This movie has already been promoted by Netflix for quite some time and looked interesting. So on the day of its release yesterday, I immediately watch it once I got the chance last night. Well here's more on the film.

Brief Story Line

Story was set in the galaxy where it was ruled by an empire called Motherworld led by Regent Balisarius (Fra Fee - Hawkeye TV series etc) along with his right hand man Admiral Noble (Ed Skrein - Midway, Deadpool etc). They always used force to conquer the whole empire while fighting some rebels called the Bloodaxe. 

When Noble and his troops arrived at a small village in the planet Veldt, they commanded the villagers to provide food for the armies otherwise they would be killed. One of the villagers named Kora (Sofia Boutella - Hotel Artemis, The Mummy 2017 reboot etc) and a farmer Gunnar (Michiel Huisman - A Boy Called Christmas, The Flight Attendant TV series etc) were tasked to find warriors to fight off Noble's troops. They managed to recruit some people who believed in their cause such as Kai the smugglers (Charlie Hunnam - The Gentlemen, Pacific Rim etc), former General Titus (Djimon Hounsou - Gran Turismo, Shazam! etc), Tarak (Staz Nair - Game of Throne TV series etc), Nemesis (Bae Doo-na - Broker, Sense8 TV series etc) and later Darrian Bloodaxe (Ray Fisher - Justice League  etc).

So would they be able to fight against the large armies of the Motherworld? You could find out in this movie.

End of Brief Story Line

Got to admit that one of the reasons I was interested with the movie was the factor of Zack Snyder as the director and writer which usually translates to stylish action films (Army of the Dead, 300, Watchman were just few example of his previous works). Plus the plot seemed simple enough and frankly a bit like Star Wars. I read somewhere that Snyder had pitched his ideas for the new Star Wars story but did not come to fruition. 

Anyway, after watching this film, I did see some of his great qualities here like some cool action sequence. But the most wonderful thing about the movie to me was definitely the marvelous special effects. They were so beautiful and some of them were breath taking like the early scene where it showed a planet with ring on the background, the life like creatures, large space ships and many more. I imagined it would have been more entertaining if I had seen this on the large screen of a cinema. Too bad the film only had limited release in the US.

I personally felt that the story was not too extraordinary. In fact it seemed pretty standard with a plot twist that was not so surprising if you had watched as many movies like I did. The early part actually felt a bit slow but the visually stunning scenes were more than enough to keep me invested. Luckily it did not take too long for the arrival of Admiral Noble's troops which increased the tempo, though afterwards the story was rather predictable by showing the capabilities of the people being recruited and closed with the grand finale fights.

The characters here were generally OK for me with my most favorite Tarak where the scene of him dealing with a creature was just amazing. Despite the admiral being a ruthless leader, I thought his viciousness was not sufficiently shown here making him just a so so villain.  General Titus was a bit under developed for me, but probably he would be in the second part to be released in April 2024. I like the fight scenes here but I felt Snyder over used the slow motion effect in many of them. I mean, I like them when they were to add the "wow" effect on certain scene like the one involving Darrian or Tarak, but it did not have to be such in every fight (the one in the bar was just one example).

The background music was quite OK but I think my TV did not give justice cause in some scenes they were too loud and did not sound nice but noisy instead. The film's duration of 134 minutes were good enough for me as it had sufficient time to show us the story that Snyder wanted to deliver plus there were plenty of awesome action scenes. The cast played their roles adequately. Sofia Boutella was very capable in the fight sequence (her experience in the past certainly helped) and Michiel Huisman was quite perfect as this farmer, while the rest were not bad. Oh there were also few well known names such as Anthony Hopkins (Westworld TV series, Nixon etc) as a character that you would not have guessed and Cary Elwes (Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre etc).

Overall to me this was an entertaining space adventure movie with a standard story but having really wonderful special effects that amazingly not too obvious even though I watched it on TV. The high production value was apparent but I was quite surprised that it only had budget of < USD 200 million for two movies. Btw, there was no mid or post end credit scene here. Critics were really unimpressed as shown by the mostly negative reviews, though audience seemed to enjoy them more. I myself was quite satisfied with the movie. So if you are interested in the epic space opera movies, then likely you would be able to enjoy it, as long as you do not expect it to be of the quality of original Star Wars trilogy.

Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars