trailer break: ‘Mutant Chronicles’

They played this movie at Comic-Con in San Diego over the summer, though it might not have been the final cut. Our impression was that they very lovingly applied every war movie cliche (in infantry grunt, bomber crew, and submarine flavors) they could think of to their zombie/monster doomsday flick while using the plot from Lord of the Rings. Except it's the Dirty Dozen headed to Mt. Doom, not plucky hobbits.

It wasn't what we expected, and it was cheesy, but we had fun. Plus, it had coal-fired spaceships.

I think "Mutant Chronicles" was some sort of "Not Quite Warhammer 40k" game that came out in the mid-90's. Didn't think it had the pull to be noticed let alone become a movie.

Wait... I thought this looked somewhat familiar. This was apparently moderately successful as game franchises go. It's from Sweden. It started as a pen and paper RPG, became two different collectible card games, and two video games. Recently they released a collectible miniatures game based on it. And of course as we can now see, a movie. That's second only (in proliferation) to Dungeons and Dragons as far as role playing games go. I used to play "Doomtrooper" (one of the CCGs) back in high school. It wasn't bad as CCGs go, but "not quite Warhammer 40K" is exactly how I'd describe the setting. Though, coal-fired spaceships and no electronics? How can this movie not be awesomely bad?

Yeah, the movie is out on DVD/Blu-Ray in a lot of places already, so I've seen it; I was also a big fan of the RPG/cards/tabletop-game back in the day, the original setting actually would have made for a much more nuanced and (IMHO) interesting movie (and explains the lack of electronics far more plausibly). The movie is about 99% different from the source material, which is not too surprising since it was in development hell since the late 90s! Pretty much the only things remaining are the given names of some factions and characters.

As far as fun cheesy action movies go it's pretty good, with enough sense (or luck?) to avoid being cheesy when it'd be annoying but keep it in when it's entertaining. At least, that's how I found it.

I actually started playing the RPG with some friends again recently, few pen-and-paper games let you, much less *encourage* you, to play such roles as private investigators in a dystopian New York analogue *on the moon*, or just giving you the range to be everything from an opera singer to a magic-using religious fanatic to a mind-wiped cyborg.

The Swedes are pretty good at world building, I'm glad that a new company is trying to re-make the RPG, but it was kindof fated that this movie would be at best a cheesy action movie. The setting itself is a bit too gritty, grim and elaborate to get much money, and studios are wary enough about sci-fi.

But I could babble forever, I guess all I'm saying is, the movie's fun if you turn your brains off, and the entirely separate original setting is endlessly fascinating (all the sourcebooks can be found online, actually, and they make for some nice post-apocalyptic/dystopian reading).