'Mutant Chronicles' - High-Def Digest Review

[Attebery]

Tom has reviewed 'Mutant Chronicles.' The film is described as love it or hate it. He did not love it. This Blu-ray is technically strong, with great audio and video and plenty of supplements. Rent this first, unless you know you love it.

Full review here:
http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/2442...hronicles.html

[Dack]

It didn't work in my Blu-ray player so I couldn't watch it, but man, I dunno. Maybe that was a good thing.

[gglass4269]

yes, it IS that bad...

[hwalker84]

About 1 1/2 stars too much.

[AndersT2]

Just a little warning for the scandinavian readers. The nordic release don't have a HD soundtrack, the UK version did.

I was unluck enough to buy the nordic release. Haven't seen it yet.

[FourToedStatue]

What happens in the end? Who dies?

[Godstar]

Never even heard of a game called Mutant Chronicles.

[Landy]

Originally Posted by Godstar

Never even heard of a game called Mutant Chronicles.

Me neither, and in the nineties I was in that world as a collector and player of Magic: the Gathering.

[MrAngles]

Obviously the movie is bad, but what if you like certain bad movies, like Johnny Mnemonic? I really want to like this movie at least a little bit, but I want to go into it with proper expectations.

[project-blu]

this film sucked so many different kinds of ass. absolutely dreadful.

[KGB]

Originally Posted by project-blu

this film sucked so many different kinds of ass. absolutely dreadful.

They had some interesting Steampunk ships and combat sequences. I thought the elevator shaft scene was pretty neat. Some of the sequences where the creatures start coming up are pretty cool. But this is what happens when a low budget film tries to do too much CG work. It comes across as being quite fake and unbelievable like the recent Star Wars films Ep 1-3.

The difference is vast between a film with a lot of real sets like Batman/Dark Knight and films like Mutant Chronicles and Sky Captain. Zak Snyder and David Fincher are two directors who understand how to implement it successfully because they were both former employees at ILM.

This could have been a great film with a director of Peter Weir's caliber. But why would he want to do a film like this...The cast was pretty solid, certainly enough to pull it off, but the script was lousy and performances were way over the top.

[Josh Z]

Originally Posted by KGB

The difference is vast between a film with a lot of real sets like Batman/Dark Knight and films like Mutant Chronicles and Sky Captain. Zak Snyder and David Fincher are two directors who understand how to implement it successfully because they were both former employees at ILM.

I don't think Sky Captain is a good analogy. Sky Captain (much like Sin City) was going for an intentionally artificial look. It was never meant to look photorealistic.

[Bouncy X]

wow that's quite an extras packed movie for such a small bad movie made for DTV. i mean a documentary thats almost 2hours plus everything else? damn.

if only they treated all movies this way.

[KGB]

Originally Posted by Josh Z

I don't think Sky Captain is a good analogy. Sky Captain (much like Sin City) was going for an intentionally artificial look. It was never meant to look photorealistic.

Personally, I don't think the desaturated and defused look works well for fantasy films. The difference is pronounced when you see a tastefully colored film with a lot of CG work like King Kong or Zodiac. The color palette of Mutant Chronicles and Sky Captain feel overstylized. I think the best use of desaturation in recent years is Letters from Iwo Jima. If there was an Oscar for color correction, I would've given it to that film.

Sky Captain uses a digital soft filter look that doesn't look convincing at all. I think there's a complacency these days with green screen work that goes something like, "We don't need to do it optically in camera since we can do it in post." I think it's an inherent danger in overdoing CG work.

Here are a few examples of compositing and desaturation:

The Mutant Chronicles


Sky Captain


Letters from Iwo Jima



King Kong

[BullRay]

Originally Posted by MrAngles

Obviously the movie is bad, but what if you like certain bad movies, like Johnny Mnemonic? I really want to like this movie at least a little bit, but I want to go into it with proper expectations.

Mnemonic is not bad, it sure ain't a masterpiece but definitely in the top 10% of all sci-fi produced. It was simply a bit too budget for it's attempted scope and world to be fully captured.

This one though (Mutant Monochromes) certainly had enough budget to capture the world as well as needed, the problem is that world is of little interest because what goes on in it is so completely nonsense and boring that the actors clearly already on the script reading (if there was one, I don't know how the hell they pulled both Malkowich and Pearlman into this if there was one. The later still did a good job though, considering..) felt no ambition whatsoever that in turn no amount of nice graphics will ever save the film from being one of the most pointless badly acted sleeping pill ever conceived. Now, those are the proper expectations to lift this mess a bit. Hope it helps your appreciations of it.

That was the only impression it left me with anyways, that it just went on and on.

Spoiler:

Then again, that about sums up my sentiments for LotR just as well. So fans of those may find some value in all the meandering meaningless filling dialogue and endless marching between equally endless boring battles in MC too.

Don't tell anyone, I'll be hunted by trolls, orch and fanboys to the end of the earths!