Mutant Chronicles

What the hell is all this?

It looks like a real movie. By that I mean it’s got well designed sets, good looking CG sets, nice wardrobe, moody lighting, a lot of duotone color timing, interesting color saturation, stylistic CG blood reminiscent of Sin City.

So it’s got stuff. It’s not a “we don’t give a shit; let’s crank this sucker out” kinda film. I only wanted to see it because it had ‘mutant’ in the title and they kinda looked like zombies, so I thought “mutant zombies in the future? Yes, I will give this a shot.”

Then something about the narration triggered a buried memory. Oh crap, I thought, I remember this universe. It’s some RPG or TCG or some garbage like that. But, hey, I wanted to give this a shot. The director used two match cuts in the first two minutes. They were pointless, but it means he’s trying, right?

Then someone opens their mouth for the first line of dialog and you realize you’re in for the long haul. The dialog is terrible. The acting is terrible. The plot is terrible. The characters are lifeless. Then the action scenes kick in and you can’t follow anything. Cut, cut, cut. Someone let Michael Bay in the editing room.

There’s some steampunk stuff in here, and I guess that’s not bad if you can stomach the sight of a coal-powered airship.

Although some of the sets look decent, we rarely have any sense of how the rooms fit together or where people are. Part of the problem is the editing. Part of the problem is that we don’t care about the actors. Another part is the stupid dialog. Another is the complete lack of coverage. There’s so much CG crap thrown around from shot to shot, it’s hard to believe that some sets look unfinished. If you have the CG budget, then…you know…do some more. Or else, shoot on a practical location and suck it up. The middle ground here is annoying.

If there is anything awesome about this film, it’s that you get to see the absolute worst performances out of John Malkovich, Ron Perlman and Thomas Jane (who, honestly, doesn’t have enough decent performances in his career to erase both this and Punisher). Everyone was awful. Every bit character. Everyone. Only those lucky enough not to have lines were spared.

The ending twist that the thing they carried was an ignition device and not a bomb as they had thought was neat, but it didn’t excuse the crappy scriptwriting for every other minute of screen time.

Drinking game: Watch John Malkovich. Watch him not care. For every word John Malkovich utters that undermines the entire craft of acting, drink. For the non-Malkovich scenes (he’s only in two or three), drink every time you feel like strangling the scriptwriter.

Crap.

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