Reptileenbu Did you people see the same film I saw?

Voxitype Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

Rio Hayward All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Walter Sloane Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

tylerflint49 When i heard about this movie i was expecting for it to be a really good movie. This movie sucks cuz the story plot goes against the story in the game series and the animation is horrible not to mention that one of the characters in this movie made a disrespectful comment about commander Shepard to Vega saying "Sucks for you that Shepard's dead"

Anssi Vartiainen Mass Effect: Paragon Lost is by no means the worst video game movie adaptation I've seen in my life, but it's the only one we have of the Mass Effect universe, a game series published by Bioware. The problem is the quality of that game series. Mass Effect is all about the story. It is a vast, epic saga of galaxy in peril and is to be counted, at least in my opinion, among the greatest of space operas, along with Star Wars and Star Trek. So you can imagine that in my honest opinion a cheap anime-style direct-to-video tie-in doesn't quite cut it.Taking place during the events of the second game and telling the backstory of one James Vega, an eventual teammate in the third game, the movie admittedly has a few good things going for it. The character animations and designs, for one, are mostly pretty good. They look like the characters from the game, the facial expressions are evocative and the action scenes work. I have no idea why they made the krogans and the collectors appear almost twice as big as they are in the games, but that's a nitpick.The ending is also surprisingly good, capturing the essence of the Mass Effect games and their tendency to make you face extremely tough choices, usually between the good of the individual and the good of the society.But then, the downsides. While the characters are animated decently enough, given the budget, the backgrounds are pure guano. They're cheap CGI garbage, clash horribly with the actual characters and don't convince for a second. Every single background in the actual games was more convincing than anything in this film. And the first one of those came out five years before this film.The story is also lame, aside from the ending. It shows us nothing new of the Mass Effect universe, thus failing to please the existing fans, and it is pretty much inscrutable by anyone who has not played the games. There are few cutscenes to the previous events, and they're so quick that they don't help much. And it's not like it would have been hard to include a brief segment in the beginning. Like: "In 2147 humanity found a cache of alien technology on Mars. A decade later they managed to join the larger galactic society, which had flourished in the ruins of the civilization that came before them, the Protheans. Later this new galactic society was threatened by an ancient threat, known as the Reapers, led by Sovereign, a dreadnought spaceship of vast technological superiority and might. It was eventually beaten by the joint taskforce led by Commander Shepard, but his warnings about the eventual Reaper invasion were dismissed. And now he is believed dead." See? Not that hard, and would have made the whole movie infinitely more watchable to newcomers.So yeah, while Mass Effect: Paragon Lost is not as bad as it could have been, it's certainly not good either. That's mostly due to the limitation of the budget, I believe, but it still means that I cannot in good conscience recommend this to anyone. Not fans or newcomers. If you're a die-hard fan of the Mass Effect universe, you're going to see it anyway, in which case I can say that at least there's some good in it, but trust me, it's not worth it.

scorp76 First off, let me state I only played half-way through the first game and didn't touch the second or third. I despise the cheap emotional and sex ploys employed in the game just to beef up a weak story.So when watching this amerime my sister who is a bigger fan (1st and 2nd game and novel) sit with me so I can check with her some facts about the story.So here is my impression and opinions of the Paragon Lost: The art was inferior to what other game franchises put out i.e. Halo. And sometimes highly inconsistent.The director had either very bad storyboards or was left to his own imagination on how each scene was to be played out that you will encounter a lot anime art (gestures, postures) tropes you in fast and cheap anime series.The story overall was dull and weak. There was not much on character backgrounds or settings and with even that it felt dragged out.The voice acting ranged from OK (Freddie Prince Jr, Laura Bailey and Monica Rial) to 1990s-2000s style dubbing (Jad Saxton biggest offender no offence to her). I totally blame the voice director.With all this in mind I would have right this movie a 3 or 4 but and there is a big but I follow one rule, "The end justifies the means." Which means that no matter crappy the beginning and middle of a story is, the ending if it is good will allow forgiveness for the rest.And I must say the ending did not cop out despite the red herrings in the 1st and 2nd act would like you to believe. The ending shows a realistic and only logically conclusion to the time and situation present for that I am grateful.If I would recommend this movie to buy it may, just maybe for the ending that is similar to the choices you have to make in the games time and again. But if you are not a fan then rent it. The ending is much better that most other sci-fi movies that have great 1st and 2nd acts but fails to pay off in the final 3rd act which always leaves me angry (like all the hype build up just to be disappointed when you finally see the crap product).

Drei Oh boy where do I even start on this one, not worth seeing for anyone that actually did play the games ME1 ME2 and ME3 specially a few times. Putting aside that the graphics aren't that great, could have at least attempted a cell shading approach the story goes against ME2 and ME3. Vega's actions put him ahead of Shepard.Spoiler: The problem with this movie is that Vega single handed with a old beat up shuttle goes inside a Collectors ship, yeeees straight through their impenetrable shield and hull something the Normandy 2 with plated hulls and super shields could not achieve. The Collector ship that you could not even approach hence why you could only do that by catching them off guard in their sector and only once the Normandy and your team was 100% upgraded and focused choosing the best of the best for that suicide mission.Somehow Vega manages to just kill all the Collectors even some massive GIANT humanoid collectors (no idea where they came from never saw them in the games, same as the normal troopers but 10 times bigger) and not only that but talk with and kill the Overmid or whatever you call the General guy that takes over collectors on the battlefield and destroy the collectors ship.If I was Shepard I would have said sorry send Vega he obviously knows what he is doing with less equipment and a inferior team so why bother me and in ME3 hell just send Vega to recruit and sort out the reinforcements since again he is the best. I think because in the game they didn't quiet state how Vega destroyed the Collectors ship, how and what data he did gather the makers blew everything out of proportion. As an added minus point Vega was never asked to join N7 before ME3, he got the offer whilst working with Shepard.This is taken straight from the game so Vega's actions were left to interpretation however there was no way in hell Vega did what he did in the anime too OTT:When the Collectors attack, determined to capture the population, Vega and his squad were tasked with protecting the civilians. James narrates that his old CO, Captain Toni, a "hard-assed son of a bitch" but a "good leader" in Vega's words, was killed along with most of Vega's squad while the squad was protecting a civilian colony from a Collector attack. The leadership vacuum caused by Captain Toni falling in battle was filled in by Vega himself, and he had to make a choice between saving the colony or saving the intel the squad had recovered that could be used to destroy the Collectors. Vega chose to save the intel, but found out far too late that his choice was rendered completely unnecessary since Shepard managed to destroy the Collector threat without the intel Vega saved, which meant that Vega allowed the colony to die for nothing. Eventually, Vega asks to speak to Shepard privately in Shepard's cabin. After Shepard invites Vega to the Captain's Cabin using the intercom, Vega will explain that he has been approached with an offer from the Systems Alliance to undergo N7 training. However, Vega is unsure whether or not to accept the offer since N7 training is a lot of work, and Vega humbly wonders why he was even approached, given his past failure, hence the private conversation. He also confesses that during that mission, his team was betrayed by a colonist who was actually a Cerberus spy working with the Collectors. Vega had no choice but to kill the spy and destroy the Collector ship, which left himself and one other squad member as the sole survivors of the mission. Shepard can either encourage Vega to go for it without hesitation or tell him that such a decision should not be taken lightly.