The Definitive Warhammer 40,000 Recommended Film List

[Death Shroud]

Platoon for me. Can't watch that film without wanting to start a Catachan army. [URL="https://youtu.be/KztP7SKe0uk"]https://youtu.be/KztP7SKe0uk[/URL]

[YorkNecromancer]

Catachans don't presently have a separate, unique list, so that's why they're absent.

Even if they did, I wouldn't go with 'Platoon' (which is a great, great film, no doubt), simply because it's much, much too obvious a choice. Same for 'Apocalypse Now'.

I might have gone with [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLVQrkWhksQ]'Winter Soldier'[/url] instead. Much harder viewing, because it comes straight from the source, and contains more viewpoints.

[Pitaya]

Heh, for genestealer cult I would had gone with "End Of Evangelion" because the evil cult wants to be come one single enthity with the Tyranid Hive Fleet while ending the world, in this case everyone turning into tang.

[Jewelfox]

I really like this approach! I haven't seen enough films to do it justice, but I did see some things differently.

Dark Angels

I always saw their central theme as being summed up in the word "Unforgiven." Except that while this supposedly applies to the Angels themselves, it really better describes the chaos marines they are willing to drop everything in order to chase down.

They're scary, like narcissistic parents who hate what you've become and aren't restrained by social / societal boundaries. They will scream at you on your lawn, poison your dog, hunt for you at your workplace, interrogate exes / significant others, call the cops on you, and try to kidnap your kids. You aren't a person to them; you're just living evidence of their failures.

Something that captures this kind of abusive family dynamic would be awesome (but terrifying) to watch.

Farsight Enclaves

Have you read any of Farsight's fiction? Because he's kind of a jerk, at least in the excerpts I read. >_>; He seeks glory, doesn't play well with others, disrespects his subordinates, and is kind of unreasonably skillful. I get the feeling he's the self-insert of someone on Games Workshop's staff, who likes Tau battlesuits but doesn't like having to answer to others (or use actual tactics in combat).

My choice for representing the country that's named after him would be any of a number of shounen anime series, with spiky-haired heroes who win through sheer force of will. Especially if the anime lacks emotional depth, beyond angst and determination. A (bad) sentai show might also work, since that's basically what The Eight are.

Tau Empire

I'm going to say the first couple of Rebuild of Evangelion films here, because the feats of technology and mobilization their society pulls off are amazing. The entire city of Tokyo-3 is a walled, mechanized fortress, bristling with fold-out gun turrets and made up of skyscrapers that retract into the ground. And yet people's daily lives in it are staggeringly normal, with kids going to school and convenience store clerks making small talk. Do they have Ethereal pheromones in the water?

At one point the entire country links its whole power grid together, in under 24 hours, to power a single gun shot by an Eva pilot at the heart of an alien nightmare. And it's not like the script hand-waves this; the montages of Every Utility Worker Ever rolling out and connecting miles of heavy-duty cables and stuff were as awesome as the fight scenes. "No Victory Without Unity," indeed.

Of course, beneath the surface their society relies on violence and coercion, to make child soldiers fight eldritch abominations until they snap. But they get to pilot cool mecha, and it's for the greater good ... right?

Chaos Daemons

Puella Magi Madoka Magica. The magical girl anime that subverted the genre the way Evangelion did "kids piloting robots," and left half its fanbase traumatized. If they didn't run screaming after what happened partway through episode three.

The series' "witches" aren't Wiccans or mages, they're greater daemons that construct "labyrinths" around them which are basically pockets of the Warp. And they are terrifying as all get out; a lot of them are stop-motion collages of physical materials, which contrast nightmarishly with the anime characters and are filled with unsettling imagery and symbology.

The witches themselves can't be reasoned with, or even communicate. Because they're like the manifestations of horrors and concepts, from abject despair to an insatiable appetite for cheese. At best, they're like Nurgle, and just can't help but make the world toxic and deadly. At worst, they're like if Khorne himself went on a rampage through a hive city, uninhibited. And the "magical girls" are intimately tied to these creatures, just like psykers are to the Warp.

Tzeentch

I am convinced that she's Flowey from Undertale. For reasons which are spoiler-iffic, and which I will not divulge because OMG everyone needs to play that game. Especially 40k fans.

[YorkNecromancer]

I really like this approach! I haven't seen enough films to do it justice, but I did see some things differently.

Dark Angels

I always saw their central theme as being summed up in the word "Unforgiven." Except that while this supposedly applies to the Angels themselves, it really better describes the chaos marines they are willing to drop everything in order to chase down.

They're scary, like narcissistic parents who hate what you've become and aren't restrained by social / societal boundaries. They will scream at you on your lawn, poison your dog, hunt for you at your workplace, interrogate exes / significant others, call the cops on you, and try to kidnap your kids. You aren't a person to them; you're just living evidence of their failures.

Something that captures this kind of abusive family dynamic would be awesome (but terrifying) to watch.

