Hooo-rah!!!! Last Thursday night, the Downtown Independent premiered Mass Effect: Paragon Lost from Funimation and Production I.G. The first twenty fans who ordered tickets got a free t-shirt and poster for the film. Some of the voice actors or people who worked on the film might have been there, no Freddie Prince Jr. mind you. The audience and I were shaken by the level of carnage and dialogue for the film, but we did have a blast.
Mass Effect: Paragon Lost is a commando squad movie where a team is outnumbered and deal with enemies much powerful then them in the Mass Effect universe. Though the main character you create Shepard isn't ever seen in the film you get known marine Vega as your main hero. He's tuff and there's some great fight scenes with the weapons and tech from the video game series.
Highlights for me were the bizarre sexual innuendo you could pick up in some scenes. The military gay jokes, "Why don't you two just kiss". There's some Japanese anime moments of just characters taking to long to move, maybe due to dub issues are Japanese animators not getting it. I know the dub team must have had some fun, because there were to many little jokes the audience and I caught and laughed at. One scene has Vega pounding a console in frustration so much it's silly and could be meme and looks like he's being frustrated sexually.
The only female marine, Cammy, looks like a Gantz character and a well known female cyborg from Ghost in the Shell and her voice actress has played so many badass women in the past it was hard to not think she's being type-cast. I know she's an anime chick, but it's almost the same design for the same anime chick over and over again. Angelea Jolie might want to copyright her face. There's also a fish eye lens shot of a blue alien girl's head that was completly out of place. For some reason Japanese animators think it's a cool shot. It isn't.
What Mass Effect really captured other than some great war scenes against horrible alien bug creatures and just epic deaths in war movies was how much a choice can effect you. The ending which goes crazy for what it's based on made me think there'd be multiple endings. For a second I thought the final choice Vega made was going to reset. Instead Vega seemed to have a nervous break down and also somehow had the ability to see a first hand account of something he wasn't there for.The movie seems start off light, but gets dark and very emotional towards the end. I really didn't expect such a dark ending, it was surprising. I mean people literally should be dying at the get go, but it's all for a much darker reason they live. You can pick it up later this December with all the blue alien head fish eye lens shots you could want.
Pre-order Mass Effect: Paragon Lost
