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In more details, he was listening on a conversation between the 2 entites and had to break concentration to warn to other because of the eminent danger. That split second was enough for the entity to possess him and it's so dangerous because of the power that they hold when possessed, that the space marines had to terminate him with ''Extreme Prejudice''
The orb said "No escape. I have failed. We have all failed. The Astartes defy our touch. You must return! Break your seal! We'll never survive. You must take them!" And then the Inquisitor says "Recall them immediately!" then the Inquisitor gets possessed. Had they not put him down, he would have been the epicenter of a nuclear sized explosion of psychic energy, killing everyone and ripping the ship apart.
@@skywillfindyou where did you get that info from? Pretty sure it's confirmed that it was some warp predator that caught the scent of the entity (the orb), because it "broke it's seal".
"At the beginning of time, the universe was created. This made a lot of people very angry, and has been widely regarded as a bad move." - Douglas Adams.
11:38 - The Sanctioned Psyker is using the restraint harness and cogitator as sort of intermediaries to interface and keep safe, keeping his defenses up with the benefit of ritual and ceremony. When he hears the two orbs talking about "taking them" he breaks concentration and yells as loudly as he is able "RECALL THEM IMMEDIATELY!" (That muffled sound is as loud as he can willingly create sound.) ...Then the orb possesses him, showing him horrors and starting to turn him into a gateway/take full control. The Captain and Lieutenant recognize the psychic blowback signs and take proper action.
the bare minimum of action. if that body is anything short of a pool of sizling carbohydrates once the re finished, I would be very surprised. Can't be heretical if holy fire has changed you into an entirely different state of matter.
It’s also not that he’s just mumbling, the characters are talking throughout the entire video, but it’s muffled because we are actually hearing it from the perspective of outside the helmets. For us to be able to hear him, that guy has to be shouting at the top of his lungs. Normal chatter is entirely mute without access to their intercoms however. It also goes to show just how loud the inquisitor’s chanting is after he gets possessed.
The best thing the Astartes creator did was avoid too many overt references in the Astartes series. All the little details are correct, Space Marine tactics and fighting style, command and leadership style, all the little symbols and greeblies are spot on, but nothing is specifically referencing any specific part of the lore, I can't tell you anything about this specific Chapter of Space Marines, or about who they are fighitng (beyond informed guesses) which really leans on the mystery side of things, while still giving a very visceral look at this universe.
the chapter is the Retributors chapter, as mentioned in the very beginning (OC chapter of the creator), the enemies are also an OC from the creator as they wanted to avoid established enemies, basically its all OC to avoid lore inconsistencies
@@mahpell7173 What's shitty of GW is that they had the creator pull his original video down and they uploaded it to their shitty payed streaming site with new music/sound that doesn't fit the animation as well.
To explain what happened to the tentacle thing: if you pause around 35:17 and skip through the frames, a very brief frame reveals that shadow that hit the tentacle thing to be a armed, legs, horned, creature. This is to say that when the orb thing 'escaped' with the marines, it did so via the warp (dream land but exclusively ALL of your worst nightmares combined). Within moments of entering the warp, a warp predator (daemon) noticed the psyker tentacle monster and IMMEDIATELY devoured it. The seal the orb broke was probably their specifically to protect it from just such a thing happening, because demons find psykers absolutely delicious.
2:20: Regular boarding action. To mind you, that was not a drop-ship or space-plane they were flown in, that was a boarding torpedo. It has front-facing las-guns that bore through the hull. 2:54: But they are. Astartes are genetically modified warriors, they are taller, bulkier than regular humans, have a couple of extra-organs implanted. Mind you, they aren't naturally grown. To become Astartes, a regular human has to be chosen at a young age to undergo a strenuous and painful procedure that takes several years while being pumped full of military doctrine and knowledge, trained to the point of physical depletion and beyond. Most measurements put the Astartes at around 7-9', depending on which Legion they belong to. They are trained to work as a perfect team. And 6 people is really enough for such a ship. They are so powerful a single chapter of 100 Astartes would be considered overkill to subdue our planet as we are now, even if we all banded together. 4:14: Well, the weapons are so-called Bolters, they are basically firing a miniature rocket-explosive, not your regular rifleshots. You can see their rocket-motors still pushing them against the shield at 5:09. These bullets are designated by the official compediums as .75 caliber on normal Bolters and 1.00 calibre on Heavy Bolters. Even the least dangerous ones are basically mini-explosives. Because the armour they have to punch through is accordingly more advanced. But regular padding or unprotected areas like the face - well, say byebye. 4:59: Well, keep in mind, the armour system has integrated systems. We don't hear them, but they are on a constant intercom with each other. 5:27: That's called a Psyker. They tap into the Immaterius of the Warp to use basically magick. But since this is the grimdark Warhammer, the Warp is a hellish place, and you cannot have superpowers without superdrawbacks, using that kinda power is dangerous. 7:18: He has a golden I sigil, means he's a psyker from the Inquisitorium. Special group of people with special mission mandates regarding all things crazy. Psykerism, Heretics, Xenos, whatever. Note that he's connected to that orb. Basically suicide already. 7:26: They wear white helmets, that signifies them as leaders already. The cape signifies one as a higher-standing one. 7:44: Yep, those are the different sensor systems in the helmet of the one with the cracked eye-lense. 7:51: They have electrically-motivated fibre-bundles that augment movement. 8:17: Presumably an automaton. See the skulls and spines in the background. They look identical to the ones from the previous psykers. It appears they were puppets, controlled by a powerful psyker. Keep in mind, a potent psyker can control an entire planet of mental noodlebrains. Controlling this many automata as a capable psyker is childs-play. 9:26: Precisely, which makes me assume that this is the powerful psykic entity that controlled the automata. My best guess is, it's an Umbra. An alien species that appears as blackish spheres to normal eyes, but is somewhat not fully in our dimension, somewhat related and close to the Warp. That freakish, hellish place. 9:47: They seem to be some kind of beacon. Either as inhibitors or as controllers or for that Inquisitor to listen in on the chatter of the orbs (I presume the last, given the following scene on the Chapters flagship). 10:32: The dialogue between the Orbs is as follows: Orb 1: "I have failed brother...we have all failed. The Astartes defy our touch. You must return. Break your seal" Orb 2: "We will never survive" Orb 1: "You must. Take them" Inquisitor (shortly before the Orb possesses him): "Astartes in Danger!" 11:09: He's about to. You hear him chant? Keep in mind, these helmets are meant to seal sound off. Nothing from outside gets in, nothing from inside gets out. So for us on the outside to hear him chant in the inside, image how he must be screaming. 11:27: Possess psyker, terrifying threat. Dealt with them properly. A regular human would be killed by one bullet. A crazed, possessed psyker can take several clips. All the while rending your flesh from your bones. 11:40: Kinda both. For someone psykic to do anything with the Immaterium, or the Warp, is a constant dancing on the edge of oblivion. For as valued as they are, they are also dangerous. Especially when the enemy takes them over. The Warp is basically Hell. Controlled by chaos demons. A handful superpowerful ones, dozens less-powerful ones and gazillions of even lesser ones, all vying for power and strength, all constantly trying to wreck the day of some other sod. 12:13: Plasma weapons are a bit unstable in the Warhammer universe. But don't worry. 12:42: Probably the Umbra. 12:58: Notice how the blood clots immediately? That's why Astartes can lose a limb and shrug it off like a light punch. Another benefit of the genetic manipulation. 13:01: You see the three bolts on his brow? They are service marks. Silver ones represent 10 or 50 years of service, depending on chapter, gold ones 100 years or 10 years in the Chaplaincy. Since he has 2 silver and one golden, I assume that means he either served for 20 years regular and 10 years in the chaplaincy, or for 120 years normally (and yes, they can live that long). 17:46: If you listen and watch closely, you can actually note the slight delay between the visual explosion and the boom. We are at a distance and thus we see the explosion just a fraction of a second before we hear it. 21:22: Yes, because this way, the chaos of battle, the confusion and disorientation becomes palpable even to the viewer. 24:00: Well, technically, we cannot know what precisely he is doing, either. He's obviously connected to the orb, but for what? Surveillance? Is he actively fighting it already? Is he probing it? Is he containing its powers? We don't know. We only know once those beacons are jabbed into the other orb, that the Inquisitor somehow managed to enter the telepathic communication between the two orbs. 27:55: Well, certainly not inviting it for a cup of tea. It's alien, it's xenos, it's psykic. Purge it. If it's not human, human-made or benefitting the Imperium of Man, suffer not its existence. 28:58: Yes, because essentially, that's what he is. Yes, he's a psyker. Yes, if he could, his abilities would allow him to control thousands, if not millions of weakminded people. But those orbs are something else. If he is powerful to weaker men, then he must be a weak little child to these orbs. 30:17: He was meditating, focussing all his power. He broke that focus to tell the Veteran Sergeant that "Astartes in danger!". And that was the slipup that sealed his fate. He dropped his guard and let the focus slide, and that's when the orb got into his mind. 31:26: Well, it looks like the statues, but the statues were all sitting in what appears to be a desert valley. This is a statue that has a hand before its face in what appears to be a cave with lava. And it holds the Astartes team, so this is more a premonition of a future event. 32:12: Yes, fully, that's why they reacted so quickly. Think of it this way: In order to use the psykic abilities that are bestowed by the hellish Warp, you have to let it touch you. If you let it touch you too much, too often, you get tainted, drawn to it like a drug. If you become addicted, you are a threat. Every time a psyker does something with the warp, they risk becoming addicted. Every time they do anything, every non-psyker gets a twitchy trigger-finger. No matter if that is some simple psyker or the biggest head-honcho of all. Especially with the most powerful psyker you have to be on your guard because when that guy becomes corrupted, Kansas won't even here to go south no more. 32:44: Again another representation of the Umbra is that of a convoluted mass of tentacles, arms, appendages that can seemingly twist and contort in impossible ways. 35:20: Yes, it got "shot" by something, somewhere. That's normal stuff in the Warp. This is what I meant above, the denizens of this terrible place are constantly out to erase each other to get just that bit more powerful.
@@mluzmoor1 Always a pleasure to help. It took me about 15 times watching it in slo-mo to get that many details, and I greatly enjoyed every bit of it. Feel free to ask away if you have further questions, also about the broader franchise.
Been a long time though with no news - not sure I trust GW to let him do his thing - I mean he is SO talented but his stuff should be everywhere by now.
