I remember a time when I would have gone nuts over the appearance of a teaser like this one for Mutant Chronicles. Youth wouldn’t have been the only factor to blame, though that and the lax critical thinking that went alongside it certainly helped. More to the point, there was that time when movies were the best venue for bizarre flights of visual imagery. Now they’ve been supplanted by video games.
Tom Jane posted this teaser on his own website [which Coming Soon pointed out] and I love the guy’s pluck. Especially lately. Hell, I love the guy in general. But what I’m seeing here is a lot of material that appears to have been better and more thoroughly covered in the last five years of gaming; there are half a dozen big franchises represented in this clip alone. (That’s in addition to all the obvious cinematic callbacks, too. Never thought I’d get Dark City and Name of the Rose vibes off the same trailer.) I no longer want to watch movies like this; I want to play them.
In addition to Jane, the film packs Malcovich and Perlman, with Devon Aoki and Sean Pertwee, son of third Doctor Jon Pertwee, along for the ride. Jane’s the solider tasked with helping a monk (Perlman) go deep into the Earth to destroy hordes of ravaging Necromutants. Malkovich is the accountant for Troma who helped move the picture along.