Simply A Masterpiece

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

before i get into this review id like to state the difference between paragon and renegade in the mass effect series as a whole. paragon and renegade choices aren't supposed to be simply as good vs evil. paragon represents Idealism a.k.a. the Socrates school of philosophy and Renegade represents Pragmatism a.k.a. the Machiavellian "Ends Justify The Means" or in simpler terms for you numnuts out there, paragon is lawful good and renegade is chaotic good. when playing the mass effect trilogy as commander Shepard i usually mixed these up and played as either a paragade or a renagon, essentially a mix of both moralities to make both a realistic and idealistic protagonist.now onto the review, first of all the story:(SPOILERS AHEAD)this film is essentially part of the backstory of alliance marine James Vegas deployment on a colony planet and his encounter with the collectors from mass effect 2. one thing you will notice about James is his good leadership skills and combat expertise. another noticeable trait from James is his admiration and idolization of commander Shepard from the mass effect trilogy, going so far as to wear a badge commemorating the remembrance of the ssv Normandy. members of Vegas squad, his captain and even admiral Hackett mention this. either teasing him for it or warning him that "greatness like that comes at a great price". the other characters were well created and felt like real people in a terrible and life threatening situation. tough not everything was combat and action, there were both fun and lighthearted moments between Vega, his squad and the colonists and some very emotional and heart breaking moments such as the death of one Vegas squad member and James final decision near the end of the film. id say that this was a 10 out of 10 for me, being a fan of the mass effect franchise as a whole i loved it. the animation was very good and the soundtrack was phenomenal.also the reason why the movie is called "paragon lost" is because James Vega himself is a very paragon character. its the reason why he admires and looks up to commander Shepard because Shepard saved the galaxy against impossible odds in mass effect 1 and became regarded as a true hero around the galaxy. near the end of the film Vega had the choice of saving the colonists or saving the intel on the collectors. James made the renegade choice, he saved the intel at the cost of the colonists, as such he lost his paragon. even tough James greatly admires Shepard and wants to follow in his footsteps, he has no idea what its like to be Shepard. when playing as commander Shepard in the mass effect trilogy i had to make dozens of tough choices and decisions both good and bad and live with the consequences. when James went trough the exact same ordeal it emotionally destroyed him, ironically making him experience what its like to be Shepard. when you meet him in mass effect 3, he still admires you but after experiencing firsthand what its like to be him Vegas idolization has been replaced with respect and relief of not being commander Shepard who he sees as a "loco"AKA crazy. for the things that the commander has done. its a very a mentor protégé like relationship between those two and part of the reason why i love his character.

This movie is about James Vega, for those who don't know him he is a companion in Mass Effect 3 video game, you don't know much about him. But he loves earth and he is just as loyal as Shepherd and he wanted to make a difference so he decided to join the best, The N7, he stands for the earth's greatest contribution just like Shephard for humanity. This movie made me respect him a lot more and I decided to always take me with him, the more you progress in the game and the more you talk to your companions the more you hear about their background stories and what they've been through. He was not my favorite companion to bring along to missions but after have seen this movie it built up a lot of respect for him so I decided to take me with him even more and he suddenly became my favorite companion, he only hints small information about his background story and you can guess it was something terrible that happened to him and his squad, but you never knew what it was until this movie came. Now when I've seen it I could never have guessed how tragic it was for him to experience what he did. I'd say this movie represented his background story to the fullest. I gave it a 7/10, I had no problem with the cgi/animation and I loved the story, Mass Effect is about tough choices, what you believe is to be the best possible outcome, sacrifice and gain. The movie title speaks for itself. James Vega has my respect, thumbs up for this movie, bring us more Mass! Effect!

Personal: Firstly, I need to say that I'm not the biggest fan of the game series. I have played only Mass Effect 3 and have read the first of the book series. I considered both to be quite excellent. So now that that's clear I need to say: Warning: This movie isn't worth the time put into making it. By comparison to the games and the books it's a poor excuse at an attempt to add some other media to the Mass Effect universe.Summary: The story is focused around the character Vega, which was first introduced in the game, Vega and his team are ordered to protect a researching colony that's working on figuring out some ancient alien tech. Not too far into the movie the colony gets attacked by an enemy who's reasoning and purposes are unknown.Impressions: I'll grant you the script sounds like it would've had potential in the right hands at making at least a decent action movie, however it was written poorly. Most of it isn't only predictable, it's so cliché you have to slap yourself in order not to fall asleep, not to mention Vega's character is - in the games at least, because there isn't a lot of character development to speak of in the movie - cliché to begin with. To sum him up quickly, he's the guy on the battlefield going 'Yeah! Get some!', and that is cause of a great many problems throughout the movie because when he 'falls in love'(meaning he gets a high school crush), they turn him into a lost puppy. It's like they took out every cliché attribute from Peter Parker and Chuck Norris and slammed it into one with this guy. I shouldn't even mention the fact that the way he's imagined and acted is not at all what I was used to from the game.Alright, moving on, voice acting... Some of the lines don't fit well with the stress levels in each scene, they're isn't one that's memorable and you can tell from a far they lacked directing.The animation. Oh boy! Remember the old X-men cartoons? That's about the level this is at. I'm not saying the X-men cartoons weren't great, for that time, they were phenomenal, however for 2012 this animation will feel like it's a blast from the past in a bad way. I think there might even be some scenes that are missing in-between frames, the lip sync is pretty awful and the level of complexity of the angles and scenes is Scooby Doo-ish.Conclusion: This movie is a shameful attempt at cashing in on an already established name. It has no positive side to it, except maybe giving you a good giggle, when you see just how bad it really is.

Well when I saw the trailer for the first time I didn't give it too much attention, even being a huge fan of the game, the animation style and the main character, Vega (a playable character in Mass Effect 3), was too weak, lacking the appeal needed for an animation with the name Mass Effect on it.But like I said, I'm a huge fan and I had to watch it. So I did. And I found myself enjoying the movie more than I thought.Basically, Vega leads his squad on a mission to protect a colony on a distant planet from a unknown threat. When they finally strike and take all the colonists hostage, Vega has to figured out what exactly he's facing and save the colony from being abducted and exterminated, having to make some tough decisions on the way.The catch here is, if you have played Mass Effect 3 you already know what will happen in the movie, as Vega himself can tell you that in the game. And that may be the biggest mistake with this movie. This should've been released when Mass Effect 2 came out, back in 2010. It would make a lot of more sense, as the story here happens few months before the second game's story and would be a good surprise to see Vega in the third game after seeing this movie back then. Oh well...The animation is pretty average. There's blood and lots of action, but the style they used just doesn't fit to the Mass Effect universe. It doesn't work. Why use Anime style on this anyway? Seriously. And not a great one too. It lacked something, I can't tell exactly what. They did the same mistake with Dragon Age animated movie. EA got it right with the first Dead Space animated movie. Please, go back to that. Mass Effect deserve way better than this. But that's just me, I'm sure there are many people that will enjoy it, I suppose.All in all, this movie is mostly for fans of the Mass Effect game series. If you've never played the game, you may still enjoy this, but without knowing the universe it just wont be the same. It's a good movie, average animation, good story, but it could be a lot better. Its not enough to have the Mass Effect name on it.