The Mutant Chronicles

 (2008)

by Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy; Greg Wroblewski)

The story takes place in the 23rd century. Sort of. More on that in a bit.

Humans have exhausted most of the earth's resources and have been plunged back to the technology level of the 1880-1915 era. Political boundaries have disappeared, but they have been replaced by rigid economic boundaries which serve the same purpose. The entire earth is now owned by four corporations which are always at war. When I say "war," I do not mean that they battle with competitive marketing or financial strategies, but that they possess armies which engage one another in endless trench warfare in the manner of WW1.

Mitch (Tom Jane), a battle-hardened soldier, is fighting a desperate battle against an enemy corporation when an errant shell destroys an "ancient stone seal" which releases some hideous "necromutants." The mutants multiply rapidly and destroy everything in their path. The officers of the corporations are about to abandon the planet and leave the common people to their fate when an alternate is proposed by Brother Samuel (Ron Perlman), leader of the Brotherhood, an ancient monastic order. Samuel is the keeper of the Chronicles, a mystical text which prophesies both the rise of the mutants, and their fall to the 'Deliverer.' Big Sam believes that he personally is the foretold Deliverer who is destined to journey deep into the earth to destroy the semi-ancient threat. He manages to recruit Mitch and a rag-tag team of stock comic book characters: an honorable enemy officer, a woman who wields a mystic sword, a street fighter named El Jesus, and so forth.

Ancient evil? In the 23rd century? Assuming that no such necromutants exist today, possible excepting Dick Cheney, the stone seal could not be more than about 200 years old, could it? Actually, the promotional literature says the story takes place in the 23rd century, but the opening captions specify the year 2707, so it is possible that future humans will discover new advances in mathematics which will allow centuries to include far more than a hundred years, possible as many as a zillion kajillion. Or maybe somebody realized at the last minute that it would not be possible to unearth "ancient" evil in the 23rd century if said evil does not already exist in the 21st, so they produced a "2707" word slide.

The director spent a reported eight million dollars and hired some recognizable stars like Ron Perlman and Thomas Jane (and even John Malkovich in a small role) to perform in front of green screens which would later be augmented with various steam-punk illustrations. The idea was to create an alternate comics-inspired world, in the manner of Sin City or Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. Unfortunately, he result looks like what Sky Captain would have looked like if I had made it in my house with no money, no CGI, no green screen, and a camcorder. If I had to do that, I would scan an actual page from a comic book, blow it up, print it out in sections on my little laser printer, re-assemble the image by taping the sections to a wall, then have my friends perform by walking in front of the wall. I'm not saying the director actually did that. It's just that many scenes look like people standing in front of drawings. To make matters worse, the vehicles and airships in motion look like the miniatures from those supermarionation TV shows in the 60s. like Supercar and Captain Scarlet.

Except Supercar was more realistic.

And had a cool theme song.

And I managed to stay awake during Supercar.

DVD INFO

* DVD info not available. Link to the left leads to the accompanying paperback.

 

 

 

 

 

THE CRITICS AND ACADEMIES

No info available.

THE PEOPLE

   
  IMDB summary (of 10)
   

THE BOX OFFICE

Unreleased. Will probably go direct to video.

 

NUDITY REPORT

  • Almost none. Anna Walton shows the top half of her bum.

 

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Web www.scoopy.com

Our Grade:

If you are not familiar with our grading system, you need to read the explanation, because the grading is not linear. For example, by our definition, a C is solid and a C+ is a VERY good movie. There are very few Bs and As. Based on our descriptive system, this film is a:

D

A total snooze-fest with f/x that look painted.