@@viktorlindqvist5308I wanna believe so but they would've at least said something by now, no? It's been about 4 years since they hired him and it's been completely radio silent. I don't trust em
The person praying in front of the Orb is a Inquisitorial Psyker, and the Orb was being "held" prisoner on the ship by a custom Space Marine chapter the creator made up, and their assault on the heretic vessel was to seize the other Orb, which those things the 5 Space Marines were stabbing into the Orb were most likely psychic dampeners to suppress it's psychic abilities long enough for the Astartes to put it in restraints and get it on board their main ship. It was psychic energy that was pushing the approaching Astartes back, and when that failed the Orb on the heretic ship with the Space Marines began communicating with the Orb that was on the Chapter vessel and the Psyker Inquisitor was attempting to eavesdrop on the conversation the two Orbs were having, which required an ungodly amount of focus not only to just hear what the Orbs were saying, but to hear it without both going mad as well as not becoming possessed. So when the Orb told the other Orb to "take" the 5 Astartes, the Inquisitor broke his focus to warn the commander and recall the Marines immediately, and that momentary lapse in concentration allowed the Orb to take possession of the Psyker, and a possessed Psyker is one of the most dangerous things in existence. The reason why the Commander and his second went to such lengths to kill him after he became possessed is because it's not enough to just shoot and kill a possessed Psyker. If even so much as a toe survives the possessed Psyker could fold spacetime in on itself and rip open a hole to the void which would then allow untold legions of demons to spill out into the mortal plane. So the commander punched his head off, and the second dumped a mag worth of Bolter rounds into the corpse to obliterate it in it's entirety. Bolters don't fire bullets, they fire mini rocket-propelled smart grenades that go off after a short duration(though they come out so fast the impact kills most things anyways, the subsequent explosion is just extra insurance that the thing they're shooting really is dead).
That's a good description. Some big dudes killed a ball. Then the ball fought back. Human basic is not problem. Man of Gold so cooooool. Sucky suck and warp fuckery. The End… I want more please 💯❤️😈🤖🫡
It's funny, because it's a literal quote from the WH40k lore about the Space Marines that "Nothing that big and bearing that much weight should be able to move that fast"
They are quite literally Halo Spartans turned up past 11 to 18! Bigger faster, stronger and with (usually) FAR more combat experience...and that REALLY says something.
@@armaggedon4christ It's also crazy that these Space Marines sometimes are defeated because the enemies of the Imperium are ridiculously overpowered as well
@@MrDrumcoreyYeah, but they aren’t really the same kind of creature. The amount of resources that go into making one Custodes is way more than even a dozen of Astartes. Not only that, but a Custodes has to begin with an infant. And each one created is it’s own process. Taking place on Terra itself. No Gene Seed to replicate the process. An Astartes can be implanted anywhere they have a ship. From young men of enough purity genetically, and strength of will to survive the trials. All that for the even clearer issue. Each Custodes is most suited to fighting on their own strength. A singular Champion. Get a bunch of them together, they are still like that. Astartes are meant to be deployed in force. To work in tandem. To bring victory via cooperation. It’s a whole other thing, even though superficially they appear to be similar. The only thing they share is their Loyalty to the Emperor, and that they were elevated out of humans via various forms of modification in development. If I had to bet on a battle, I’d take Custodes. If had to bet on a War, I’d bet on Astartes. Excluding other factors than just how their roles work. Even if it took an entire Company to take down one Custodes, they are suited to the sustained attrition, and cooperative enough to make that their edge. That’s really the point though. Totally different animals. It’s like comparing a Leopard to a Wolf. Any pack of Leopards just isn’t a thing. A single Leopard would never find a Lone Wolf to fight. It would contravene their strengths to face a pack of them. They are fast and agile, strong, stealthy, and can bound straight up the trunk of a 20 foot tree. Why would they ever expose themselves to domain of Wolves? Wolves excel at cooperate hunts on the ground, favoring endurance. Leopards favor surprise and overwhelming power on a target.
Trust me, the more you know about the lore of W40K, the better this gets. It is truely awesome and I hope the dude who made this gets to have the career he deserves. There is SO MUCH one can do wrong, when trying to transfer the W40K world to film, he did everything right.
Expert use of vagueness is in his favor. The sound design, is just perfect. Unlike some other pieces of 40k animation and fan projects, this really drove home the majesty of the Imperium.
@jackr2287 well, its rumors, no way to confirm but ppl say games workshop threatened to lawsuit the man if he doesnt join them and work for them and 2nd he gonna hand over the finished product now first part would explain why his channel suddenly closed and deleted the original vid and 2nd part would explaain why theres a shitty edited ver of astartes by games workshop, with small edits like company logo and bad sfx. theres a couple video around utube explain this search "what happened to astartes" and u'll get a few
@@zerotrig8331His channel was suddenly brought down because of a large and concerted effort by Games Workshop over the years to attempt to gain exclusive control depictions of their trademarks. Arch (Warhammer) covered this a few years ago. It's not like this is an unknown.
The lore behind 40k is far too vast to try and put into a single comment but the Astartes are genetically enhanced humans, so while the armor is bigger than them, they are like 8ish ft tall due to the augmentations (You can see how big they are in the first couple shots as there are some normal humans scooting past them in the hallway when they are loading into the assault ram). One of the things they get implanted into them is an organ/piece of technology called "The Black Carapace" (I think you see a bit of it on the one guys neck when he takes off his helmet) that lets them control their armor almost like a second skin, so yes their suits do help them move faster (those packs on their backs are basically power plants) but they are still ridiculously fast even without them. With the guy getting posessed that was not planned, it seems like he was hooked up to the orb to try and discern what it was doing but when the orb on their ship got in touch with the one on the rebel ship it took him over and began to fry his psyche (hence the screaming). Psykers wield great power, but it is highly volatile so if one ever begins to lose control they must be dealt with quickly lest things spiral wildly out of control as their power is drawn from "The Warp" which is a short of shadow dimension that mirrors our own but is ruled over by horrific daemon lords that embody different elements of Chaos. The giant gold colossus is not some specific thing in lore but the thing I find cool about that shot where we see him is that in the background there are more of the golden heads/spines as if those 2 guys from the previous room were a first draft or something. As for the orbs there have been some videos speculating on what they are but there is no definitive answer. Right before the scene where the orb shows its true form it seems like the guy there got the communication from their ship that something was wrong (the marine that ran off before the ritual guy got fried was presumably heading to the bridge to get in contact with the away team but it was too late). That final shot if you look really closely you can see that there are flashes of light on the other pillars where it seems that the rest of the away team has also been teleported to this strange place. The guy who made this was hired by Games Workshop (the guys who make Warhammer) I do not know what project he is working on for them now but presumably he is doing something over there.
No, the orbs are a firm of technology from an ancient alien race that was from the Goul Stars in either the Culixus Sector or the neighboring Koronus Expanse. Their stuff is infused with warp energy and has a habit of changing those who use it into ungodly powerful cannibalistic mockeries of their former selves. So a Tuesday.
@@keaering5183 If i remember correctly before he went to GW the creator said the large golden husk was the rebels attemping to create a false Emperor, likely at the behest of the sphere or w/e was using the spheres to communicate.
One more small thing that I haven't seen in the comments so far is that if you pay attention in the ending sequence, you can see little blips of light on the other pillars where the other members of the squad teleport to!
“Warhammer fans, Loremasters, join me in battle.” For a while I didn’t understand this comment but then I realized, “We’re in a fight against ignorance.” -Pulls out an Axe of Aktually- I will join you in glorious combat! So I’ve seen Astartes many times, read many comments, and one theory that I read and really liked goes like this: When red-cloak guy was listening in on the orbs we see that his aura in the Warp is a black smoke. When tentacle-demon has the Space Marines in the Warp it is successfully attacked by a black smoke. What likely happened is that even though red-cloak died in the Space Marine ship, his psychic presence in the Warp lingered long enough for him to rescue the Space Marines. Hope that helps!
After watching it a few times, I'm now sure this is _not_ the case. The black 'smoke' is actually the plasma shot that was fired into the sphere in the previous scene - it acts exactly as shown during previous shots, except that in whatever warp pocket this takes place in, its color has shifted to black. The psychic backlash that followed is also what blew the focus-character's arm off or, alternatively, the plasma shot through the entire warp bubble and came out from where it originated. Yes, it's also a time paradox, because Warp.
@ghetta Neither of these theories are true. What actuallyᵀᴹ happens, is that a daemon attacks the orb-aliens soul in the warp, since it's full-power use of its psychic might makes it light up as a beacon to all warp denizens (thereby broadcasting 'I/free food am/is over here' at full blast). That is why it earlier said to its kindred, that breaking its seal and taking "them" aka the astartes was impossible and that they would never survive this course of action. The creator of Astartes has already confirmed that its attacker is a daemon, too.
Little fun, slightly annoying fact, the creator was approached by Games Workshop lawyers after he published this. Their topic of conversation, legal action, or join us. GW doesn't like when people outside of their organization violate their IP's. Crappy, but true.
I think my favorite yet super small detail was when the space marine was shooting at 5:45 , and the bullets were bouncing off the psychic wave heading towards him. It happened so quick but a really nice touch there.
Those lovely tiny details. At 3:20 when the marine in the background clears a room by firing into it a few times, and then throwing a grenade inside before moving on is really cool. And of course the entire Multilaser sequence, that demonstrates how fast Space Marines can process combat data.
Same! Another small detail i liked was a tiny flash on another pillar in the final scene, like the marine's comrades were also being teleported to the same location. (It is easier to see if you maximize the resolution, if only for that scene, if hunting for what i'm talking about)
Yet. These types of work take considerable amounts of time to do well, and if he started a fresh project when hired, I wouldn't expect anything of this quality level for a couple years. Give them some time to make something you'll love as much as this project before sh!tting all over what you assume is poo without having seen *anything* that backs up your words.
They also prevented him from making any more of these by 'offering' him a job. basically shutting him down out of jealousy that he made something hundreds of times better than they ever managed.
@@Kainlarsen that's the risk you take when you play with other people's IPs... he could have made a movie based on his own invented universe, but he probably isn't that creative. most digital artists aren't.
One of my favourite little moments in this that builds lore if you know a bit about 40k is at 11:40. When the first marine reaches out and grabs the orb (involuntarily) the marine next to him IMMEDIATELY raises his bolter, suspecting him to be possessed, only to be grabbed before he can do anything. Like they know they are dealing with something 'beyond' and have zero hesitancy and zero tolerance. It reinforces the point earlier where the marines kill the inquisitor. It's not cause the inquisitor is 'just a human' they would kill each other in a heartbeat if their suspicions are confirmed (and have had to do so, chaos marines are a thing).
Like the Iron Hands say: Flesh is WEAK. It's vulnerable to corruption, and one must always, ALWAYS be on guard for it, ready to destroy it with zero hesitation. It doesn't matter WHO, as they are immediately deemed irredeemable and ended with extreme prejudice. Chaos corruption is THAT dangerous.
I love the little head-movements near the orb, both as they approach, but also there is this tiny, tiny little double-take that the lead-marine makes upon reaching the orb. Like he was looking at it, and got just the *tiniest* bit entranced before his brother walked past with the blades.
That's crazy I never noticed that. Good call. The zero hesitation on killing the friendly psyker is nuts and gets me every time. They're so disciplined and brutal, I absolutely love it.
I love how the second use of the plasma pistol that blasts his hand off is a complete mirror of the first. He faces the camera and we see his pistol from a low angle to highlight how its his long range "ace in the hole", while in the second it's fully side on with him facing the orb. It shows that he's not completely out of his depth, but compared to the first use of it, he's lost control, is using it out of desperation, and something is bound to go wrong this time.
I love this. The way you're constantly commentating, but managing to not overshadow the video, and you're not just speaking for the sake of filling space but actually providing well thought out commentary.
5:16 always gives me chills.. it perfectly depicts that spacemarines arent slow, lumbering giants, but killermachines that shouldnt be as agile and fast as they are. god i love astartes.. so incredibly well done.
