Daemon reviews Tempus Maximus

Tempus Maximus is another one of those machinimas that I knew was going to be big even before it was released. I was first introduced to it while browsing around for some voice talent and was then shown the trailer as a kind of impromptu 'demo reel'. My curiosity was piqued at the FX and overall visual quality. Clearly this project was being handled by someone who knew what they were doing. Color me intrigued, if slightly cautious.

Then it was released, and there was much rejoicing and critical acclaim. It even made it to the front page of Bungie's site, a feat that I haven't seen done since Ataraxia. Clearly this video was going to be special...or be another Ataraxia. Considering that this video turns out to have a run time double that of Ataraxia's and about ten to twenty times the run time of most garbage that M.com regurgitates as 'content' that I have to sit through, I decided to hear a few other opinions before I dove in. After hearing Jack give it a positive review I finally decided it was time to stop putting Tempus Maximus off and give it a shot.

The final verdict?

Meh, it's okay.

If I bring up Ataraxia a lot in both this review and in general, it's because Ataraxia was a landmark in my machinima watching career. Suddenly, large ambitious projects weren't something to be welcomed with open arms, but to be closely scrutinized. Ataraxia was like that bad first relationship that made us all become more cynical of the world around us, afraid to reach out lest we just be rejected again.

And to be honest, most of the things that hindered Ataraxia make return appearances in Tempus Maximus. For starters you have the latinized, nonsensical title (though I'll grant that Tempus's does make a slight bit more sense when translated), you have a skeleton crew of three members in a desolate location who are guarding something of importance to the UNSC, only to start being followed by something ominous that picks them off one by one, all of which leads up to the dramatic reveal which ultimately makes no sense.

For those who don't know, the big dramatic reveal here is that the Forerunner artifact the team is supposed to...defend? Analyze? The film wasn't really specific on this point...whatever, the point is it's a 'time machine' that sends people a few days backward in time. How exactly it works and why it sent the protagonist back to that particular moment in time and to that particular location are never really explained. More importantly, if the Forerunners had a time machine, why didn't they ever use it to go back in time in order to stop their entire race from being tentacle raped by the Flood?

See, this is the problem I have with machinima series like Deus Ex Machina that take place in the Halo universe while bearing only a fleeting connection to the story's setting and characters. The resulting machinima has almost nothing to do with the Halo canon, which in the end just makes it more problematic then if it had just been an original creation.

Almost none of this machinima's backstory makes sense. Most of the plot centers around the idea that they're on a planet with no oxygen (or at least that's what they're told at first for...some reason), but really, how could anyone have been fooled into thinking that such a lush planet had an oxygen poor atmosphere? Christ, between Ataraxia's Carbon Monoxide plants and this film's attempts to pass off a lush forested Halo ring as being oxygen-poor it's like none of these writers have any idea how basic respiration works. Even then, they make a point about how one of the characters has low oxygen while he's inside a building, implying that the building has no form of life support systems, which makes absolutely no goddamn sense.

The characters were remarkably under-developed, which for a machinima of this length is inexcusable. Unlike Ataraxia, which had some moments of dialogue that were chillingly good, Tempus lacks those brief bits of genius. Its obligatory moment of introspection about the nature of time travel is completely ham-fisted. For the record, unless you regularly ram your own flaccid dick up your own ass, then no, having sex with yourself does not count as masturbation.

The characters themselves were for the most part an unlikable bunch of idiots, from the character of Mack who warns the two not to go to the portal and then acts amazed when they go to it (even though there are literally no defenses around the artifact itself), to the protagonist who steps through the portal and immediately complains about how the portal supposedly didn't work as if he was some kind of spoiled brat complaining about their latte being served wrong. Special attention should be given to Clay who treated the act of sneaking around a giant confidential relic with the same air as a high schooler dragging his friends along for a night of spray-painting giant day-glo penises on the side of grocery stores. The voice actors did an alright job with the lines they were given I guess, but as far as making us care about the characters was concerned the script dropped the ball. I guess it's a good thing that we got to see them all die twice.

There are so many abandoned plot threads in this machinima that the result looks like my first attempt at knitting a scarf. We never really learn what happened to the previous crew, and the way the ending's done we're supposed to believe that some epic victory was accomplished. But let's really think about this for a second: there are two copies of Peyton running around on Earth. Wouldn't that be a pretty huge problem? Wouldn't people eventually notice that there were now two Peytons running around on Earth? Why would the UNSC let the two Peytons get away from the top secret base without some kind of debriefing? Also, we're supposed to believe that now that the UNSC knows about the portal and has control over it that everything will be all hunky-dory. This is the same government that authorized the kidnapping and abuse of young children to make into super soldiers, often times with the sole purpose of being expendable, and we're supposed to believe they'll use the ability to time travel responsibly? The ending should have involved Peyton destroying the portal to prevent that kind of technology from falling into anyone's hands. And don't even ask me to try to decipher how the time-travel is supposed to work here, my doctor says that it'll just lead to another aneurysm.

The cinematography was pretty good. Some moments were bad, most of the driving scenes were exemplary, but for the most part it was just kinda there. There is some FX work which went pretty well, though the rain scenes had a few flukes. As far as cinematography and body acting goes, it's all good, but there aren't really any shots that will 'stick with me'. When I think of good cinematography, I think of the works of TGO GMBH and 2 Ghosts 1, which had images that could move us emotionally and tell their story through the visuals as well as other narrative methods. Tempus has a moment that attempts this shortly after the protagonist steps through the portal, but it doesn't really approach the same level of quality. It's adequate and that's pretty much all anyone can say about it.

The music was alright, though I think it belonged in another movie. While the music itself is undeniably well-composed, it doesn't seem to fit the tone of the scene it's in more then half the time. The music is far too energetic and pumped for a machinima about a conspiracy involving a time travel portal.

Overall the scope of the machinima is just underwhelming. The Time Machine it is not. Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure was a brainier time travel story then this and seemed a lot more plausible, and when I can say that a movie that involves Abe Lincoln lounging around a shopping mall and Napoleon going bowling seems more plausible, that says a lot.

I must stress that it is a fairly enjoyable machinima. It does have some good moments in the filming and there are times where the dialogue even works. But as a whole the movie just falls flat for me.

Honestly guys, I don't like it when I have to criticize a machinima that does its damndest to be engaging, intelligent and well-filmed. These are the kinds of machinimas that I want to see more of: plot-focused machinimas that none the less have good production values. And I'll be the first to say that Tempus Maximus is worth seeing. But it's far from perfect and isn't nearly as good as everyone has claimed it to be. I wish I could live in a world where large projects could get me excited, but unfortunately with machinima the more you put into the production, the more likely it is to crumble. Hopefully in time that will change.

Now go forth and be excellent to each other.