Cyclops

Needless to say, expectations were low for this no-budget Sci Fi flick. From atrocious acting and middles-school level CGI to uneven direction and boring subplots, Cyclops is what you've come to expect from the Sci Fi channel these days.

One interesting question was, how cold was it where they filmed this movie in Bulgaria? You could see the actor's breath in many scenes, including the indoor ones. Very strange and out of place. I never knew Rome got this cold.

The CGI was just dreadful. While the modeling of the monster wasn't bad, it seemed to change sizes continually throughout the production. In some scenes, it was enormous and in others, it was human-size.

I bought this with a bunch of other Sci-Fi movies that Anchor Bay had released under the "Alternate Realities" line-up. I initially thought this was a cheesy 80's movie which closely resembled Jason and the Argonauts and Clash of the Titans. Much to my disappointment this movie was more recent and from the opening scene my hopes for some good ol sci-fi cheese reminiscent of the 80s were quickly dashed.

The costumes seemed too bright thrown together. I felt as if at any moment I would look down and see one of them wearing sneakers. The actors throughout the film seemed out of place and much too "modern" as it were. The first characters we come across just seem to not be properly prepped for their rolls.. where was the makeup department on that one?

I didn't believe any of the actors portrayals in any of their rolls. Eric Roberts was just awful.. It felt like he checked out before filming ever began. Stapleton's character Marcus wasn't much better. Although he seemed to get progressively less crappy as the movie went on I can't say I was able to believe his role whatsoever. Mike Straub who played Gordian was by far the best throughout the film. He seemed to be the only actor taking his role seriously. The soldiers of Rome were pitiful as well. There weren't enough of them so their attempt at a Phalanx (the shield maneuver like in 300) fell short. They all looked like random kids they pulled off the street and once again it felt as if none of them played their roles with any kind of serious intention.

The visual effects were atrocious. For a movie that was made in 2008 the lacklustre CGI quality is quite disheartening. I have worked on a few low budget films and the CGI weren't astounding but the CGI in this film makes the projects I've worked on look like Avatar! For a movie like this that did have some production value (supposedly) you think they would strive to make it look a lot better than they did. Epic failure across the board in the CGI department.

This movie def. screams Cheese! Unfortunately it's not the good kind of cheesy that you enjoy watching again and laughing at, no it's the kind of cheesy that you are just happy to be done with once the movie has ended. I would feel embarrassed to have my name associated with this movie in any form. had a little more time, planning and research into the story been done I'm sure they would have had at least something that they wouldn't spend the rest of their lives trying to forget was ever made.

How Eric Roberts can go from portraying Sal Maroni in The Dark Knight to this is beyond me. The production value, low budget or not, is horrific. The costumes look like they were stolen from a nearby Halloween shop and the CGI looks like an art student got drunk and submitted some stock CG to SciFi.

That, and the gross butchering of Roman culture. The Emperor of the the most powerful empire in history clearly only hires the dumbest and most inept soldier for the city guard elite. These guys make the Star Trek "Red shirts" look like Leonida's 300.

To sum up: Take Gladiator, add a crappy subplot about a Cyclops to make it more SciFi worthy, and then give the staff 1 good actor surrounded by many, many bad ones and a budget of a 5 grade video project, without mommy's help.

I shudder to think about the future of the SciFi channel after Battlestar Galactica is done. Whether you like it or not, you must admit, after viewing terrible stuff like this, it's all they have left.

First and foremost: the Cyclops wasn't a Roman legend, it was Greek! (Check any decent production of Homer's "Odyssey".)

Eric Roberts was the best-known name in the cast, and therefore the first name mentioned in all the promo advertising. However, with what little screen-time Mr Roberts got, even he could not have saved this turkey. They wrote the Emperor Tiberius' character as if they'd never heard anything about the real man beyond his name. They had Tiberius completely under the sway of his evil counselor.

The CGI Cyclops effect was cartoonish not monstrous! (I've seen better amateur efforts!) It has to be seen to be (dis-)believed. — And it's really not worth the trouble.

All in all, I found it not only a waste of my time but a waste of the electricity it took to power my TV.

I have to admire the film-makers' ability to get paid for this.

dreck (noun: trash - worthless trashy stuff, especially low-quality merchandise.)

Yes, I said it's dumb. The quality of the acting is bad. The Cyclops is CG'ed and looks pretty badly done. A real live actor in a cyclops costume would fair better than the efforts of the CG team. The costumes look like they came from the local fabric store sales rack. Pretty low budget flick. OK for the younger kids, but there is a lot of fake blood and killing to be had. If they play video games, this will fall right into that category. The writing is pretty elementary. The use of cheap actor's to play secondary rolls is quite obvious. Some of the camera shots, POV, are poorly done. The use of a steady cam might have helped with some of the scenes in the courtyard shots. The better part of this being made for TV, will be the commercials between the program. Not for the intelligent viewer.