It really speaks to how well the short was made that you were able to infer so much about Warhammer that was very close to, or actually, correct because he highlights details and commands the immersion so well with the filmmaking.
"What is this psychic power they are using?!" It is literally a person tapping into the Etherial plane (usually called The Warp), which is currently in such a turmoil that it is the homestead for demon lords. Psykers, the WH40k version of a Mage, literally taps into the powers of the demonic dimensions but in doing so also becomes a bridge between the mortal plane and the demonic plane! Meaning the Psykers can gain powers from the Warp but when doing so also risk that the demons living there senses them, possess them and start to try to take over the mortal plane! The guy kneeling with the incense was literally sitting there, praying, performing ceremonies to try to keep his/her soul pure enough to not get possessed by demonic forces in preparation for if or when the two orbs (the one they have trapped and the one on the ship) started to communicate. The split second that the person turned to shout a warning at the leader in the white armor was enough for him to lose focus and get taken by the demonic forces. as he burst with energy they dispose of him before the demons can manifest. Killing a person possessed by demons can take multiple Astartes (the guys in the Power Armors) and you saw how they just massacred the regular human troops on their way to the orbl. Punching the guy's face in and shooting him with multiple rounds was not an overreaction.
Honestly I'd argue not dousing him in a flamer makes this an underreaction. Sure, you poured bolter rounds into the body, but that's not sure to banish the damn thing. Blessed prometheum flames on the other hand, will make sure. (But it lacks the immediacy of bolt rounds, so use both.)
Great breakdown, I really think Astartes can stand by itself as a lesson or discussion-point in film-school. One shot which I truly love, but doesn't get much attention is the long one-shot of the boarding-craft flying from one ship to the other in the beginning. The little tactical details really sell it, but you only see them if you watch the same shot three or four times focusing on a different area each time through. 1. the escort fighters drawing-fire from a different attack-vector. 2. The decoy-drones intercepting and spoofing the missiles fired at the landing-ship on approach. 3. The point-defense system on the landing craft shooting missiles which got past the decoy-drones. 4. The smooth, natural, almost sleepy way the landing-craft maneuvers and rolls on the approach all the way to impact. Showing this kind of tactical depth and "realism" makes it feel both genuine and intense (rather than like showing off, or unnecessary theatrical effects) I also LOVE that there is (basically) no spoken lines, since poor writing or delivery is a common weak-point and very immersion-breaking. And because it makes for a piece that can be enjoyed regardless of the viewer's own language. We need more films made as lovingly and well as Astartes is.
You are quickly becoming my favorite reactor, you are 100 % immersed into what you're watching, and you are quite knowledgeable about technical stuff, really cool!
I normally don’t enjoy reaction videos but this one is really cool. Educational and the passion this man has for filmmaking seeps through. This isn’t just a great short, it’s even better seeing it the second time with this superb breakdown as to why it works.
I like how you break everything down and provide your own analysis. I've been studying color theroy as an employee of Sherwin-Williams. I love how you show so much insight about what the director did. You touch upon ideas/theories I never would have considered when watching film.
The last shot of the video as you described as a painting is heavily inspired by Zdzisław Beksiński work. Polish painter and photographer known as the Nightmare Artist. Absolutely recommend to look at his paintings. Master and a genius.
Oh, and by the way, it’s not that they’re not talking; you just can’t hear them. They took it from the perspective of an outside observer. They are talking through internal comms constantly, but unless they are literally shouting at the top of their lungs, you cannot hear them. For example: at 5:02, you can actually tell when the captain gives the order for the other marines to attack with the little head movement. 10:52 you can hear the inquisitor (that’s what the guy with all the magic regalia is btw) yell “recall them immediately!” So loud you can hear it through his helmet 10:55: the commander isn’t just waving his hand, he’s giving and order we can’t hear to the other marine. 11:12: you can straight up hear the inquisitor chanting through his helmet. That shows just how LOUD he’s doing it. 11:32: you can just vaguely hear them relay the commander’s orders to the marines here if you listen closely enough. You actually talk over it.
I love the little touch in the beginning where they are blessing their weapons. Gives a bit of foreshadowing as to the threat they could be dealing with
Easily one of the best reactions on this one. The point you made about no dialogue making you feel like youre on this journey and afraid to speak is such a good way of explaining the immersion!
You can feel the weight of every body, every weapon, every piece of armour. You can feel the tension, the strain against the psychic force, even the sharpness of the knife's edge and point. Everything has a sense of presence and solidity. It's amazing.
This is insane, I found your channel a week ago with the World of Warcraft reactions, and now Warhammer 40k? I've been absolutely enjoying your reactions and analysis, and live streams no matter the genre of content, but damn you are now 2/2 of my favorite stuff my guy! Warhammer and Warhammer 40k, just like WoW has a tone of stuft to watch, lore to explore and for 40K even the fanmade stuft is amazing. "Helsreach" comes to mind, which is basically a fully animated series of an official 40k audiobook, excellent story animation.
Oh man I love that you start digging into the Warhammer cinematics! Warcraft, then this, Thank you! You make me relive the joy of seeing those amazing cinematics for the first time. Cheers!
In my opinion out of all the reactors of this video you’ve had by far the most insightful commentary about visual language and how it can wordlessly and seamlessly tell a story. I always keep coming back to this reaction. It doesn’t help that I also went to film school but he’s WAAAY smarter than I am.
I LOOOOVE how he shot his blaster to buy that extra split second and close that distance just that much more... and just powered through it like a BOSS til homie ran up to even the field
To my knowledge what happened to the Psyker (The guy who got possessed) basically, it can happen at any time to any Psyker if they let their guard down. The Warp (Hell essentially) invades their mind and tears them open from the inside, tearing a hole into the Warp through them and releasing demons everywhere. They murdered the Psyker before that could happen.
First of all, that Psyker is lucky to continue it's heretical existence vs joining some other 10,000 Psykers in any given day of the week that are sacrificed in an effort to powering the Golden Throne.
One of the biggest things about the Space Marines how efficiently deadly they are, not a single wasted motion to lay waste to their enemies, and one of the best ways Astartes shows this is just by not letting the audience hear their vox chatter. Granted, there wouldn't be much, as every Space Marine already knows his job when in combat, but still, it really drives home the sense that they operate as a hivemind almost, they are such a well oiled machine of death.
Oh man first your getting into wow and now wh40k. I love both of these things so much. Very cool to see you reacting to them and breaking it all down from a new perspective
The attention to detail is incredible- notice in the room with the giant golden man construct, in the background, barely visible, are many stands holding the same external spinal columns the two psykers were wearing. There is a huge potential story in that little visual connection that is only hinted and never told. Youll find those little things all throughout this film- it hints at the lore but doesnt beat you over the head with it, and makes you want to ask questions and learn more. Masterful.
That's part of what makes this feel like the opening part of a film. Because there's details that would be there for people on the rewatch to go 'ohhh, that element was set up here!' as many of the best films do.
"This does not look like it was part of the plan." After somebody screamed while burning from the inside with warp energy so hard it bursts through the helmet and two supersoldiers, that eat armies for breakfast, immediately lose their cool and punch and shoot him point blank a few times to be super sure he's super dead. This shows one thing really: The 40k universe was SO INCREDIBLY WELL portrayed in this short video that somebody who is not familiar with it doesn't think: "omg wtf this is overkill and against the GenevaConvention! Who would do that?!?" to an actually lore fitting assumption, that this might actually be at least a likely danger of the process. The reaction by the two Astartes was pretty much protocol in that situation. I mean that was an Inquisitorial agent who might even outrank them, but as soon as something like this takes place that person could be a high lord of Terra and he'd get a Bolter-Round to the head. Astartes is amazing.
Inquisition: How dare the Space Marines kill an inquisitor. He was a powerful psyker that had solved many cases and was well respected. Inquisition after seeing bodycam footage: ... oh
What I love about this is that this is like a regular Tuesday for Space Marines. Strange thing? Persecute it with lethal prejudice. Inquisitor sending your chapter to do something weird? Ok, but we're going to do what we have to, to make sure nothing gets out of the Warp. And the inquisitor knowing he's compromised and letting them know what they need to do, which they do with zero hesitation.
11:58 is my favorite shot. Though the elite stoicism of the Astartes is portrayed in many small details throughout the series, this is my favorite. The sergeant here, despite being pulled in by the sphere, keeps his head from touching the sphere with everything he's got until the last moment. As soon as his helmet touches the orb, he won't be able to look around for a solution to save his men, and sure enough when that does happen he makes a final hail mary with his plasma pistol to try and stun or harm this entity pulling them in. Astartes never give up, their concentration is at 100% up to the last man, the last round, and the last breath.
4:01 Notice that he had a kind of "tank buster" explosive, made to be place on an armored vehicle, because THAT is what is required to take down an astartes.
I was gonna comment about I’ve seen in other react videos/the originals that that guy was basically a suicide soldier trying to take them out with the bomb.
Every time I see another reaction video like this I check the comments and inevitably find another amazing detail I missed the previous ten times I watched it.
I like to describe that last shot as Astartes' "we're not in Kansas anymore" moment. We have no idea _where_ they are, but we know that it looks as drastically different from every other environment we've been in as it possibly could (bright, orange, outside, sand and stone, predominantly organic features). And from its design it's very clear that this is a place where they - and humans in general - are not supposed to be...
People who don't understand Reaction Videos: "Why is he talking so much? Why won't he be quiet and let us watch it?" Me: "Finally, a perfect reaction video."
The Inquisitor (the hooded figure with the skull on the back of his tunic) stared into the beyond and lost. I loved the kill punch and the immediate application of bolt-gun fire!
This is how stories should be told. The amount of respect that the creator has for his audience is what makes this in my mind. Its for us to figure out. Even for 40k fans, there are a lot of things here that are not obvious. Don't explain it to me, just present it in an artful manner. True masterwork here.
Space Marines don't have to use their strength to actuate their armor. Their already superhuman strength and speed is further augmented by the armor itself which is plugged directly into their nervous systems through one of their gene seed organs, the Black Carapace. The hooded guy kneeling before the orb is a Pysker and the reason why you can't hear any talking is because the Space Marines are talking to each other through the comms system in their helmets. From the outside looking in, they run around killing in total silence, adding to their effect.
One thing I never see brought up is at 5:44, when the psyker is launching the shockwave at the marine firing his bolter, you can see the gyro jets/tracers from the bolt rounds hitting the shockwave and getting shoved out of the way. It's such a tiny, cool little detail that I think helps illustrate how remarkably powerful these two psykers are.
@@enterthedragon2689 I saw it after I posted mine, yeah. Doesn't detract from my point. Mr. Filmmaker didn't seem to notice it, and that's whose video I'm watching.
The thing with the incense at the beginning with him blessing their weapons. They believe that all machines have a spirit inside of them that gives them life and function.
I find it interesting that you keep commenting on how fantastic the sound design is. I, and the entire fan base, wholeheartedly agree. Which is why the fact they changed it when GW purchased the rights to this video is such a travesty.
The amount of detail is so cool. SpaceMarines are in constant communication inside their helmets, so we only hear some faint muffled words here and there.
