It’s not really news that movies inspired by video games tend to have major flaws; but with role playing games like Dungeons and Dragons or, in this case, Mutant Chronicles the track record isn’t quite as set in stone. Mutant Chronicles doesn’t really help the case for role playing game adaptations, but if you’re willing to take the proceedings with a grain of salt then you just might enjoy yourself in spite of all the film’s flaws.
Imagine if the scrolling yellow text of Star Wars ran on for about five minutes to give us a lengthy expositional background on the world’s greatest war waged between the planet’s remaining four mega-corporations. Trench warfare rages on until an enemy unexpected rises from the Earth’s core: a band of machine made mutants with no agenda save for killing all those standing in their way. Even with the planet’s greatest warriors holding their ground on the battlefield the mutants grow into an unstoppable force until the only solution left to humanity is to flee to another planet.
The planet is nearly evacuated with the poorer denizens crowding onto spaceships in scenes that would give James Cameron “been there, done that” Titanic-sized déjà vu. But not all have given up on humanity’s earth-side chances – some “have faith” in a last-ditch squadron of elite fighting machines like Brother Samuel (Ron Perlman) who gathers the team together with the blessings of the planet’s noble ruler Constantine (John Malkovich). Samuel invokes promises of travel off-world when the quest is done to recruit the likes of Major Mitch Hunter (Thomas Jane), Corporal Valerie Duval (Devon Aokie), Lieutenant Maximillian von Steiner (Benno Furmann) and Severian (Anna Walton). Each blows out a “what else am I gonna do” rationale for going along on the suicide mission without any actual thought – but hey, these are noble warriors, they live for the fight. At least, that’s the explanation we’re expected to swallow.
The belligerent crew journeys down into the underbelly of the planet with Brother Samuel citing scriptures from a sacred religious tome and encouraging everyone involved to “have faith” which quickly becomes an obvious mantra of the story. The blind adherence to the book’s writings forms the grounds of a very simplistic analysis of blindly following a religion when one of the devoutly religious amongst the warriors admits she can’t read and just obeys what people tell her the book says. Okay, so she has blind faith and in a moment of dire conflict it reveals her to be rather ignorant, but for a real message the movie would have to have delved deeper than that – but the movie never pretends to be all that deep, so we forgive it. Self-important, yes. Deep? No.
Brother Samuel’s rants serve as little more than a Dungeon Master heralding its players deeper into the enemy-infested dungeon when common sense would dictate their plan to be a stupid one. His role as Dungeon Master couldn’t be any more obvious, but again, Mutant Chronicles is unashamedly self-indulgent in longwinded speeches on heroics and faith that you start to just accept and tune out the squawking and refocus when the action bits stir you back to consciousness. The stylistic fighting and visually visceral gore make for entertaining shoot outs and melees, but that’s really the film’s only perks. Sometimes it uses its style to amazing effect, but at others all it has is very boring and straightforward gunshots and blood. The special effects, like the battle scenes, require a little bit of forgiveness from the audience. Mutant Chronicles knows full well that it had a small budget to work with, but they stretched it really far. The green screen is disturbingly obvious, but the cinematography works around it and treats it as is – so you get used to the cheesy appearance rather fast and settle in for the rest of the movie.
Thomas Jane was really the film’s saving grace for me, even though I thought both Perlman and Malkovich would help as well – they didn’t. Malkovich vanishes after the first 20 minutes and Perlman is absolutely insufferable in his preaching.
DVD Bonus Features
It’s a two-disc special edition, so once you get finished watching the feature with and without the audio commentary (starring director Simon Hunter and Ron Perlman), pop in the second disc and get ready to be impressed by the generous helping of featurettes. Sure, there are deleted scenes, trailers, teasers, concept art and storyboards – but those are the least of the disc’s benefits. Instead focus on the fun Storyboard / Green Screen comparisons and the Comic-con Panel Q&A. Seeing the film without any background on it, you’d wonder why it made a Comic-Con appearance; but once you consider its role playing game roots the connection makes lots of sense – and so does the Comic-Con audiences startling positive reaction. Finally, you’ll find some interviews with cast and crew and a making of featurette which cover roughly the same ground, though the latter stretches on a bit longer.
"Mutant Chronicles" is on sale August 4, 2009 and is rated R. Action, Sci-Fi. Directed by Simon Hunter. Written by Phillip Eisner. Starring Devon Aoki, John Malkovich, Ron Perlman, Thomas Jane, Anna Walton, Benno Furmann.