There's a couple of options that spring to mind. Possibly '[url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEyQIcuGwDw]'The People Under The Stairs'[/url], although that seems more Chaos to me. Alternately, there's [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swrcKRVgeGI]'Mirrormask'[/url], which probably does a far better job of it. Also has an excellent Eldritch Abomination in there.

Farsight Enclaves
Have you read any of Farsight's fiction? Because he's kind of a jerk, at least in the excerpts I read. >_>; He seeks glory, doesn't play well with others, disrespects his subordinates, and is kind of unreasonably skillful

It was why I went with the choice I did. Most of those traits could be used to describe Phoolan Devi; she was anything but a clear-cut hero; about the only difference was that she had no interest in glory, just revenge.

[CoffeeGrunt]

Ghost Dog is a personal favourite. I'm trying to think of suitably-obscure movies that represent 40K themes that I've seen, but ultimately can't think of any.

Perhaps [URL="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDDFNpj9xBQ"]District 13[/URL] as a look into the live in an underhive? It captures the poverty and the general hope that the underhive could be saved, but it's collapsed into gang warfare looked down upon with great distaste by the ones living in luxury above them. The mayor of Paris could very well be a Planetary Governor, and the solution they come up with to the problem is quite brutally 40K in its callous disregard for lives.

Also some cool parkour gunfights, yo.

[URL="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QILNSgou5BY"]Elysium [/URL]could also qualify, especially with the human faces being replaced by cold, callous machines who control the populace, corral them into working on in unsafe factory jobs and keep them living in the slums while the owners reap the eternal rewards. They even literally live on a space station of paradise in orbit, and are practically immortal due to advanced technology they withhold from the populace. Rejuvenat treatment, much?

[URL="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMRD3z_mTqI"]Lebanon [/URL]is also good. A depiction of an Israeli tank crew sent in to support an attack during the war. The entire movie, start-to-finish, is shot in the tank or through its optics, blending uncomfortably close-ups shots of the crew slowly falling apart as they're forced into worse and worse situations during the battle, with impassive, clinical views of the world outside, permanently lined with a crosshair. Very easy to imagine it as an untrained Leman Russ crew in a PDF putting down a rebellion.

Also, [URL="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24XXECv-oWw"]White Tiger[/URL]. A Soviet tank crew of the best the Red Army can find are assembled to hunt down a White Porsche Tiger tank that has been appearing without warning, slaughtering Red Army tank offensives, then disappearing faster and through terrain no tank should. It mixes mysticism with cold reality, and the White Tiger itself is more than it would seem. It's also quite a brutal depiction of the Great Patriotic War, by Russian standards. Perhaps a Chaos Possessed tank?

[Gotthammer]

Heh, for genestealer cult I would had gone with "End Of Evangelion" because the evil cult wants to be come one single enthity with the Tyranid Hive Fleet while ending the world, in this case everyone turning into tang.

Lolz - maybe that's how they get people to join. I mean yeah there's the six armed monstrosities and eventual consumption by alien horrors... but they've got tang.

[Jewelfox]

Well I mean, the tangification wasn't the point of End of Evangelion, so much as that the writer was disgusted with Evangelion fans after getting hate mail and graffiti for writing an ending where Shinji learns to accept himself. And not putting in enough fanservice, I guess.

Also, for underhive stuff the trailer for the (now canceled) Star Wars 1313 comes to mind. Especially the part at the very end. It's like the Coruscant skyline, but a dark and smoky version of it that has a ceiling.

[Jewelfox]

Oh yeah ...

Chaos Space Marines

Okay, this is not fair to all the diverse chaos marine legions and players. But when I think of the grotesque, Hellraiser-esque, red horned marines, that Games Workshop seems to think are the only chaos marines, what comes to mind is Dark Dungeons. Yes, the anti-D&D Chick tract. Some people made it into a movie in order to mock it, but it parodies itself so well that they didn't even try. They just played it perfectly straight.

It's got all of its target audience's fears in it. The college kids are playing dark, Satanic games For Teh Evulz. They're learning real magic, and not caring if people get killed. And those gods that their characters worship are real! Cthulhu is real!!!!1! We have to burn all their books, and stop them by any means necessary!

I think of that because it's like, I'm sure there's a portrayal of these guys that I could take seriously, but the ones that Games Workshop put in Dark Vengeance and video games just seem to me more like they're the embodiment of Satanic Panic nightmares. 'Cause when I think of like, actual psychological profiles of serial killers, and perpetrators of hate crimes and war crimes and stuff, they never put on red armour with horns on their head.

Mostly they look, talk, and act like the "heroes," of stories about fighting ultimate evil. Stories like 40k.




EDIT: Wow, that was mean and sanctimonious of me. Sorry.

[Rory Wildwards]

The imperium; Brazil. By Terry Gilliam. Massive oppressive red tape and bureaucracy.