30:00 also the fact you can hear him, the reason theres no voices in the whole thing is because they are communicating through their helmet radios, but the fact you can hear the preist from outside gives a hint of how loud he is chanting
So, a term worth knowing when it comes to Space Marines would be "Transhuman Dread". Now, I'll admit, I don't know if this term came from within the universe of 40k, or whether it is a label that has come from our world, but it always leads to Space Marines. In short, it's a kind of fear you feel, when you see something human, that is either too big, too fast, too much in some way or a mix of all these things. The Space Marines have it all, as they just make regular humans think: "Nothing that big should be moving that fast!" (Which is also the sentence often used to make people understand transhuman dread)
The sound design alone gives me chills every time I rewatch this through reactions And if anything can tell you why you root for humanity (or what's left of it) in Warhammer 40K, these videos damn well can
4:02 that stab was nasty, the way that he holds the body for a second, not struggling AT ALL to hold a human body in place. no trembling or shaking or anything that show strain on the muscles. Straight up savage
He barely even notices he did it. Casual blind stab around the corner while still staying on target and putting out rounds. Every part of this series give me chills, I fucking love it.
Fun lore tidbit. That isn't how Astartes run. They're actually a lot faster as they lean forward almost far enough to lose balance then begin bounding. They cover meters in a step. 9:10 when you see the sparks from his feet that's from the sheer weight and force of his steps trying to find traction. Then his feet suddenly stop. That's from the Astartes engaging his maglocks. I find it interesting that you mention dialogue several times. But consider this. Lore wise, these Astartes, these marines, are most definitely actively speaking to one another throughout the film. The reason they move seemingly in silence is because they are using voxes built into their helmets to communicate. They are using radios to speak to one another, but their voices aren't escaping their armor. Astartes grade power armor is always environmentally sealed unless specifically built otherwise or heavily damaged. The funny electric spines these giant men have are psychic amplifiers. There's a million different designs a psychic hood could have.
Welcome to 40K. Now you're in, you can never leave. I could sit here and elaborate on lore and the rest of it, but that would require more than a week of my typing into this comment, non-stop. Guaranteed that most responses have covered a lot of the basics already anyways, so all I can recommend is seek out more from well known lore meisters. Siama Pederson is a straight up genius. A visionary. There is no err or misstep in this entire production. Every byte of sound, every frame of animation, every angle, every perspective, every shade is absolutely deliberate. It's a masterpiece! I've shown this to many people who had previously thought Warhammer 40K was just a niche tabletop game. They were all blown away. Those who can portray the universe of 40K with such intricacies that pull you in and immerse you into such a compelling fictional franchise is nothing short of astonishing. Warhammer 40K is the single most awe inspiring world ever conjured, in my humble opinion, and those who can bring it to life in such a visceral and assured manner are beyond incredible, I feel very privileged that they have been so generous as to bless us all with their works.
In that last scene in the alien world if you look closely at the other plateaus you can see the other marines being teleported in. Also when they get taken the creature that took them was killed by another entity in the warp.
For the possession part: Yes the Inquisition member most likely was possessed or at the very least gave very heavy signs of it. Demonic Possession is somethingthat the Marines absolutely do NOT play around with in the least, if someone is possessed by a demon it's a matter of seconds before something the size of a room / building pops out from that connection with the Warp and kills everything. So if someone is showing signs of demonic possession it's Kill as fast ask questions never, them killing him when he was showing signs of it is absolutely 100% in line with how the handle things like that.
You need to go back to the scene at 6:10 mark. You must watch it in slow motion or stop frame. But in that quick scene, the Astarte, realizes in mid action he does not have the proper leverage for the strike and switches hands with the knife. Go see…it’s amazing and so quick you don’t even see it.
This was literally the first Warhammer 40K fan animation I ever watched. I always knew of 40K. I was 9 years old when Warhammer broke out and became part of our conscience. Never really paid it any mind. Until Astartes. I made a Patreon just for this to support the creator. Since then, I dived right in. Fell head over heels in love with the 40K universe. Consumed so much lore, read so many novels, and watched so many insanely talented creators manifest the 40K universe in their passion project interpretations, I'd caught up on almost 35 years of lore in just 3 years. It's so compelling, so enthralling, and will consume you.
What is so amazing about this piece is that it is familiar to existing fans but still ambiguous since it isn't using established lore. I have been a 40k/GW fan since the 80s and while the marines, inquisitor, ships, human guardsmen is recognizable the particulars of the antagonists are vague and don't have direct analogs in the lore. It is amazing how he brought long time fans as well as noobies into the same sense of confusion...beautiful choice to keep it a fresh experience for old heads and people new to the IP at the same time.
The black mist in the void that attacks the tentacle monster (a demon/"Daemon") is [most likely] the psychic/ethereal remains of the robed guy (a Imperial Inquisition psyker, which is a psychic practitioner). Psykers' (if sanctioned by the empire) whole deal is to muck about in what amounts to WH40K's "The Void", which is the realm of Chaos; one of the primordial big bads, and is a direct oppositional force to The Emperor himself (one of them at least). The Inquisitor was eavesdropping on the conversation between the captured orb, and the orb that the squad went to seal up on the ship the Marines breached. In the scene where the 5 marines are walking towards the orb, you can see it trying to mind control them. The first wave of dust kicking up was actually from the first mind control attempt; you can see the Space Marines resist in those small, sharp, sudden head moves. While not necessarily psykers, Space Marines have a high general resistance to psychic attacks. "The Astartes defy our touch." They are not completely immune, though.
No sure if anyone's noticed, but I love how the bolter blasts clear out smoke in the beginning when they breach the ship, and again you can see the concussive blasts push the one of the Astartes's cape when they kill the possessed psyker. the other one I noticed was the when they were ambushing the 2 psykers, how one of them cleared out the slack on the trigger of their bolter before fully engaging the trigger.
The boarding torpedo is one thing that everyone gets so confused by. As it closes on the target vessel, retro-thrusters fire to slow the torpedo's momentum, and at the same time Melta beams fire, which are capable of reducing even the hardest metal to molten slag on contact. Combining the two makes for a very efficient and brutal way of boarding enemy vessels in void warfare. Also, regarding the Astartes and their superhuman speed in bulky power armour. They wear something called "The Black Carapace", and have numerous implants kind of reminiscent of those Neo has in the Matrix that plug into your body. The armour plugs into these implants, and due to them interfacing with the marine's implants, it feels almost like wearing basic clothing to them. They can move at frightening speeds with incredible strength behind every movement. In one of the novels I have read, a group of Grey Knights (a specialist group of space marines) needs to assault a heavily defended keep, so they get one guy in a suit of Terminator armour (a larger, heavier and more durable suit of power armour that enhances the wearer's strength) to act as a living battering ram, charging through several walls head first like some kind of sci-fi rendition of Marvel's Juggernaut in a bad mood.
basically my understanding of it is that Orb is a Ctan Shard, the large Being was a Deceiver Shard (dead one), the planet he gets transported to is a Necron World.
i leave this comment in many of these astartes reviews. knowing all the lore makes this video the pinnacle of 40k video. there is so much lore in this one video series that it's almost overwhelming. the beauty though is you don't need to know any to enjoy it but knowing the lore makes it that much more incredible. Also, the creator was bought out by games workshop and we haven't had another since. while I am very happy for the guy I am also very saddened that we aren't getting any more of this beautiful storytelling from him. I have watched this series no less than 50-60 times. I will also add this specific review is one of the best ones I have watched along with 40klore actually talking about everything in this video. good stuff
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Eldar and wraithlord.
I play, Space Wolves, T'au, and Imperial Knights....T'au might be my favorite though, cuz....ya know...big Titanfall lookin mechs.
Adeptus Mechanicus and my favorite unit is the Sydonian Dragoon
Shame there can't be a continuation.
Under new contract rules on the website, the creator of this ASTARTES content has a Cease And Desist order.
Imperial Knights, Any cerastus knigth.
To put it simply;
11:22 In 40K, that is a possession.
11:24 In 40k, that is an exorcism.
to add to this, in 40k if a possession starts, you NEED to stop it or you and everyone for miles (likely the whole planet) is in deep deep shit.
Space Marines are nothing if not thorough
In more details, he was listening on a conversation between the 2 entites and had to break concentration to warn to other because of the eminent danger. That split second was enough for the entity to possess him and it's so dangerous because of the power that they hold when possessed, that the space marines had to terminate him with ''Extreme Prejudice''
This is the best comment 😂
Also, in 40k, possession fucking SUCKS and that exorcism is the better option.
The orb said "No escape. I have failed. We have all failed. The Astartes defy our touch. You must return! Break your seal! We'll never survive. You must take them!" And then the Inquisitor says "Recall them immediately!" then the Inquisitor gets possessed. Had they not put him down, he would have been the epicenter of a nuclear sized explosion of psychic energy, killing everyone and ripping the ship apart.
Also, that inquisitor's releases SM form those tentacles with his soul.
I believe that is just some Inquisition psyker. Not an Inquisitor themselves. Inquisitors tend to have quite the retinue and staff behind them.
@@skywillfindyou where did you get that info from? Pretty sure it's confirmed that it was some warp predator that caught the scent of the entity (the orb), because it "broke it's seal".
I'm reminded of the flight of the Eisenstein. Fuck Ignatius Grulgor.
or DAEMON
"Can the Loremaster drop some.knowledge"
I mean...if you have like 8hours to kill we can give you the BRIEF and Short introduction to the 40k verse
"At the beginning of time, the universe was created.
This made a lot of people very angry, and has been widely regarded as a bad move." - Douglas Adams.
8 hours is a good wa to scratch the surfce.
@@Zombiewithabowtie "Don't be part of the problem. Be the whole problem."
More like a few dozen hours, lol. I've watched Luetin09 videos when painting entire houses, lol.
@@scar445 surf the kali-yuga wave you must
11:38 - The Sanctioned Psyker is using the restraint harness and cogitator as sort of intermediaries to interface and keep safe, keeping his defenses up with the benefit of ritual and ceremony. When he hears the two orbs talking about "taking them" he breaks concentration and yells as loudly as he is able "RECALL THEM IMMEDIATELY!" (That muffled sound is as loud as he can willingly create sound.) ...Then the orb possesses him, showing him horrors and starting to turn him into a gateway/take full control. The Captain and Lieutenant recognize the psychic blowback signs and take proper action.
the bare minimum of action. if that body is anything short of a pool of sizling carbohydrates once the re finished, I would be very surprised. Can't be heretical if holy fire has changed you into an entirely different state of matter.
@@scar445 The camera switches to another scene there, so we don't see any subsequent actions to purify the Inquisitor's remains.
mmm.. good soup.
@@scar445
It’s also not that he’s just mumbling, the characters are talking throughout the entire video, but it’s muffled because we are actually hearing it from the perspective of outside the helmets. For us to be able to hear him, that guy has to be shouting at the top of his lungs. Normal chatter is entirely mute without access to their intercoms however.
It also goes to show just how loud the inquisitor’s chanting is after he gets possessed.
@@alphastronghold715 the only sound we could possibly hope to hear, would be the tiny clicks as their helmet vox-beads click on and off.
