Film on RPG shows grim, war-torn future

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Film on RPG shows grim, war-torn future
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MANILA - When you turn a role-playing game (RPG) into a movie, the one thing you should never do is take it too seriously. Fun and a little cheesiness work, philosophical discussions and an attempt at reaching an epic scope do not.

Unfortunately, for fans of the game, the film adaptation of “The Mutant Chronicles” doesn’t have enough of the former and has too much of the latter. It makes for a mind-numbing viewing experience—not exactly what you’d want your action movie to be.

However, this doesn’t mean you can’t derive any enjoyment from it. Some scenes—particularly those involving the titular mutants slashing at humans—work (in a very grindhouse kind of way).

Sequence

Then, there’s the sequence where the movie’s protagonists plummet to the earth in a metal container of sorts, their parachute torn to shreds—and the fact that once you get over your sense of outrage (movie tickets are expensive these days, after all), you’ll realize that the movie is good for a couple of laughs. That the filmmakers didn’t intend for it to be funny only makes it even more hilarious.

Directed by Simon Hunter, the movie stars Thomas Jane, Ron Perlman, Devon Aoki, Anna Walton, Benno Fürmann, Sean Pertwee, Luis Echegaray and John Malkovich. The story is set 300 years into the future, where the war-torn world is a grim, cheerless place.

Four corporations—Bauhaus, Capitol, Imperial and Mishima—rule contentiously. In one of their many skirmishes, an ancient seal gets blown up, uncovering an otherworldly machine that spawns mutants. Apparently, their goal is to make all humans mutants, and the object of the game—or rather, the objective of the movie’s band of heroes—is to save mankind by blowing up the machine.

Ron Perlman is Brother Samuel, the head of a secret order whose reason for being is to provide information about the infernal machine, which has apparently been oppressing humans on and off for generations. With his ancient book, the Chronicles, he and his motley crew of commando types set off to save the world. More or less, you can guess how the rest of the story unfolds. In movies like this, players—or characters—are killed one by one, until there’s only one person left standing to get the job done!

Visuals

The movie’s visuals are a murkier, low-budget version of “Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.” The mutants are scary enough in the beginning, but they quickly become just another zombie type. The pace gets bogged down every 10 minutes or so, and there are moments when you’ll have to seriously concentrate or you’ll zone out. What all those famous and semifamous actors are doing here is anyone’s guess. Someone should’ve told John Malkovich to stay away from fantasy flicks.

“Mutant Chronicles,” the game, is what’s known as a pen-and-paper or table-top RPG. It was published in 1993 by Target Games AB (now Paradox Entertainment) and has since generated a number of spinoffs, including computer video-game versions and comic books. The movie is its latest incarnation.

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