It begins in a simple homestead village on the moon Veldt. Looking like somewhere between 1930's Kansas and Tolkien's Shire. Nasty men in tyrannically tight boots turn up in a spaceship, demanding a percentage of the villages corn. Kora, who has lived in the village for two years, unbeknownst to the villagers can kick ass with the best of them. Along with Gunner from the village she sets off to put together an elite team. One that can defend the village from the authoritarian space gents in neat uniforms.
This is a not an unfamiliar story line, essentially a direct steal from Kurosawa's epic Seven Samurai. Throw in the gothic steam punk styling of David Lynch's Dune, the throbbing blazing swords of Star Wars via Chinese martial arts and there you have it. A veritable smorgasbord of references to chew on. and find hard to digest.
Zack Snyder never knowingly under cooks his films. So Part One clocks in at two hours, with a three hour Directors Cut if you could bare it. Part Two is two hours, or two and a half when uncut. The thing is longer is not what you really needed here. Snyder appears to not understand less can be more. Because in his book, more requires MORE but with huge roaring exclamation marks MORE!!!! What happens in the directors cuts? There is just grotesque amounts of bloody violence, and if there is a suggestion of a sexual encounter in the cut version, in the uncut it gets explicitly raunchy, apparently. So he didn't edit out the subtle more nuanced bits after all.
As it stands Part One just about holds its own as a film. It's quite a passable, if very derivative, science fiction romp. Part Two could realistically be over in an hour and a half. But it decides to luxuriate in its first hour with scenes of folksy tweeness and soul searching. Followed by an hours worth of the battle for the village which just goes on and on and on and on. The thing is, that the battle is directed at only one pace, which is intensely furious, so after half an hour you are utterly exhausted with it. You remove your active emotional engagement and endure its constant overreaching for meaning with a stoical heart. Light and shade here is a basic description of a lamp stand.
CARROT REVIEW - 4/8
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