The best thing the Astartes creator did was avoid too many overt references in the Astartes series. All the little details are correct, Space Marine tactics and fighting style, command and leadership style, all the little symbols and greeblies are spot on, but nothing is specifically referencing any specific part of the lore, I can't tell you anything about this specific Chapter of Space Marines, or about who they are fighitng (beyond informed guesses) which really leans on the mystery side of things, while still giving a very visceral look at this universe.
the chapter is the Retributors chapter, as mentioned in the very beginning (OC chapter of the creator), the enemies are also an OC from the creator as they wanted to avoid established enemies, basically its all OC to avoid lore inconsistencies
@@shibe2042Since GW hired the man, it was canonized.
@@mahpell7173 What's shitty of GW is that they had the creator pull his original video down and they uploaded it to their shitty payed streaming site with new music/sound that doesn't fit the animation as well.
@@NitroStarman I know.
@@NitroStarman And it seems like they've shelved the series
LADIES AND GENTLEMAN, WE GOT ANOTHER!
ONE OF US ! ONE OF US !
Emperor be Praised!
This was the power of the fandom, and Games Workshop destroyed it.
FOR THE EMPEROR
To explain what happened to the tentacle thing: if you pause around 35:17 and skip through the frames, a very brief frame reveals that shadow that hit the tentacle thing to be a armed, legs, horned, creature. This is to say that when the orb thing 'escaped' with the marines, it did so via the warp (dream land but exclusively ALL of your worst nightmares combined). Within moments of entering the warp, a warp predator (daemon) noticed the psyker tentacle monster and IMMEDIATELY devoured it. The seal the orb broke was probably their specifically to protect it from just such a thing happening, because demons find psykers absolutely delicious.
2:20: Regular boarding action. To mind you, that was not a drop-ship or space-plane they were flown in, that was a boarding torpedo. It has front-facing las-guns that bore through the hull.
2:54: But they are. Astartes are genetically modified warriors, they are taller, bulkier than regular humans, have a couple of extra-organs implanted. Mind you, they aren't naturally grown. To become Astartes, a regular human has to be chosen at a young age to undergo a strenuous and painful procedure that takes several years while being pumped full of military doctrine and knowledge, trained to the point of physical depletion and beyond. Most measurements put the Astartes at around 7-9', depending on which Legion they belong to. They are trained to work as a perfect team. And 6 people is really enough for such a ship. They are so powerful a single chapter of 100 Astartes would be considered overkill to subdue our planet as we are now, even if we all banded together.
4:14: Well, the weapons are so-called Bolters, they are basically firing a miniature rocket-explosive, not your regular rifleshots. You can see their rocket-motors still pushing them against the shield at 5:09. These bullets are designated by the official compediums as .75 caliber on normal Bolters and 1.00 calibre on Heavy Bolters. Even the least dangerous ones are basically mini-explosives. Because the armour they have to punch through is accordingly more advanced. But regular padding or unprotected areas like the face - well, say byebye.
4:59: Well, keep in mind, the armour system has integrated systems. We don't hear them, but they are on a constant intercom with each other.
5:27: That's called a Psyker. They tap into the Immaterius of the Warp to use basically magick. But since this is the grimdark Warhammer, the Warp is a hellish place, and you cannot have superpowers without superdrawbacks, using that kinda power is dangerous.
7:18: He has a golden I sigil, means he's a psyker from the Inquisitorium. Special group of people with special mission mandates regarding all things crazy.
Psykerism, Heretics, Xenos, whatever. Note that he's connected to that orb. Basically suicide already.
7:26: They wear white helmets, that signifies them as leaders already. The cape signifies one as a higher-standing one.
7:44: Yep, those are the different sensor systems in the helmet of the one with the cracked eye-lense.
7:51: They have electrically-motivated fibre-bundles that augment movement.
8:17: Presumably an automaton. See the skulls and spines in the background. They look identical to the ones from the previous psykers. It appears they were puppets, controlled by a powerful psyker. Keep in mind, a potent psyker can control an entire planet of mental noodlebrains. Controlling this many automata as a capable psyker is childs-play.
9:26: Precisely, which makes me assume that this is the powerful psykic entity that controlled the automata. My best guess is, it's an Umbra. An alien species that appears as blackish spheres to normal eyes, but is somewhat not fully in our dimension, somewhat related and close to the Warp. That freakish, hellish place.
9:47: They seem to be some kind of beacon. Either as inhibitors or as controllers or for that Inquisitor to listen in on the chatter of the orbs (I presume the last, given the following scene on the Chapters flagship).
10:32: The dialogue between the Orbs is as follows:
Orb 1: "I have failed brother...we have all failed. The Astartes defy our touch. You must return. Break your seal"
Orb 2: "We will never survive"
Orb 1: "You must. Take them"
Inquisitor (shortly before the Orb possesses him): "Astartes in Danger!"
11:09: He's about to. You hear him chant? Keep in mind, these helmets are meant to seal sound off. Nothing from outside gets in, nothing from inside gets out. So for us on the outside to hear him chant in the inside, image how he must be screaming.
11:27: Possess psyker, terrifying threat. Dealt with them properly. A regular human would be killed by one bullet. A crazed, possessed psyker can take several clips. All the while rending your flesh from your bones.
11:40: Kinda both. For someone psykic to do anything with the Immaterium, or the Warp, is a constant dancing on the edge of oblivion. For as valued as they are, they are also dangerous. Especially when the enemy takes them over. The Warp is basically Hell. Controlled by chaos demons. A handful superpowerful ones, dozens less-powerful ones and gazillions of even lesser ones, all vying for power and strength, all constantly trying to wreck the day of some other sod.
12:13: Plasma weapons are a bit unstable in the Warhammer universe. But don't worry.
12:42: Probably the Umbra.
12:58: Notice how the blood clots immediately? That's why Astartes can lose a limb and shrug it off like a light punch. Another benefit of the genetic manipulation.
13:01: You see the three bolts on his brow? They are service marks. Silver ones represent 10 or 50 years of service, depending on chapter, gold ones 100 years or 10 years in the Chaplaincy. Since he has 2 silver and one golden, I assume that means he either served for 20 years regular and 10 years in the chaplaincy, or for 120 years normally (and yes, they can live that long).
17:46: If you listen and watch closely, you can actually note the slight delay between the visual explosion and the boom. We are at a distance and thus we see the explosion just a fraction of a second before we hear it.
21:22: Yes, because this way, the chaos of battle, the confusion and disorientation becomes palpable even to the viewer.
24:00: Well, technically, we cannot know what precisely he is doing, either. He's obviously connected to the orb, but for what? Surveillance? Is he actively fighting it already? Is he probing it? Is he containing its powers? We don't know. We only know once those beacons are jabbed into the other orb, that the Inquisitor somehow managed to enter the telepathic communication between the two orbs.
27:55: Well, certainly not inviting it for a cup of tea. It's alien, it's xenos, it's psykic. Purge it. If it's not human, human-made or benefitting the Imperium of Man, suffer not its existence.
28:58: Yes, because essentially, that's what he is. Yes, he's a psyker. Yes, if he could, his abilities would allow him to control thousands, if not millions of weakminded people. But those orbs are something else. If he is powerful to weaker men, then he must be a weak little child to these orbs.
30:17: He was meditating, focussing all his power. He broke that focus to tell the Veteran Sergeant that "Astartes in danger!". And that was the slipup that sealed his fate. He dropped his guard and let the focus slide, and that's when the orb got into his mind.
31:26: Well, it looks like the statues, but the statues were all sitting in what appears to be a desert valley. This is a statue that has a hand before its face in what appears to be a cave with lava. And it holds the Astartes team, so this is more a premonition of a future event.
32:12: Yes, fully, that's why they reacted so quickly. Think of it this way: In order to use the psykic abilities that are bestowed by the hellish Warp, you have to let it touch you. If you let it touch you too much, too often, you get tainted, drawn to it like a drug. If you become addicted, you are a threat. Every time a psyker does something with the warp, they risk becoming addicted. Every time they do anything, every non-psyker gets a twitchy trigger-finger. No matter if that is some simple psyker or the biggest head-honcho of all. Especially with the most powerful psyker you have to be on your guard because when that guy becomes corrupted, Kansas won't even here to go south no more.
32:44: Again another representation of the Umbra is that of a convoluted mass of tentacles, arms, appendages that can seemingly twist and contort in impossible ways.
35:20: Yes, it got "shot" by something, somewhere. That's normal stuff in the Warp. This is what I meant above, the denizens of this terrible place are constantly out to erase each other to get just that bit more powerful.
Thanks a lot for going so in-depth into this. I have NO experience with 40k but this definitely helps!
@@mluzmoor1 Always a pleasure to help. It took me about 15 times watching it in slo-mo to get that many details, and I greatly enjoyed every bit of it. Feel free to ask away if you have further questions, also about the broader franchise.
Astartes is a mindblowingly beautiful work and I really hope GW has been letting Syama work on what he wants since they hired him.
Been a long time though with no news - not sure I trust GW to let him do his thing - I mean he is SO talented but his stuff should be everywhere by now.
@@BritGirlJay Either that or he's working on something larger
I feel like he had a hand in the horus heresy cinematic.
@@viktorlindqvist5308I wanna believe so but they would've at least said something by now, no? It's been about 4 years since they hired him and it's been completely radio silent. I don't trust em
@@nukem8128Nah I think that was the people that worked on the 9th and 10th edition trailers
The person praying in front of the Orb is a Inquisitorial Psyker, and the Orb was being "held" prisoner on the ship by a custom Space Marine chapter the creator made up, and their assault on the heretic vessel was to seize the other Orb, which those things the 5 Space Marines were stabbing into the Orb were most likely psychic dampeners to suppress it's psychic abilities long enough for the Astartes to put it in restraints and get it on board their main ship. It was psychic energy that was pushing the approaching Astartes back, and when that failed the Orb on the heretic ship with the Space Marines began communicating with the Orb that was on the Chapter vessel and the Psyker Inquisitor was attempting to eavesdrop on the conversation the two Orbs were having, which required an ungodly amount of focus not only to just hear what the Orbs were saying, but to hear it without both going mad as well as not becoming possessed. So when the Orb told the other Orb to "take" the 5 Astartes, the Inquisitor broke his focus to warn the commander and recall the Marines immediately, and that momentary lapse in concentration allowed the Orb to take possession of the Psyker, and a possessed Psyker is one of the most dangerous things in existence. The reason why the Commander and his second went to such lengths to kill him after he became possessed is because it's not enough to just shoot and kill a possessed Psyker. If even so much as a toe survives the possessed Psyker could fold spacetime in on itself and rip open a hole to the void which would then allow untold legions of demons to spill out into the mortal plane. So the commander punched his head off, and the second dumped a mag worth of Bolter rounds into the corpse to obliterate it in it's entirety. Bolters don't fire bullets, they fire mini rocket-propelled smart grenades that go off after a short duration(though they come out so fast the impact kills most things anyways, the subsequent explosion is just extra insurance that the thing they're shooting really is dead).
"custom Space Marine chapter"? Those are clearly Grey Knights, working with the Inquisition's Psyker.
@@TF2CrunchyFrog I believe the creator said Astartes was based on his own custom chapter.
No need to cleanse if its pulp! 😂
That's a good description. Some big dudes killed a ball. Then the ball fought back. Human basic is not problem. Man of Gold so cooooool. Sucky suck and warp fuckery. The End…
I want more please 💯❤️😈🤖🫡
The Retributors.
