Mediocre Movie Month 2016: Some Thoughts on "Manborg"

Look at all the laurel wreaths along the bottom!
The true mark of quality.

Manborg (2011)

Directed by Steven Kostanski
Produced by Steven Kostanski
Written by Steven Kostanski, Jeremy Gillespie

Starring Matthew Kennedy, Adam Brooks, Meredith Sweeney, Conor Sweeney, Ludwig Lee

Budget: $1,000 (Canadian)

Nostalgia is kind of played out.

"But Dylan," you say, "you're just repeating yourself from the other day in an attempt to draw some cheap chuckles!"

Right you are, hypothetical strawman. But speaking of segues, let's talk about what happens when the inmates begin running the asylum.

Over the past five years or so, there have been a rash of films, television shows, and other media which aim to recapture the tone of science fiction as people remember it back in the 80s. The first time I truly noticed this was with J.J. Abrams's 2011 Spielberg love-letter Super 8. Depending on who you ask, it was either a functional tribute to films like ET and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, or a try-hard attempt that felt like a cheap imitation rather than a true homage.

This trend has really picked up recently, what with the success of the internet short-film Kung Fury, Netflix series Stranger Things, and goofy gore-fest Turbo Kid. That list is by no means exhaustive, but there's a reason I chose those three specific works: each of them managed to capture a specific tone while adding its own voice to the chorus shouting its way into the abyss.

Manborg seems to have slipped under the radar, and I think I understand why: restraint can be a wonderful thing.

At roughly 71 minutes, Manborg is by no means an epic. It tells the story of...well, Manborg. We start with a recounting of the final days of Earth's war against Count Draculon and his legions of Hellborgs as they invade and conquer the planet. Manborg (unnamed before his transformation) is killed by Count Draculon after the villain drinks his brother's blood. Uncounted years later he wakes up, having been transformed into a half-man, half-borg, all-hero. He teams up with a squadron of specialized heroes, including martial artist #1 Man, Aussie gun-toter Justice, and knife-babe Mina. These four fighters escape Draculon's clutches and wage a guerrilla war against the legions of Hell itself.

Sound familiar? It should, because the entire movie comes across as a very deliberate attempt to ape the Toy Line adaptations of the 80s, where groups of specialized weirdos with appropriately distinguishable characteristics take on an equally-marketable bad guy.

Look at that articulation!
Also, this is within the first two minutes.

There are certain things the movie does that I really, really like. The bad guys, when not played by rubber-masked extras, are stop-motion with surprising quality. There's a...not-quite-film grain filter overlaid over the entire movie that gives it the general appearance of a Command & Conquer cinematic, but after the first few minutes it blends into the rest of the movie with surprising ease.

And roughly 5 minutes later.

At least, I thought it was easy. Really, whether you enjoy this movie relies entirely on your level of tolerance, because this movie is most definitely not for those who demand crisp, high-def action movies. The production not only relies on greenscreen, it wallows in it. Visual effects are bare-boned, with just enough resolution to get things done. Sound effects for Manborg's whirr-stomp-gearclicks are recognizable to anyone who's downloaded a soundpack from a public domain website. Every single line of dialogue has been obviously ADRed over...

As a passion project put on for a shoestring budget with a production team obviously invested in making the best possible film they could, Manborg succeeds on pretty much every level, in my opinion. If you have a soft spot for goofy action schlock, it's worth checking out. Of course, at 71 minutes long it drags at certain spots, and serves as a fair example of why something like Kung Fury still holds the crown as one of the best nostalgia-kings; sometimes pastiches need to practice restraint.

The Man

Not shown: the jpeg compression on all the text

What surprised me most was the humor present at certain points of the film. The character of the Baron, commandant of Draculon's prison full of arena fighters, has several very funny moments where he's trying to flirt with Mina and the delivery, despite the low-articulation mask, works purely based on the voicework. Throughout the Baron proved to be the funniest part of the movie, with the exception of three lines from the end of the movie delivered by Manborg's brother's ghost (it makes sense in context).

Surprisingly, some of the composition and digital effects are actually serviceable. There's a hoverbike chase scene at the halfway point that's better put-together than most high-budget chase scenes today. There's some legitimate attempts to making the world look like a post-apocalypse, and the character prosthetics and makeup are pretty passable. Manborg himself looks fine, considering it's mostly just wires and metal slapped on a harness.

Finally, the gore and animation effects are pretty good for having such a small team and low budget. Various stop-motion baddies are integrated into scenes with live-action actors, and though the goofy filter is off-putting at first, I got over it pretty quick and admired the labor that went into this.

The Borg
The movie drags on, and its length is really the only mark I would hold against it. While Turbo Kid manages to maintain its momentum for the majority of its run and Kung Fury has a really good cheese-to-minute ratio, I can easily see Manborg wear out its welcome for those without a pretty high tolerance for goofball low-budget nonsense.

The Hero
Interestingly enough, Steven Kostansky's got a fairly impressive IMDB profile, with special effects work done on large-budget works like Suicide Squad and Mortal Instruments. Considering that list, alongside other movies directed by special effects and stunt coordinators (I'm looking at you, John Wick), maybe we should stop letting directors...direct.

Finally, there's a fake trailer after the end credits for a movie called Bio-Cop about a cop who's been made immortal...by making it so he can't die, no matter what happens. It's about five minutes long, and if you can find only a single thing to watch from this review, watch that.

Verdict
Does this look like something you'd enjoy?

Then go for it.