far as I can see. That many good actors often heralds a poor film, but boy would I like to see it anyway! Thanks for sharing.
Grimstonefire:
The big question though would be who to play the Emperor? Or would you have him as a blinding light and not be able to see his face clearly?
I think I’d have Hugh Jackman as Russ though, Vin Diesal as Dorn and Mads Mikkelsen as Mortarian.
Dave Bautista would make a better Angron I think. You need someone who can do rage incarnate and that’s not easy to portray.
Dînadan:
I say have it be animated and have Matt Mercer do all the voices for the primarchs �Y~?
cornixt:
Horus Heresy could really only be done justice over a series of movies or a tv series. Start with Horus and the Emperor as the main characters, then add more as you go, culminating in the big Horus/Emperor battle. Each movie/episode could cover a few of the primarchs, their back story and how they react as they are tempted by Chaos.
Dînadan:
Would probably need to be a film series - don’t think a TV series would get a big enough budget to do it justice