That's the Chapter in this series.
It's funny, because it's a literal quote from the WH40k lore about the Space Marines that "Nothing that big and bearing that much weight should be able to move that fast"
They are quite literally Halo Spartans turned up past 11 to 18! Bigger faster, stronger and with (usually) FAR more combat experience...and that REALLY says something.
@@armaggedon4christ And that's before you get to the bat-sh@t insane ones, like the Black Templars
@@armaggedon4christ It's also crazy that these Space Marines sometimes are defeated because the enemies of the Imperium are ridiculously overpowered as well
Custodes lol in condescending disgust as they blink by faster than the Astartes eyes can trace
@@MrDrumcoreyYeah, but they aren’t really the same kind of creature. The amount of resources that go into making one Custodes is way more than even a dozen of Astartes. Not only that, but a Custodes has to begin with an infant. And each one created is it’s own process. Taking place on Terra itself. No Gene Seed to replicate the process. An Astartes can be implanted anywhere they have a ship. From young men of enough purity genetically, and strength of will to survive the trials.
All that for the even clearer issue. Each Custodes is most suited to fighting on their own strength. A singular Champion. Get a bunch of them together, they are still like that. Astartes are meant to be deployed in force. To work in tandem. To bring victory via cooperation.
It’s a whole other thing, even though superficially they appear to be similar. The only thing they share is their Loyalty to the Emperor, and that they were elevated out of humans via various forms of modification in development.
If I had to bet on a battle, I’d take Custodes. If had to bet on a War, I’d bet on Astartes. Excluding other factors than just how their roles work. Even if it took an entire Company to take down one Custodes, they are suited to the sustained attrition, and cooperative enough to make that their edge.
That’s really the point though. Totally different animals. It’s like comparing a Leopard to a Wolf. Any pack of Leopards just isn’t a thing. A single Leopard would never find a Lone Wolf to fight. It would contravene their strengths to face a pack of them. They are fast and agile, strong, stealthy, and can bound straight up the trunk of a 20 foot tree. Why would they ever expose themselves to domain of Wolves? Wolves excel at cooperate hunts on the ground, favoring endurance. Leopards favor surprise and overwhelming power on a target.
Trust me, the more you know about the lore of W40K, the better this gets. It is truely awesome and I hope the dude who made this gets to have the career he deserves. There is SO MUCH one can do wrong, when trying to transfer the W40K world to film, he did everything right.
Expert use of vagueness is in his favor. The sound design, is just perfect. Unlike some other pieces of 40k animation and fan projects, this really drove home the majesty of the Imperium.
but then when i heard abouut what Games Workshop did to the creator of Astartes
disgust me
they did him dirty and quite literally defiled his work
@@zerotrig8331 Now you need to be a bit more specific and fill us in.
@jackr2287 well, its rumors, no way to confirm
but ppl say games workshop threatened to lawsuit the man if he doesnt join them and work for them
and 2nd he gonna hand over the finished product
now first part would explain why his channel suddenly closed and deleted the original vid
and 2nd part would explaain why theres a shitty edited ver of astartes by games workshop, with small edits like company logo and bad sfx.
theres a couple video around utube explain this
search "what happened to astartes" and u'll get a few
@@zerotrig8331His channel was suddenly brought down because of a large and concerted effort by Games Workshop over the years to attempt to gain exclusive control depictions of their trademarks. Arch (Warhammer) covered this a few years ago. It's not like this is an unknown.
The lore behind 40k is far too vast to try and put into a single comment but the Astartes are genetically enhanced humans, so while the armor is bigger than them, they are like 8ish ft tall due to the augmentations (You can see how big they are in the first couple shots as there are some normal humans scooting past them in the hallway when they are loading into the assault ram). One of the things they get implanted into them is an organ/piece of technology called "The Black Carapace" (I think you see a bit of it on the one guys neck when he takes off his helmet) that lets them control their armor almost like a second skin, so yes their suits do help them move faster (those packs on their backs are basically power plants) but they are still ridiculously fast even without them.
With the guy getting posessed that was not planned, it seems like he was hooked up to the orb to try and discern what it was doing but when the orb on their ship got in touch with the one on the rebel ship it took him over and began to fry his psyche (hence the screaming). Psykers wield great power, but it is highly volatile so if one ever begins to lose control they must be dealt with quickly lest things spiral wildly out of control as their power is drawn from "The Warp" which is a short of shadow dimension that mirrors our own but is ruled over by horrific daemon lords that embody different elements of Chaos.
The giant gold colossus is not some specific thing in lore but the thing I find cool about that shot where we see him is that in the background there are more of the golden heads/spines as if those 2 guys from the previous room were a first draft or something. As for the orbs there have been some videos speculating on what they are but there is no definitive answer.
Right before the scene where the orb shows its true form it seems like the guy there got the communication from their ship that something was wrong (the marine that ran off before the ritual guy got fried was presumably heading to the bridge to get in contact with the away team but it was too late).
That final shot if you look really closely you can see that there are flashes of light on the other pillars where it seems that the rest of the away team has also been teleported to this strange place.
The guy who made this was hired by Games Workshop (the guys who make Warhammer) I do not know what project he is working on for them now but presumably he is doing something over there.
The golden man could be a refercne to the men of iron during the age of strife though its unconfermed
No, the orbs are a firm of technology from an ancient alien race that was from the Goul Stars in either the Culixus Sector or the neighboring Koronus Expanse. Their stuff is infused with warp energy and has a habit of changing those who use it into ungodly powerful cannibalistic mockeries of their former selves. So a Tuesday.
@@keaering5183 If i remember correctly before he went to GW the creator said the large golden husk was the rebels attemping to create a false Emperor, likely at the behest of the sphere or w/e was using the spheres to communicate.
@@keaering5183 more likely a man of gold from the age of terra
Love the fact you say the lore is way to vast, then proceeds to write half a book, to give a small peek of it
One more small thing that I haven't seen in the comments so far is that if you pay attention in the ending sequence, you can see little blips of light on the other pillars where the other members of the squad teleport to!
Yes, my favourite detail, gives further scale to both the skeletons and the pillar he stands on.
It took me months to notice that.
Same that many don't mention the spines with masks that indicate failed psychers.
Same that many don't mention the spines with masks that indicate failed psychers.
I JUST noticed that@@volodyanarchist
“Warhammer fans, Loremasters, join me in battle.”
For a while I didn’t understand this comment but then I realized, “We’re in a fight against ignorance.”
-Pulls out an Axe of Aktually- I will join you in glorious combat!
So I’ve seen Astartes many times, read many comments, and one theory that I read and really liked goes like this: When red-cloak guy was listening in on the orbs we see that his aura in the Warp is a black smoke. When tentacle-demon has the Space Marines in the Warp it is successfully attacked by a black smoke. What likely happened is that even though red-cloak died in the Space Marine ship, his psychic presence in the Warp lingered long enough for him to rescue the Space Marines.
Hope that helps!
After watching it a few times, I'm now sure this is _not_ the case. The black 'smoke' is actually the plasma shot that was fired into the sphere in the previous scene - it acts exactly as shown during previous shots, except that in whatever warp pocket this takes place in, its color has shifted to black. The psychic backlash that followed is also what blew the focus-character's arm off or, alternatively, the plasma shot through the entire warp bubble and came out from where it originated.
Yes, it's also a time paradox, because Warp.
@ghetta Neither of these theories are true. What actuallyᵀᴹ happens, is that a daemon attacks the orb-aliens soul in the warp, since it's full-power use of its psychic might makes it light up as a beacon to all warp denizens (thereby broadcasting 'I/free food am/is over here' at full blast). That is why it earlier said to its kindred, that breaking its seal and taking "them" aka the astartes was impossible and that they would never survive this course of action. The creator of Astartes has already confirmed that its attacker is a daemon, too.
Little fun, slightly annoying fact, the creator was approached by Games Workshop lawyers after he published this. Their topic of conversation, legal action, or join us. GW doesn't like when people outside of their organization violate their IP's. Crappy, but true.
Violate is an interesting term to use for this excellent piece of art. May Games Workshop eat shit and rest in piss.
Yea but this is definitely not a violation to IP if anything it made it better lol
I think my favorite yet super small detail was when the space marine was shooting at 5:45 , and the bullets were bouncing off the psychic wave heading towards him. It happened so quick but a really nice touch there.
Those lovely tiny details. At 3:20 when the marine in the background clears a room by firing into it a few times, and then throwing a grenade inside before moving on is really cool.
And of course the entire Multilaser sequence, that demonstrates how fast Space Marines can process combat data.
never noticed that, i like the small lights at the end signaling the arrival of his sqaud mates on the other pillars
Everyone is pointing out such crazy details I missed in my first 300 watches. This shit is so wild....
Same!
Another small detail i liked was a tiny flash on another pillar in the final scene, like the marine's comrades were also being teleported to the same location.
(It is easier to see if you maximize the resolution, if only for that scene, if hunting for what i'm talking about)
The guy who made this was SO good at small details. I still get chills seeing Astartes again 😵💫
Games Workshop was so impressed with Astartes, they made it canon and added the Retributors to the rolls of active Space Marine chapters in 40k.
Yet.
These types of work take considerable amounts of time to do well, and if he started a fresh project when hired, I wouldn't expect anything of this quality level for a couple years. Give them some time to make something you'll love as much as this project before sh!tting all over what you assume is poo without having seen *anything* that backs up your words.
Loved it so much they C&D'd the most amazing piece of free positive press ever made for their product. 🤬ers
They also prevented him from making any more of these by 'offering' him a job. basically shutting him down out of jealousy that he made something hundreds of times better than they ever managed.
@@Kainlarsen that's the risk you take when you play with other people's IPs... he could have made a movie based on his own invented universe, but he probably isn't that creative. most digital artists aren't.
@@sasquatchhadarock968 Except they didn't.
One of my favourite little moments in this that builds lore if you know a bit about 40k is at 11:40. When the first marine reaches out and grabs the orb (involuntarily) the marine next to him IMMEDIATELY raises his bolter, suspecting him to be possessed, only to be grabbed before he can do anything. Like they know they are dealing with something 'beyond' and have zero hesitancy and zero tolerance. It reinforces the point earlier where the marines kill the inquisitor. It's not cause the inquisitor is 'just a human' they would kill each other in a heartbeat if their suspicions are confirmed (and have had to do so, chaos marines are a thing).
Like the Iron Hands say: Flesh is WEAK. It's vulnerable to corruption, and one must always, ALWAYS be on guard for it, ready to destroy it with zero hesitation. It doesn't matter WHO, as they are immediately deemed irredeemable and ended with extreme prejudice. Chaos corruption is THAT dangerous.
@@lordmortarius538 well its not like machines are any more resistant, dark mechanicus and deamon engines are pain to deal with
@@lordmortarius538 Ask a Necron how well giving up the flesh worked out for them
I love the little head-movements near the orb, both as they approach, but also there is this tiny, tiny little double-take that the lead-marine makes upon reaching the orb. Like he was looking at it, and got just the *tiniest* bit entranced before his brother walked past with the blades.
That's crazy I never noticed that. Good call. The zero hesitation on killing the friendly psyker is nuts and gets me every time. They're so disciplined and brutal, I absolutely love it.
