This year, a swords and sandals epic got released that had clunky dialogue, cheap digital camera work, extremely wooden acting and hardly even a dash of historical accuracy, in addition to an extremely loud soundtrack that overpowered the dialogue (which wouldn't have been a problem if the music weren't so overly cheap sounding). Nope, I'm not referring to 300: Rise of an Empire. I'm referring to Ivan Pavletic's "epic", 476 A.D. Part 1: The Last Light of Aries The film is apparently a part 1, yet it's hardly even 90 minutes long and worse yet, it's hardly a movie. For one, the film was made on a small budget and it shows. It boasts overly cheap and cringe-worthy green screen effects, the audio editing is horrendous and the dialogue sounds like it was recorded in a decompression tank. The rather unattractive and uncharismatic actors mumble through their lines as if English is their ninth language, but it's hard to blame them when the script is so paper-thin. Speaking of the dialogue, if you love dialogue either that appears to have been written by someone whose first language clearly isn't English, or love cliché dialogue from films such as Gladiator ("Rome... is calling me"), then get a load of this. Actually, while I'm at it, good luck trying to understand ANY of what the characters are saying because it's so hideously poorly mixed A particularly bad offender is Ivan Pavletic himself, whose accent can be described as a drunken Croatian cyborg. He recites half the dialogue like he has no idea what any of it is supposed to mean, AND HE WROTE THIS DRECK. The result is something reminiscent of Tommy Wiseau's disasterpiece "The Room", except cheaper. And it's obvious that there's only forty minutes of of intent here because the majority of the film is looped shots and stock footage. Oh speaking of which, go on youtube and look at the hilarious sex scene that apparently opens up part II that makes the sex scenes in "The Room" seem like a Coppola creation. And is worse than anything that came before in part I. Before it is a hilarious nightmare sequence cobbled from stock footage and done on Adobe Ultra and it truly must be seen to be believed. One must wonder if like Wiseau himself Pavletic had any intention on making more sex scenes But what truly baffles me most about this movie is how on earth it managed to make it into any cinema. It is completely unprofessional and looks like it was thrown together in ten days. Is it like the Special Olympics? Or are people just afraid of saying no to someone whose head clearly isn't in the right place? (Pavletic does rhyme with pathetic after all) or is the film business riddled with yes men willing to enable this guy's clearly delusional fantasies? I do believe we moviegoers have a right to know
