Metal Hurlant Chronicles

When a cheap looking Sci-Fi show comes around that I never heard of, I immediately fear the worst. Mutant Hurlant Chronicles came along- toting a big cast with recognizable names like Michael Jai White (Black Dynamite) Rutger Hauer (Blade Runner) Michael Biehn (Aliens) and John Rhys-Davies (Raiders Of The Lost Ark) I thought there might be a chance that it could be good. I was wrong. Based on the popular comic of the 80's, Heavy Metal, each episode is it's own story with a different cast that takes place on a different planet. This idea I love because it gives the viewer a new story every episode, the only problem is that almost every episode sucks. Bad writing, acting and special effects make it seem like something that would air after Sharknado on Syfy. (Fitting considering it's the same network.) Another problem is how they end each episode, there always has to be some type of M. Night Shyamaian twist that more often than not you see coming a mile away. One positive thing I can say about the show is that it looks great on Blu-ray.

This French series (shot in English) adapts stories from the "Metal Hurlant" magazine, which eventually became "Heavy Metal" in the U.S. Director Guillaume Lubrano helms six 25-minute episodes with the common thread being a metal/rock meteor (the Metal Hurlant) screaming past each of these alien worlds before each story.

"King's Crown" has peasants on a floating rock of a planet engaging in a combat tournament to determine the new king. Two of the better combatants are Michael Jai White and Scott Adkins. "Shelter Me" has a girl (Michelle Ryan) waking up in a bomb shelter and being told by a man (James Marsters) that he saved her before a nuclear war. Soon she starts doubting his story. "Three on a Match" has three men (Craig Fairbrass, Dominique Pinon, and Eriq Ebouaney) battling for space on an escape pod. "Red Light / Cold Hard Facts" is an episode split in two and was apparently the pilot that Lubrano shot to get the series greenlit. "Red Light" focuses on a prisoner (David Belle of the BANLIEUE 13 series) fighting a guard (French MMA fighter Cyril Diabate) while trying to escape a high-tech prison; "Cold Hard Facts" has folks in the 24th century discovering a 20th century cryogenic patient that they resurrect. "Pledge of Anya" has a young warrior sent by his master (Rutger Hauer) to the planet Earth to destroy a "dragon." Finally, "Master of Destiny" focuses on a intergalactic hunter named Hondo (Joe Flanigan) who sets out on a quest to find a planet where the alien race can tell you when you are going to die. This one might gain the most interest from fans as it adapts a story co-written by Alejandro Jodorowsky back in the day.

Being not all that familiar with the source material, I still found this to be a fun series and got through the two and a half hours quickly. Lubrano has definitely chosen some good stories to adapt. Sure, you'll see some twists coming a mile away, but others not so much. He also has a pretty great visual style and some of the space shots are great, esp. for a low budget series. Another thing I liked was his casting as he got some good familiar faces in there (although I doubt Hauer was ever on set with anything but a green screen) and I'll never complain about seeing White and Adkins face off. A second season has been greenlit so look for that.

i have a pretty high tolerance for science fiction, even goofy campy science fiction, heck i liked lexx, but this the some serious dreck. a few of the episodes rise up towards mediocrity... sort of like a bad episode of the 80s show "tales from the dark side", with obviously telegraphed twist ends and sub par acting but at least a decent narrative structure and look. the others look like they are plays written and produced as class assignments for a middle school creative writing class and acted by people banded from normal TV for gross incompetence. i'll admit some of the problems may be from the source material, i remember the magazine when i read it in the 80s had a tendency toward ham handed plots and obvious twist endings, but you would think the producers would have at least cherry picked their story lines from the publications long run of issues.

When you watch bad science fiction, it can be nearly as mesmerizing as watching excellent science fiction. I've probably watched 'judge dread' as many times as I have 'the man from earth', or 'chronicles of Riddick' as many times as 'the color of magic', for very different reasons obviously. The problem that I am left with in the show, is that it isn't entirely bad. The bad parts are funny, like the line "2000 light years away, that's at the end of the universe." Wait, what? It is kind of disturbing that the writers thought that was true. or did they? are they intentionally writing bad dialogue to be funny? I'm not sure. But, make no mistake, the writing is terrible, intentionally, or not, which if you are in the mood, is actually bad enough to be funny. Some people are saying the rest of it is bad, and I disagree. Makeup, graphics, staging, and cgi are all done fairly well, there are points where you can see they clearly didn't have the money to make it perfect, but this isn't the hobbit or star wars, it is a low budget TV miniseries. All of the aforementioned areas seem authentic, and well done, if not perfect. Where it gets weird is that I almost feel bad for the actors. You see moments where acting talent comes through, and no matter how talented you are, you can't make dialogue that isn't researched or thought out, which often reads like stage directions, into Shakespeare, you just can't. Normally in bad scifi you get terrible actors like vin diesel in chronicles of Riddick, or Stallone in judge dread, but some of the actors here actually have some level of talent, detracting from the humor of it. When you hear Vin Diesel respond to the line 'how do you get eyes like that?' with 'you've got to kill a lot of people' it is almost transcendently terrible. When you hear Joe Flannigan of stargate atlantis fame say that it is 2000 light years to the end of the universe, that just breaks your heart a little. If you are looking for advice on whether to watch of not, I'd say give it a go for a good laugh. I for one will probably keep watching for that reason.

SYFY is showing Metal Hurlant Chronicles = Heavy Metal ( yes, the French mag ) anthology stories. Production, acting, script all on par with standard SYFY channel fare like "Sharknado". I figured it would look cheap, that's not an issue. Sure, the acting is weak, but with ads, it's only 18 minutes of story.

Come on – they can't tell a story that holds together for a mere 18 minutes? No, they can't. ONE stupid twist ending is okay. TWO is pushing it for a 12 episode series. Doing that same "fooled you" trick ending in every god-damned story is just ridiculous. These are not stories – they are only set-ups and punch lines.

This doesn't even come close to storytelling, it's more like random juxtaposition of sci-fi & fantasy elements. The Twilight Zone did that, but they had a moral and Serling knew how to write a play in 3 acts.

Not happening with Metal Hurlant.