I wasn't particularly planning on writing a review, but when looking through the reviews I noticed most where either 10s or 3s, so I thought I'd put my thoughts out there.
Basically, the plot is that something is wrong with the respawn machines in from TF2. The movie takes place years after the actual events of the game, in the sense that some of the mercenaries are retired, fired, or dead. So that should already clue you into the fact that this movie does require prerequisite knowledge of the games/lore to really understand at all.
That's where my first problem lies though, as this story is kind of inconsistent in that it does take things from pre-established lore, but it also retcons things. The biggest example is that it's implied that Soldier was in WW2, even though according to the official lore, he never actually was in WW2. The movie tries to have its cake and eat it too, which is impossible.
But what if you could have your cake and eat it too? What if you could respawn the cake? That is, after all, what this whole story is about. Well, the cake will become defective... or something. While the fact that the movie borrows from game lore without fully committing irks me, I can't say this story should be fully detached from TF2, because the respawn machine, which is simply a mechanic in the game, is something integral to the plot here. The movie is pretty vague and leaves a lot up to interpretation, but from what I can tell the main idea is that the mercenaries have symptoms of Schizophrenia as a result of the respawn machine. It's a little too scattered in terms of what the respawn machine actually does though. Sometimes it seems to create Zombies or something, there's time loops for some reason, and ultimately, I think too much was attempted here. They should've stuck to just respawning and hallucinations.
There is a lot to interpret regarding this movie, but I don't think that's necessarily an excuse for how messy and incomprehensible the movie can be at times. You can have a lot of depth in a story without throwing a lot of stuff in and making it confusing.
I also think the plot suffered a bit because it felt the need to use every TF2 Merc to a significant capacity. Well, Engineer is dead, but we have his two brothers here. Pyro and Heavy could've been just one character, Sniper doesn't do much, and Demo's inclusion didn't really add anything.
The best part is definitely the visuals. Yeah, it looks really good for a source film. Good use of color, the lighting is good, there are some cool shots (Some are kinda just taken from other movies though). However, the secondary character models clash with the Merc's artstyle.
Lastly, I have to talk about the voice acting. Scout sounded like scout and his voice acting was also just solid. Soldier and the Engineer brother sounded fine. Sniper sounded fine. However, Spy in particular sounded bad, and Medic wasn't great either. Spy was not only a terrible impression, but the actual acting sounds like it's from Killer Bean.
Overall though, I liked it. It's neat. However, it's not 10/10, not even close.
Basically, the plot is that something is wrong with the respawn machines in from TF2. The movie takes place years after the actual events of the game, in the sense that some of the mercenaries are retired, fired, or dead. So that should already clue you into the fact that this movie does require prerequisite knowledge of the games/lore to really understand at all.
That's where my first problem lies though, as this story is kind of inconsistent in that it does take things from pre-established lore, but it also retcons things. The biggest example is that it's implied that Soldier was in WW2, even though according to the official lore, he never actually was in WW2. The movie tries to have its cake and eat it too, which is impossible.
But what if you could have your cake and eat it too? What if you could respawn the cake? That is, after all, what this whole story is about. Well, the cake will become defective... or something. While the fact that the movie borrows from game lore without fully committing irks me, I can't say this story should be fully detached from TF2, because the respawn machine, which is simply a mechanic in the game, is something integral to the plot here. The movie is pretty vague and leaves a lot up to interpretation, but from what I can tell the main idea is that the mercenaries have symptoms of Schizophrenia as a result of the respawn machine. It's a little too scattered in terms of what the respawn machine actually does though. Sometimes it seems to create Zombies or something, there's time loops for some reason, and ultimately, I think too much was attempted here. They should've stuck to just respawning and hallucinations.
There is a lot to interpret regarding this movie, but I don't think that's necessarily an excuse for how messy and incomprehensible the movie can be at times. You can have a lot of depth in a story without throwing a lot of stuff in and making it confusing.
I also think the plot suffered a bit because it felt the need to use every TF2 Merc to a significant capacity. Well, Engineer is dead, but we have his two brothers here. Pyro and Heavy could've been just one character, Sniper doesn't do much, and Demo's inclusion didn't really add anything.
The best part is definitely the visuals. Yeah, it looks really good for a source film. Good use of color, the lighting is good, there are some cool shots (Some are kinda just taken from other movies though). However, the secondary character models clash with the Merc's artstyle.
Lastly, I have to talk about the voice acting. Scout sounded like scout and his voice acting was also just solid. Soldier and the Engineer brother sounded fine. Sniper sounded fine. However, Spy in particular sounded bad, and Medic wasn't great either. Spy was not only a terrible impression, but the actual acting sounds like it's from Killer Bean.
Overall though, I liked it. It's neat. However, it's not 10/10, not even close.