I love how the second use of the plasma pistol that blasts his hand off is a complete mirror of the first. He faces the camera and we see his pistol from a low angle to highlight how its his long range "ace in the hole", while in the second it's fully side on with him facing the orb. It shows that he's not completely out of his depth, but compared to the first use of it, he's lost control, is using it out of desperation, and something is bound to go wrong this time.
I love this. The way you're constantly commentating, but managing to not overshadow the video, and you're not just speaking for the sake of filling space but actually providing well thought out commentary.
7:47 Eight-foot tall genetically-engineered behemoths with gene-seed organ implants (two hearts, three lungs etc).
I never get tired of watching Astartes.
I have it on my hard drive just in case it will get removed from the net some day.
5:16 always gives me chills.. it perfectly depicts that spacemarines arent slow, lumbering giants, but killermachines that shouldnt be as agile and fast as they are.
god i love astartes.. so incredibly well done.
It really speaks to how well the short was made that you were able to infer so much about Warhammer that was very close to, or actually, correct because he highlights details and commands the immersion so well with the filmmaking.
"What is this psychic power they are using?!"
It is literally a person tapping into the Etherial plane (usually called The Warp), which is currently in such a turmoil that it is the homestead for demon lords. Psykers, the WH40k version of a Mage, literally taps into the powers of the demonic dimensions but in doing so also becomes a bridge between the mortal plane and the demonic plane! Meaning the Psykers can gain powers from the Warp but when doing so also risk that the demons living there senses them, possess them and start to try to take over the mortal plane!
The guy kneeling with the incense was literally sitting there, praying, performing ceremonies to try to keep his/her soul pure enough to not get possessed by demonic forces in preparation for if or when the two orbs (the one they have trapped and the one on the ship) started to communicate. The split second that the person turned to shout a warning at the leader in the white armor was enough for him to lose focus and get taken by the demonic forces. as he burst with energy they dispose of him before the demons can manifest. Killing a person possessed by demons can take multiple Astartes (the guys in the Power Armors) and you saw how they just massacred the regular human troops on their way to the orbl. Punching the guy's face in and shooting him with multiple rounds was not an overreaction.
Honestly I'd argue not dousing him in a flamer makes this an underreaction. Sure, you poured bolter rounds into the body, but that's not sure to banish the damn thing. Blessed prometheum flames on the other hand, will make sure. (But it lacks the immediacy of bolt rounds, so use both.)
Great breakdown, I really think Astartes can stand by itself as a lesson or discussion-point in film-school. One shot which I truly love, but doesn't get much attention is the long one-shot of the boarding-craft flying from one ship to the other in the beginning. The little tactical details really sell it, but you only see them if you watch the same shot three or four times focusing on a different area each time through. 1. the escort fighters drawing-fire from a different attack-vector. 2. The decoy-drones intercepting and spoofing the missiles fired at the landing-ship on approach. 3. The point-defense system on the landing craft shooting missiles which got past the decoy-drones. 4. The smooth, natural, almost sleepy way the landing-craft maneuvers and rolls on the approach all the way to impact. Showing this kind of tactical depth and "realism" makes it feel both genuine and intense (rather than like showing off, or unnecessary theatrical effects) I also LOVE that there is (basically) no spoken lines, since poor writing or delivery is a common weak-point and very immersion-breaking. And because it makes for a piece that can be enjoyed regardless of the viewer's own language. We need more films made as lovingly and well as Astartes is.
You are quickly becoming my favorite reactor, you are 100 % immersed into what you're watching, and you are quite knowledgeable about technical stuff, really cool!
That means the world, thank you so much 🙏🏻
Marines were communicating via comm. We, as the observer, were not part of that
I normally don’t enjoy reaction videos but this one is really cool. Educational and the passion this man has for filmmaking seeps through. This isn’t just a great short, it’s even better seeing it the second time with this superb breakdown as to why it works.
I like how you break everything down and provide your own analysis. I've been studying color theroy as an employee of Sherwin-Williams. I love how you show so much insight about what the director did. You touch upon ideas/theories I never would have considered when watching film.
Thank you so much!
@PhilipHarts I play Iron Hands, one if the First Founding chapters. My favorite unit is the Assault Terminators.
The last shot of the video as you described as a painting is heavily inspired by Zdzisław Beksiński work. Polish painter and photographer known as the Nightmare Artist. Absolutely recommend to look at his paintings.
Master and a genius.
That little click of them switching the bolters to full auto. So subtle, so cool
Oh, and by the way, it’s not that they’re not talking; you just can’t hear them. They took it from the perspective of an outside observer. They are talking through internal comms constantly, but unless they are literally shouting at the top of their lungs, you cannot hear them.
For example: at 5:02, you can actually tell when the captain gives the order for the other marines to attack with the little head movement.
10:52 you can hear the inquisitor (that’s what the guy with all the magic regalia is btw) yell “recall them immediately!” So loud you can hear it through his helmet
10:55: the commander isn’t just waving his hand, he’s giving and order we can’t hear to the other marine.
11:12: you can straight up hear the inquisitor chanting through his helmet. That shows just how LOUD he’s doing it.
11:32: you can just vaguely hear them relay the commander’s orders to the marines here if you listen closely enough. You actually talk over it.
I love the little touch in the beginning where they are blessing their weapons. Gives a bit of foreshadowing as to the threat they could be dealing with
Gotta keep the Machine Spirit happy.
This video series alone made me want to know about the 40K universe,
After a few weeks i think i have a good grasp of 0.00001% of it
Vast and grim dark is Warhammer 40k
Easily one of the best reactions on this one. The point you made about no dialogue making you feel like youre on this journey and afraid to speak is such a good way of explaining the immersion!
You can feel the weight of every body, every weapon, every piece of armour. You can feel the tension, the strain against the psychic force, even the sharpness of the knife's edge and point. Everything has a sense of presence and solidity. It's amazing.
I've seen plenty of reactions to Astartes, but your breakdown was one of my favorites.
The scene at 11:23 What I noticed when I first saw and find really well made, is how his cape billows in reaction to the shots.
This is insane, I found your channel a week ago with the World of Warcraft reactions, and now Warhammer 40k?
I've been absolutely enjoying your reactions and analysis, and live streams no matter the genre of content, but damn you are now 2/2 of my favorite stuff my guy!
Warhammer and Warhammer 40k, just like WoW has a tone of stuft to watch, lore to explore and for 40K even the fanmade stuft is amazing.
"Helsreach" comes to mind, which is basically a fully animated series of an official 40k audiobook, excellent story animation.
So so glad to have you here!! I’ve been enjoying it all so much and there’s much more to come! Thank you 🙏🏻
Oh man I love that you start digging into the Warhammer cinematics! Warcraft, then this, Thank you! You make me relive the joy of seeing those amazing cinematics for the first time. Cheers!
Thank you!!! Much more to come!
In my opinion out of all the reactors of this video you’ve had by far the most insightful commentary about visual language and how it can wordlessly and seamlessly tell a story. I always keep coming back to this reaction. It doesn’t help that I also went to film school but he’s WAAAY smarter than I am.
In the very last scene, you see teleport flashes on the other pillars: His entire squad got transported there.
I LOOOOVE how he shot his blaster to buy that extra split second and close that distance just that much more... and just powered through it like a BOSS til homie ran up to even the field
You sir have earned a new sub. I really appreciate how you didn't pause for 1 second while you watched it for the first time.
"...aannd what in the Elden Ring is that?"
😂 quote of the day
To my knowledge what happened to the Psyker (The guy who got possessed) basically, it can happen at any time to any Psyker if they let their guard down. The Warp (Hell essentially) invades their mind and tears them open from the inside, tearing a hole into the Warp through them and releasing demons everywhere. They murdered the Psyker before that could happen.
I wouldnt say murdered, Ide legit say mercied...very quick death, and he got to die keeping his honor in service to the emperor!
First of all, that Psyker is lucky to continue it's heretical existence vs joining some other 10,000 Psykers in any given day of the week that are sacrificed in an effort to powering the Golden Throne.
One of the biggest things about the Space Marines how efficiently deadly they are, not a single wasted motion to lay waste to their enemies, and one of the best ways Astartes shows this is just by not letting the audience hear their vox chatter. Granted, there wouldn't be much, as every Space Marine already knows his job when in combat, but still, it really drives home the sense that they operate as a hivemind almost, they are such a well oiled machine of death.
Oh man first your getting into wow and now wh40k. I love both of these things so much. Very cool to see you reacting to them and breaking it all down from a new perspective
The attention to detail is incredible- notice in the room with the giant golden man construct, in the background, barely visible, are many stands holding the same external spinal columns the two psykers were wearing. There is a huge potential story in that little visual connection that is only hinted and never told. Youll find those little things all throughout this film- it hints at the lore but doesnt beat you over the head with it, and makes you want to ask questions and learn more. Masterful.
That's part of what makes this feel like the opening part of a film. Because there's details that would be there for people on the rewatch to go 'ohhh, that element was set up here!' as many of the best films do.
"This does not look like it was part of the plan." After somebody screamed while burning from the inside with warp energy so hard it bursts through the helmet and two supersoldiers, that eat armies for breakfast, immediately lose their cool and punch and shoot him point blank a few times to be super sure he's super dead.
This shows one thing really: The 40k universe was SO INCREDIBLY WELL portrayed in this short video that somebody who is not familiar with it doesn't think: "omg wtf this is overkill and against the GenevaConvention! Who would do that?!?" to an actually lore fitting assumption, that this might actually be at least a likely danger of the process. The reaction by the two Astartes was pretty much protocol in that situation. I mean that was an Inquisitorial agent who might even outrank them, but as soon as something like this takes place that person could be a high lord of Terra and he'd get a Bolter-Round to the head.
Astartes is amazing.
Inquisition: How dare the Space Marines kill an inquisitor. He was a powerful psyker that had solved many cases and was well respected.
Inquisition after seeing bodycam footage: ... oh
What I love about this is that this is like a regular Tuesday for Space Marines. Strange thing? Persecute it with lethal prejudice. Inquisitor sending your chapter to do something weird? Ok, but we're going to do what we have to, to make sure nothing gets out of the Warp. And the inquisitor knowing he's compromised and letting them know what they need to do, which they do with zero hesitation.
11:58 is my favorite shot. Though the elite stoicism of the Astartes is portrayed in many small details throughout the series, this is my favorite. The sergeant here, despite being pulled in by the sphere, keeps his head from touching the sphere with everything he's got until the last moment. As soon as his helmet touches the orb, he won't be able to look around for a solution to save his men, and sure enough when that does happen he makes a final hail mary with his plasma pistol to try and stun or harm this entity pulling them in. Astartes never give up, their concentration is at 100% up to the last man, the last round, and the last breath.
4:01 Notice that he had a kind of "tank buster" explosive, made to be place on an armored vehicle, because THAT is what is required to take down an astartes.
I was gonna comment about I’ve seen in other react videos/the originals that that guy was basically a suicide soldier trying to take them out with the bomb.
Every time I see another reaction video like this I check the comments and inevitably find another amazing detail I missed the previous ten times I watched it.
