Where to start. The film opens with a brief narration about the history of what's been happening, but ends up being mostly unnecessary because it relays information that could have easily been peppered into the movie. All of this info ultimately proves useless anyway because the story is a fairly generic and cliche Rebel-Versus-Empire story, via Star Wars. We're then briefly introduced to a moon village that is quickly targeted by a generic evil bad guy who does very evil bad guy things. This gives way to a nearly carbon copy of Severn Samurai on a galactic level, with the village deciding whether to cave to the evil empire or not, but eventually relenting to the same exact thing from that movie: finding a bunch of warriors to come back to train and protect the village. It is literally the exact same set up as that classic film.
From then on, the story is mostly recruiting the brave heroes for the task. Unfortunately, none of these characters get any decent development. Oh, there are hints there. Tarak is a noble "slave" who always fulfills his debts, is clearly very brave and heroic, but beyond that mostly just follows our lead, Kora, around being very noble and acting regal. Titus is a legendary general who they spend a third of the film trying to reach, only to find him, spend a brief scene with him and a very small speech before he completely abandons his drunken, self-imposed exile out of shame to join them on their mission. There's absolutely nothing whatsoever leading up to this complete change of character. It's some of the laziest and least developed character work I have seen in a long time. Everyone in this movie, save for the lead, is like this. By far, the character who suffers the worst is Ed Skrein's Atticus Noble, who is as generic a villain as could be developed. He goes around beating, killing, and smarming for what seems to be the sake of just being evil. We learn nothing about him and he feels like little more than a tool and motivation for our heroes. Kora, for her part, is decently developed, but far too much of it is relayed over dialogue. Everything we know about her comes from dialogue over action. I've never known Snyder to be big on character development, he commonly uses too much dialogue and not enough action to tell his character's stories, but even for him this is very sad.
The more visceral elements are much better off. When there is action, it's entertaining enough, though Snyder continues to rely too much on his trademark. The film does look very good and it's well designed, though Snyder doesn't demonstrate much originality. The creatures, costumes, settings, etc. Look great and are always interesting. The movie also leaves little time for getting bored as it moves so fast, it never feels like it's lagging or wasting time. I was even surprised it was over two hours because it doesn't feel like it. These things are minor though in the face of all that this film fails to achieve. There's plenty of groundwork here that could be great, but the pieces are so poorly developed rushed, they don't rise above mediocre and typically just wallow in poor. I have no idea what Part II has in store for us, but I can say I am glad this is on Netflix because if it was getting a major theatrical release, I very much doubt I'd be buying a ticket to it.
From then on, the story is mostly recruiting the brave heroes for the task. Unfortunately, none of these characters get any decent development. Oh, there are hints there. Tarak is a noble "slave" who always fulfills his debts, is clearly very brave and heroic, but beyond that mostly just follows our lead, Kora, around being very noble and acting regal. Titus is a legendary general who they spend a third of the film trying to reach, only to find him, spend a brief scene with him and a very small speech before he completely abandons his drunken, self-imposed exile out of shame to join them on their mission. There's absolutely nothing whatsoever leading up to this complete change of character. It's some of the laziest and least developed character work I have seen in a long time. Everyone in this movie, save for the lead, is like this. By far, the character who suffers the worst is Ed Skrein's Atticus Noble, who is as generic a villain as could be developed. He goes around beating, killing, and smarming for what seems to be the sake of just being evil. We learn nothing about him and he feels like little more than a tool and motivation for our heroes. Kora, for her part, is decently developed, but far too much of it is relayed over dialogue. Everything we know about her comes from dialogue over action. I've never known Snyder to be big on character development, he commonly uses too much dialogue and not enough action to tell his character's stories, but even for him this is very sad.
The more visceral elements are much better off. When there is action, it's entertaining enough, though Snyder continues to rely too much on his trademark. The film does look very good and it's well designed, though Snyder doesn't demonstrate much originality. The creatures, costumes, settings, etc. Look great and are always interesting. The movie also leaves little time for getting bored as it moves so fast, it never feels like it's lagging or wasting time. I was even surprised it was over two hours because it doesn't feel like it. These things are minor though in the face of all that this film fails to achieve. There's plenty of groundwork here that could be great, but the pieces are so poorly developed rushed, they don't rise above mediocre and typically just wallow in poor. I have no idea what Part II has in store for us, but I can say I am glad this is on Netflix because if it was getting a major theatrical release, I very much doubt I'd be buying a ticket to it.