We saw it last night and I pretty much agree.

Some of the filming was great, and some of the effects, and some looked downright amateurish.

But it was largely warmed-over Star Wars, with unnecessarily added adult content and profanity added in. Oh, and a girl power main character. I almost nodded off around 3/4 of the way through it.

No depth of characters, an unappealing main character, plus unnecessary characters.

What did they pull from Star Wars? Desolate planet, child of a famous warrior, wise mentor, Han Solo, Lando, cantina, empire bad, lowly farmer good, lightsabers, blasters, starships, Nazi imagery, and on and on.

Companies are spending hundreds of millions of dollars and can't come up with something more original or interesting than this?

I also was desperate for something to watch. I did the whole thing, it was ok.

Ok so I am easily amused.

Was it derivative? HELL YES! Right down to some of the visuals and cinematography.

Was it a GOOD movie? No. It was basically 70s sci-fi with slick sheen.

Did the slow motion get annoying as hell? You bet you ass it did! Some of it would have been cool and was great looking but WAY OVER USED!!

All that said was it fun? Yea, it was. It was basically a big budget version of Battle Beyond The Stars at its heart and I loved that cheesy Corman flick. Add in lots of Star Wars, some Warhammer 40K and a few others sprinkled in as well as the source material for pretty much all of this the old Kurosawa stuff and you have basically a modern big budget 70s B grade Sci-Fi flick and you know, I’m ok with that. I liked the casting as well in general.

So should you go into this looking for the next great science fiction saga? HEEEELLLLLL NNNNOOOOO!!! But if you go into it looking for a little of that childhood joy a crappy sci-fi flick like Battle Beyond The Stars might bring then I think you will be pleasantly surprised.

But again, I’m easy and I like bad movies.

quote:

Originally posted by AUTiger89:
We saw it last night and I pretty much agree.

Some of the filming was great, and some of the effects, and some looked downright amateurish.

But it was largely warmed-over Star Wars, with unnecessarily added adult content and profanity added in. Oh, and a girl power main character. I almost nodded off around 3/4 of the way through it.

No depth of characters, an unappealing main character, plus unnecessary characters.

What did they pull from Star Wars? Desolate planet, child of a famous warrior, wise mentor, Han Solo, Lando, cantina, empire bad, lowly farmer good, lightsabers, blasters, starships, Nazi imagery, and on and on.

Companies are spending hundreds of millions of dollars and can't come up with something more original or interesting than this?

you, I and likely dozen or more members here could name of a double handful of Sci Fi books that have never been made into a movie, and would likely do well, but will never make it to the big screen,

Part 2 came out the other day if anyone is interested.

I'm not even going to bother.

Reviews I've seen state that it's even worse than Part 1, which is a somewhat impressive achievement, I guess...

This message has been edited. Last edited by: RogueJSK,

I mean its a cheesy scifi 'splody Seven Samurai ripoff.

I don't necessarily say that as a bad thing. I haven't watched part 2 but part one was entertaining enough to me in the above stated way. Not everything has to been ground breaking or even "good" to be mindless fun.

But I am easy in this regard and the real world sucks so as long as you aren't preaching to me telling me how horrible of a human I personally am......'splody, cheesy, scifi works for me.

I mean this is just a big budget "Battle Beyond the Stars" and I love that movie.

Part 1: meh

Part 2: even more meh

I skipped on watching this when it originally came out, but watched the director’s cut versions today. Since I never saw the shorter PG-13 movies, I can’t directly compare to the longer R version, other than what I’ve read. The DC versions are longer (just under 3 1/2 hours for Part 1 and just under 3 hours for part 2), and pretty violent with lots of blood and gore, as well as nudity and a couple of sex scenes. I thought part 1 was watchable. Yes, it’s pretty derivative, but I didn’t feel lost. They went into the backstories of the rebel characters enough to understand their motivations and the story seemed to flow well, both of which people said was a weakness in the originals. The bad guy was a bit too cartoonishly evil for my tastes though, although I do like the actor who plays him in other stuff. For part 2, the first half is pretty skippable. Except for the scenes for the backstories of a couple of characters who weren’t done in part 1, it’s a lot of slo-mo of harvesting wheat, and other happy time on the farm stuff. At about 1 1/2 hours in, when the bad guy drop ships land, is when it’s time to start watching, because it’s over an hour of hard nonstop action from that point on.

Overall, I thought it was watchable and mostly worth the time on a rainy day. Zac needs to cut back on the slo-mo, though. If all of the scenes were run at normal speed, the movies would probably be 30-45 minutes shorter.

Finally, had to chuckle that the big planet bombardment guns on the dreadnaught were aimed by a guy cranking two small handwheels for bearing and elevation like on a WW2 AA gun. Really?