Metal Hurlant Chronicles

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

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

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

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

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

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

Not happening with Metal Hurlant.

The Metal Hurlant Chronicles is a good series. It is similar to The Twilight Zone telling six different stories. After seeing all six, I like the series very much. The stories have different themes and are good. Each one makes a person think. The producers hope to make more episodes telling new stories. I personally enjoyed Joe Flanigan's episode. The story was really good and Joe's acting was great. Hopefully, the series will be seen in the US. Right now, it can be seen in Europe on different networks and different channels. The series has been released on DVD and Blu-Ray in France. The producers are working on releasing the series in Australia on DVD and Blu-Ray

My wife and I tore through these episodes pretty quickly. They were quite enjoyable and we made a game of trying to guess the "twist" endings. Most of the time, the twists had twists! In one episode, the twist was there wasn't a twist! Being a half-hour show also also eliminated the padding that you would have gotten with hour-long episodes. I also thought the series had pretty good special effects for a low budget effort. It succeeded in capturing the flavor of Heavy Metal magazine and it looked quite different than anything else on TV. I hope SyFi or some other network picks it up. It's great news that the producers are making a second season.

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