Red Faction: Origins (2011)

Directed by: Michael Nankin
Run time: 88 minutes

Red Faction: Origins is a movie adaption of the video game Red Faction Guerrilla.  The game is centered around Eric Hammerguy, a guy who reluctantly frees Mars from the tyrannical rule of the Earth Defense Forces.  He does this task by destroying everything Earth related with a variety of weapons and a mining hammer. Since this game did better than the other two Red Faction games, so a movie adaption was just a matter of time.

The starts twenty five years after the events of the game. We catch up with Eric Hammerguy,  who is now a drunk hero of Mars. In news broadcast info dump we learn that few years after freeing Mars that Eric had his wife and daughter murdered by the Marauders. The Marauders are the other faction that control Mars.  The best to describe them is Hollywood's idea of Native Americans mixed with the Fremen from Dune. They dislike Earth, the Red Faction, and firearms, and will kick thirty two kinds of ass when put into a fight.

Eric meanwhile is drinking in the only bar on Mars, sick of hearing about how much of a hero he was, and is annoyed with another drunk who is a fan of him. So he fixes the one problem he can do something about and punches out the drunk.  This leads to a brawl that leads out of the bar and becomes the problem of officer Eric Hammerguy Jr. Who arrests his dad, again, for drunk and disorderly conduct. It should be pointed out that the Red Faction are a sort of militia police force.

The next day, Eric Hammerguy Jr.'s boss smoothed things over with the bar so his dad can keep drinking there. He also wants Eric Hammerguy Jr. to take a salvage party out to crash site. Part of a Earth battleship that was blown up twenty five years ago is crashing on to the surface of Mars. The problem is that the ship fragment is crashing in an area that is contested by both the Red Faction and the Marauders. Another problem is that Eric Hammerguy Jr. doesn't know much about valuable Earth technology. Fortunately the Red Faction has hired an Earth born technology genius. Her name is Ms. BornonEarth and she is expert in all things technology, science, and reminding everyone that she is was born on Earth and how no one trusts her.

Eric Hammerguy Jr's team is the last to arrive where the ship crashed. The Marauders got to the crash site first and were killed by the mysterious soldiers in white battle fatigues. Eric Jr. and Ms. BornonEarth catch up with with one of the soldiers in white and it just so happens to be Eric Jr.'s sister. The movie then becomes a hunt for Eric Hammerguy Jr.'s sister across the surface of Mars. Along the way Eric Jr. runs into and befriends a couple of Marauders who are on a quest of plot convenience and annoyance. Together they solve the mystery of the soldiers in white, find Eric Hammerguy Jr.'s sister, expose old man Faust as the ghost of the haunted Mars amusement park, and have a positive ending. Though several people die to obtain it.

I am of two minds on this movie. On the one hand, this is the best video game adaption movie I have seen in awhile. Thought the movie has a limited budget it makes good use of it's CGI and practical effects. The other side, the plot, while faithful to the game, is lazily written, full of one or less dimension characters, and suffers from It's a SyFy/Video Game Movie So Who Gives A Fuck syndrome.

If you are a fan of the Red Faction Guerrilla game and trashy scf fi movies, this is a movie you will want to find. Otherwise, it is a great movie to have on in the background.

MVT: The CGI work in the film, while cheap, is well done and is the best thing in the movie.

Make or Break: Though Mars is smaller in size than the Earth, Mars has roughly similar same amount of land mass as there is dry land on Earth.Yet the writer of this movie managed to make Mars feel like a quarter of the size of the United States. So rather than having a wide open planet, it instead feels like small place with a settlements named after Robert A Heinlein and Isaac Asimov.

Score: 3.2 out of 10

Dungeons & Dragons: The Book of Vile Darkness (2012)

Directed by: Gerry Lively
Runtime: 82 minutes

As of this post this is the last Dungeons and Dragons movie. It is also the best and worst of the three Dungeons and Dragons movies. It is the best as because it is the most faithful to the original source material and it is the worst because it assumes that the audience is made up of hard core D&D fans. This movie also assumes that the audience has read The Book of Vile Darkness.