I like to describe that last shot as Astartes' "we're not in Kansas anymore" moment. We have no idea _where_ they are, but we know that it looks as drastically different from every other environment we've been in as it possibly could (bright, orange, outside, sand and stone, predominantly organic features). And from its design it's very clear that this is a place where they - and humans in general - are not supposed to be...
People who don't understand Reaction Videos: "Why is he talking so much? Why won't he be quiet and let us watch it?"
Me: "Finally, a perfect reaction video."
The Inquisitor (the hooded figure with the skull on the back of his tunic) stared into the beyond and lost. I loved the kill punch and the immediate application of bolt-gun fire!
This is how stories should be told. The amount of respect that the creator has for his audience is what makes this in my mind. Its for us to figure out. Even for 40k fans, there are a lot of things here that are not obvious. Don't explain it to me, just present it in an artful manner. True masterwork here.
8 feet tall and running at you at almost 70 mph in full sprint... terrifying
Space Marines don't have to use their strength to actuate their armor. Their already superhuman strength and speed is further augmented by the armor itself which is plugged directly into their nervous systems through one of their gene seed organs, the Black Carapace. The hooded guy kneeling before the orb is a Pysker and the reason why you can't hear any talking is because the Space Marines are talking to each other through the comms system in their helmets. From the outside looking in, they run around killing in total silence, adding to their effect.
One thing I never see brought up is at 5:44, when the psyker is launching the shockwave at the marine firing his bolter, you can see the gyro jets/tracers from the bolt rounds hitting the shockwave and getting shoved out of the way. It's such a tiny, cool little detail that I think helps illustrate how remarkably powerful these two psykers are.
Holly shit I've literally watched Astartes about 20 times and never noticed that.
It was brought up by another commentator one day before your comment was posted, and pretty sure you've seen it too.
@@enterthedragon2689 I saw it after I posted mine, yeah. Doesn't detract from my point. Mr. Filmmaker didn't seem to notice it, and that's whose video I'm watching.
12:57 - Plasma weapons are dangerous to use in the best of circumstances, he willingly overloaded the plasma pistol in order to try to do some damage.
This is one of the best reactions I've seen! The level of filmmaking knowledge you have is amazing!!
you are on point like no one i watched describing the art of this
The thing with the incense at the beginning with him blessing their weapons. They believe that all machines have a spirit inside of them that gives them life and function.
I find it interesting that you keep commenting on how fantastic the sound design is. I, and the entire fan base, wholeheartedly agree. Which is why the fact they changed it when GW purchased the rights to this video is such a travesty.
The amount of detail is so cool.
SpaceMarines are in constant communication inside their helmets, so we only hear some faint muffled words here and there.
30:00 also the fact you can hear him, the reason theres no voices in the whole thing is because they are communicating through their helmet radios, but the fact you can hear the preist from outside gives a hint of how loud he is chanting
So, a term worth knowing when it comes to Space Marines would be "Transhuman Dread".
Now, I'll admit, I don't know if this term came from within the universe of 40k, or whether it is a label that has come from our world, but it always leads to Space Marines.
In short, it's a kind of fear you feel, when you see something human, that is either too big, too fast, too much in some way or a mix of all these things.
The Space Marines have it all, as they just make regular humans think: "Nothing that big should be moving that fast!" (Which is also the sentence often used to make people understand transhuman dread)
It is always a pleasure to watch someone react to the absolute MASTERPIECE that is Astartes
The sound design alone gives me chills every time I rewatch this through reactions
And if anything can tell you why you root for humanity (or what's left of it) in Warhammer 40K, these videos damn well can
"There's got to be some juicy lore behind that". Warhammer 40k fans; Prepare to spend the next 10 years going down a rabbit hole.
Funny how this 40k short with no dialogue is better than the entire Rey starwars trilogy.
4:02 that stab was nasty, the way that he holds the body for a second, not struggling AT ALL to hold a human body in place. no trembling or shaking or anything that show strain on the muscles. Straight up savage
He barely even notices he did it. Casual blind stab around the corner while still staying on target and putting out rounds. Every part of this series give me chills, I fucking love it.
Games Workshop hired the creator, essentially forcing him to work for them or cease and desist. Watch Pariah Nexus next!
Fun lore tidbit. That isn't how Astartes run. They're actually a lot faster as they lean forward almost far enough to lose balance then begin bounding. They cover meters in a step.
9:10 when you see the sparks from his feet that's from the sheer weight and force of his steps trying to find traction. Then his feet suddenly stop. That's from the Astartes engaging his maglocks.
I find it interesting that you mention dialogue several times. But consider this. Lore wise, these Astartes, these marines, are most definitely actively speaking to one another throughout the film. The reason they move seemingly in silence is because they are using voxes built into their helmets to communicate. They are using radios to speak to one another, but their voices aren't escaping their armor. Astartes grade power armor is always environmentally sealed unless specifically built otherwise or heavily damaged.
The funny electric spines these giant men have are psychic amplifiers. There's a million different designs a psychic hood could have.
Welcome to 40K. Now you're in, you can never leave.
I could sit here and elaborate on lore and the rest of it, but that would require more than a week of my typing into this comment, non-stop.
Guaranteed that most responses have covered a lot of the basics already anyways, so all I can recommend is seek out more from well known lore meisters.
Siama Pederson is a straight up genius. A visionary.
There is no err or misstep in this entire production. Every byte of sound, every frame of animation, every angle, every perspective, every shade is absolutely deliberate. It's a masterpiece!
I've shown this to many people who had previously thought Warhammer 40K was just a niche tabletop game. They were all blown away.
Those who can portray the universe of 40K with such intricacies that pull you in and immerse you into such a compelling fictional franchise is nothing short of astonishing.
Warhammer 40K is the single most awe inspiring world ever conjured, in my humble opinion, and those who can bring it to life in such a visceral and assured manner are beyond incredible, I feel very privileged that they have been so generous as to bless us all with their works.
In that last scene in the alien world if you look closely at the other plateaus you can see the other marines being teleported in. Also when they get taken the creature that took them was killed by another entity in the warp.
For the possession part: Yes the Inquisition member most likely was possessed or at the very least gave very heavy signs of it. Demonic Possession is somethingthat the Marines absolutely do NOT play around with in the least, if someone is possessed by a demon it's a matter of seconds before something the size of a room / building pops out from that connection with the Warp and kills everything. So if someone is showing signs of demonic possession it's Kill as fast ask questions never, them killing him when he was showing signs of it is absolutely 100% in line with how the handle things like that.
You need to go back to the scene at 6:10 mark.
You must watch it in slow motion or stop frame. But in that quick scene, the Astarte, realizes in mid action he does not have the proper leverage for the strike and switches hands with the knife.
Go see…it’s amazing and so quick you don’t even see it.
This is such a fantastic insight into the mind of how directors and producers conceptualise cinematography.
took me years and 100x times watching it to notice, but @14:30 watch all the pillars in the back ground, you see the entire squad warp in.
Philip, amazing job breaking this down. Best thing I can say is. Welcome to the Grim Dark Future of Warhammer 40k!
This was literally the first Warhammer 40K fan animation I ever watched.
I always knew of 40K. I was 9 years old when Warhammer broke out and became part of our conscience.
Never really paid it any mind.
Until Astartes. I made a Patreon just for this to support the creator.
Since then, I dived right in. Fell head over heels in love with the 40K universe. Consumed so much lore, read so many novels, and watched so many insanely talented creators manifest the 40K universe in their passion project interpretations, I'd caught up on almost 35 years of lore in just 3 years. It's so compelling, so enthralling, and will consume you.
What is so amazing about this piece is that it is familiar to existing fans but still ambiguous since it isn't using established lore. I have been a 40k/GW fan since the 80s and while the marines, inquisitor, ships, human guardsmen is recognizable the particulars of the antagonists are vague and don't have direct analogs in the lore. It is amazing how he brought long time fans as well as noobies into the same sense of confusion...beautiful choice to keep it a fresh experience for old heads and people new to the IP at the same time.
that "painting" at the end is the space marine arriving on a Nechron world
i'm only just getting into 40K, so i may be wrong, but i freaking love it
Fantastic analysis, loved your perspective!
Thank you for the amount of explanations, you give. Your excitement is beautiful. ❤️
The black mist in the void that attacks the tentacle monster (a demon/"Daemon") is [most likely] the psychic/ethereal remains of the robed guy (a Imperial Inquisition psyker, which is a psychic practitioner). Psykers' (if sanctioned by the empire) whole deal is to muck about in what amounts to WH40K's "The Void", which is the realm of Chaos; one of the primordial big bads, and is a direct oppositional force to The Emperor himself (one of them at least). The Inquisitor was eavesdropping on the conversation between the captured orb, and the orb that the squad went to seal up on the ship the Marines breached. In the scene where the 5 marines are walking towards the orb, you can see it trying to mind control them. The first wave of dust kicking up was actually from the first mind control attempt; you can see the Space Marines resist in those small, sharp, sudden head moves. While not necessarily psykers, Space Marines have a high general resistance to psychic attacks. "The Astartes defy our touch." They are not completely immune, though.
Enjoyed seeing your reactions to this amazing animation
No sure if anyone's noticed, but I love how the bolter blasts clear out smoke in the beginning when they breach the ship, and again you can see the concussive blasts push the one of the Astartes's cape when they kill the possessed psyker. the other one I noticed was the when they were ambushing the 2 psykers, how one of them cleared out the slack on the trigger of their bolter before fully engaging the trigger.
The boarding torpedo is one thing that everyone gets so confused by. As it closes on the target vessel, retro-thrusters fire to slow the torpedo's momentum, and at the same time Melta beams fire, which are capable of reducing even the hardest metal to molten slag on contact. Combining the two makes for a very efficient and brutal way of boarding enemy vessels in void warfare.
Also, regarding the Astartes and their superhuman speed in bulky power armour. They wear something called "The Black Carapace", and have numerous implants kind of reminiscent of those Neo has in the Matrix that plug into your body. The armour plugs into these implants, and due to them interfacing with the marine's implants, it feels almost like wearing basic clothing to them. They can move at frightening speeds with incredible strength behind every movement. In one of the novels I have read, a group of Grey Knights (a specialist group of space marines) needs to assault a heavily defended keep, so they get one guy in a suit of Terminator armour (a larger, heavier and more durable suit of power armour that enhances the wearer's strength) to act as a living battering ram, charging through several walls head first like some kind of sci-fi rendition of Marvel's Juggernaut in a bad mood.
An absolute masterclass in show, dont tell. Spectacular composition, sound, and visual storytelling.
basically my understanding of it is that Orb is a Ctan Shard, the large Being was a Deceiver Shard (dead one), the planet he gets transported to is a Necron World.
Always a pleasure seeing someone watch Astartes for the first time
i leave this comment in many of these astartes reviews. knowing all the lore makes this video the pinnacle of 40k video. there is so much lore in this one video series that it's almost overwhelming. the beauty though is you don't need to know any to enjoy it but knowing the lore makes it that much more incredible. Also, the creator was bought out by games workshop and we haven't had another since. while I am very happy for the guy I am also very saddened that we aren't getting any more of this beautiful storytelling from him. I have watched this series no less than 50-60 times. I will also add this specific review is one of the best ones I have watched along with 40klore actually talking about everything in this video. good stuff