Filmmaker Reacts: ASTARTES 1-5 Warhammer 40K

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To put it simply; 11:22 In 40K, that is a possession. 11:24 In 40k, that is an exorcism.

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.

"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

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.

LADIES AND GENTLEMAN, WE GOT ANOTHER!

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.

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"

Astartes is a mindblowingly beautiful work and I really hope GW has been letting Syama work on what he wants since they hired him.

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).

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.

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.

I never get tired of watching Astartes.

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!

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.

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.

“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!

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.

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).