Yes I should explain this one. The Book of Vile Darkness is one of two adult supplemental material books for D&D. Basically additional information for people who would rather pay for stuff they don't want to make up themselves. As for the subject matter of the book, take the works of Stephen King, Clive Barker, Poppy Z Brite, and Dan Simmons, run their collected works through a blender and have R.L. Stein filter and write the result. An afternoon spent watching horror movie or reading horror novels would be much better than what The Book Vile Darkness is.

Like the second movie there is back story over the opening credits. It is about Lord Dickhead, a man who hates all things living and gets off on being an evil dick to everything. Near the end of his life he clues into the fact that the fun will end when he dies. So he makes a deal with demons that his soul can't be destroyed and then has himself turned into a book. A book so evil that it spread evil, corruption, and madness to anyone who comes in contact with this vile book.

All this evil stupidity creates the Bros of Pelor (Pelor is the god of light and keg parties). These Bros are so awesome that Pelor gives them medallions to help them spread righteous light across the land. The forces of evil deiced to break the book into three parts. The ink was found and destroyed but the cover and pages disappeared.

The movie opens with our young hero becoming a Bro. And like all young heroes he thinks he is the chosen one who is going to change everything. But when he taps the scared stone, the stone does not light up proving that he is the chosen one. So our hero runs off while his fellow Bros have a good laugh at the hero's naivety.

The hero's dad consoles the hero after he is sure that he will not kill himself laughing at the site of his son. The two of them talk about how foolish the hero is being. Meanwhile, barbarians attack the Bros keg party because barbarians are dicks when they smell beer. So father and son join their fellow Bros and the scene cuts to next day. Because who really wants to watch a battle in a fantasy movie.

Our hero wakes up from being hit in the head and finds he is the only Bro left alive. He has a hazy idea that the barbarians kidnapped his dad. So trusting to plot convenience our hero sets out to save his dad. After some needless misadventures with a sex worker our hero finds the people who ordered the barbarians to attack the Bros in the first place. We have goth witch, creep with a mask, annoying assassin, hired goon, and Mr. I have two minutes to live.

This group won't let our hero join until he kills someone in cold blood. Luckily for him, Mr. I have two minutes to live remembers his name and walks right into our hero's sword. So team evil sets out to do the next thing on their list of tasks, kill a bad looking computer generated dragon. This leads to travel and getting more reasons to hate the characters. Then they fight and kill the dragon. This leads to the major thing that takes me out of the movie, everyone except our hero is needlessly evil and stupid. In the dragon's cave team evil finds the mcguffin they need and villagers from a town they need to visit. So what does team evil want to do with the villagers? Why kill them because they are weak for letting a dragon capture them.

However our hero is quick thinking and save the villagers by pointing out by keeping them alive the village will welcome team evil with open arms. So team evil goes into the village, welcomed like heroes, and hired goon goes to the village brothel to meet the topless female nudity requirement. Our hero and goth witch fulfill the required love interest part of the film and creep with a mask goes around the village being a needlessly evil dick because he can. Oh and the annoying assassin is robbing the village.

The next day team evil is about to leave but the villagers are not happy about being robbed. So the villagers locked the gates of the outside and have rounded up a posse to kill team evil. Our hero nearly talks team evil out of a needless fight but creep with a mask makes it worse. Forcing team evil to kill all the villagers without the villagers putting up much of a fight.

Later that night hired goon gets character development and poisoned by our hero. Then our hero puts hired goon and all the treasure team evil has collected into a magical bag (bag of holding) and throws the bag into a near by lake. He then puts annoying assassin in a situation where the assassin gets himself killed. This paves the way for team evil to get the last mcguffin and the last act of this movie.


If you are a D&D fan this movie is for you. It is the closest thing to a movie version of  role playing session that is not a comedy that you are likely to find. As for everyone else if you can't find anything else or you can't sleep this movie might be for you. But I don't suggest looking this one up unless this really your thing or your are a masochistic fantasy fan.

MVT: There is a undead child that benefits from the low quality computer animation as it adds to the creepiness.

Make or Break: What breaks this movie for me is team evil being evil and stupid so the hero looks more heroic.

Score: 4.15 out of 10