Warning: The robots in this movie look nothing like the one on the cover!
First thing we notice as the movie starts is that the director is Leign Scott (I presume he is the Asylum version of Ridley Scott although as we will soon find out his shooting style is much more reminiscent of Edward J Wood.)
Do you really wish to continue after this intro?
Intro informs us of evil alien machines in plot that seems to borrow heavily from (surprisingly) Terminator and Matrix with a hint of the expected source of inspiration-
Michael Bay’s Transformers. Decimated humanity escapes underground and stays there for 300 (or 400, it constantly changes) years!!! It will be interesting to see how we evolved and muted in those conditions. And then I get my answer- humanity now consists of 70% woman population, all clad in heavy leather and fetish wear. They look like a deranged bunch of sex predators. On the other hand man look like a bunch of pathetic nerds, but they still do manly jobs as we see as they lead the troops to the surface to deal with a approaching treat. Team lead by Captain Blackthorn survives a complete disaster pretty much as we expected and never makes it back. One of the soldiers dies seemingly from bad techno music, ’cause we don’t see anything else around.
So, military officers decide to make a final, desperate gamble… they release The MITCHELL from his cryogenic prison. Now what’s the deal with the Mitchell dude, I guess we will find out. They unfreeze the dude and he ends up being just some random scrawny looking fellow with a would be British accent.
Who needs John Connor when you’ve got… THIS dude!
He insists on bringing his bearded friend from prison too and soon they are assigned with a dangerous mission.Oh, yeah we also find out that love of his life Kadira decided to start playing for the other team and married Lady- General Van Ryberg. Guess the lack of real man down there had taken its toll. After some pathetic demonstration of hand to hand combat debriefing starts… and then it seemingly lasts forever. The only thing that breaks the horrible monotony is the ridiculous chick-fight that ensues between pilots who supports Mithcell, lead by Xandria Lux and sluts who likes chilling in a cave and not doing anything (pilots who dislike the sky, well, that’s first). At this point I start to wander are these women real actresses or somebody just sold us a porno without sex scenes, ’cause it looks mightily like just that.
I truly don’t know what’s worst here, “acting” of “fights”
Somewhere around the 40th minute of the film we finally see the surface again, and that makes it better- but only slightly ’cause we are served with some pretty lame CGI straight from a get go and the acting looks incredibly like a bunch of 5 year olds playing war (with some keyboard sound effects added as a bonus). After being overwhelmed one of the soldiers throws laser frisby and starts completely wrecking things. The most laughs erupt at the sight of the giant mecha styled robot who has transform itself into a cannon so he can fire at human forces. The idea is nonsensical but the design work and animation are not that much better thou. Then Mitchell runs into the remaining members of the first team from the beginning of the movie, still lead by chubby blonde dude and they decide to join forces. They hold their line against the giant robots as long as they can and eventually menage to retreat.
Faced with imminent defeat Mitchell calls for another attack but gets into fight (of words) with a General Van Ryberg because he left her “wife” on the surface. Interesting how they just keep insisting on that marriage but that same wife seems ready and willing to hop back into Mitchell’s bed any moment. In the meantime the scientist, Dr. Alextzavich uncovers the terrible truth- the alien robots are in fact – THE ALIENS!!!
Just like a Kinder Surprise!
Special breed that he calls Transmorphers (for no reason- they don’t transform or morph) are in fact meat on the inside aka some sort of cybernetic organism. The fact that they haven’t figured it out in 400 years shows that humanity is ovbiasly useless and doomed from the start. Also, another thing- this fact doesn’t really change anything ’cause there’s really no difference in fighting a mostly robot cyborg and regular robot per se. Also, one more revelation occurs, Mitchell is also a robot!!!! He is the first android made by the good Dock in hope of saving humanity-and he never had a clue! Not even when he found out cryo- sleep doesn’t work on him? Maybe a fact that he never had to eat? No? Somebody here has no knowledge of a dramatic structure, and severely lacks common sense, don’t you agree?
Mitchell incredibly quickly reconciles with his true nature and instead of deciding that he was used and he needs to kill some humans and then joins his true brothers (that would truly be a twist) he decides to sacrifice his main power cell (battery, whatever) and in doing so sacrifice himself in one final attempt do defeat machines. Another childish battle ensues with the addition of poorly animated aeroplanes this time. In fact the aerial battle looks incredibly like arcade video games from the early 90s. Mithchell with Kadira, Doctor and his Android (lover?) flying on hower- bikes find a way into the Machine’s main tower (that is incredibly easy to locate). He then procides to kill some of the robo- guards and use his power cell to disrupt their main tower and in … turn off the machines. Of course we also had a touching scene between a Karina Nadir and himself in which they professed their eternal love to each other but that didn’t stop her from returning to her superior officer and lesbian lover mere moments later. Then we finally see sky clearing (like in Lion King or something like that) and we have our victory. Than we are presented with the criminally weak CGI attempt of fireworks and an ugly blond with her mouth wide open staring at the sky and then thankfully it is all over!* This was really a test, I tell you.
Damn, she’s ugly!
Verdict: the ultimate battle between a man and a machine ends up being anything but ultimate and by the end of the movie you’ll just pray that somebody destroys both humans and machines ASAP so we can all get on with our lives and never speak of this movie again.