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Title: Manborg

Director: Steven Kostanski

Cast: Matthew Kennedy, Conor Sweeney, Meredith Sweeney, Ludwig Lee, Adam Brooks

Production Company: Astron-6

Plot: A reanimated soldier wakes up in a nightmarish future world where a demon called Count Draculon won. All humans are either enslaved or dead, except two Australians, a treacherous scientist, an Asian martial arts fan and a dubbing artist. It’s up to Manborg to entertain them all for the next 60 minutes.

Subplot: The Baron is feeling things he’s never felt before in places Count Draculon never told him he had. But does the Australian girl feel the same way?

Subplot 2: An amateur martial artist breathes a sigh of relief as he discovers his limited skills are better than anything the bad guys have got and secretly pines for one of the only two women left in the world. Will she overcome typical Hollywood prejudice and accept that Asian men also have sex? Or will she overcome typical Hollywood prejudice and accept that female characters don’t have to fuck a guy by the end of every movie?

Subplot 3: An Australian lout feels positive about things until labels start appearing with words on them. Who put them there? Why are they all in Russian?

Subplot 4: Count Draculon conquers the world and shacks up with Mary Elizabeth Winstead to celebrate good times with buckets full of plum wine. But the party never seems to stop for Draculon, even when Winstead says she’s giving up the booze. Can he get past this or will he drag them both down into the abyss?

Notes:

Manborg is absolutely all over the place.

Seeing the opening five minutes is like seeing that little mermaid statue in Copenhagen and thinking, jesus, this cannot be it.

The dialogue, CGI, and plot is so basic and cheap and…actually, I looked at the running time straight away and if it hadn’t been an hour long I probably would’ve stopped the film right there and then.

But then the CGI kind of grows on you. I can’t explain why or what exactly they’re doing, but it seems to be some kind of method where each shot is of characters moving towards the camera in an action pose and then passing it before moving on to the next one. So, in one of the chase scenes, for example, you’ve got Manborg on a hoverbike zooming from one corner of the shot to the other, then a switch to the bad guys doing the same thing, but at a slightly different angle. Continue reading →