The upsides? A good, solid, and non-monochrone cast. Oh, and the droid played by the graduate of the Joss Whedon school of anti-heroes that came off as the love child of PROXY and HK-47. The premise of a Lower-Deck Episode without the "demigods" as described in David Brin's harsh criticism of the series.
The downsides? Pretty much everything else. It seemed to be going for Deconstructor Fleet in talking about all the Muggle men and women caught up in the ceaseless wizards' religious war driving the series, but fell flat. We know from the outset that this is pretty much going to end badly for our gang of RedShirts, so no real time or effort is spent in characterization or making us care about them. The script is so obsessed with trying to go "gritty" that it more or less comes across like a dreary Oscar BaitWW2 film with palatte-swapped X-wings, mixed with a half-hearted Ripped from the Headlines in trying to draw parallels between the Rebel Alliance and contemporary Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters, which also falls flat in the universe's context. The only humor comes from the droid, and that's mostly due to Tudyk's mastery of Sarcasm Mode.
They bounce around planets and locations so fast that no effort is made to develop a feel for any of the locations. They probably could have cut about two planets and two characters and not lost anything. The music is anemic, which is very jarring; it's fine for Marvel films to have unforgettable elevator music, but Star Wars? Even if you couldn't get Williams, there are still composers like Jeremy Soule (KOTOR) that could have delivered a decent score.
Overall, a mess of a film that should have been better than it was.
Anemic and dreary
The upsides? A good, solid, and non-monochrone cast. Oh, and the droid played by the graduate of the Joss Whedon school of anti-heroes that came off as the love child of PROXY and HK-47. The premise of a Lower-Deck Episode without the "demigods" as described in David Brin's harsh criticism of the series.
The downsides? Pretty much everything else. It seemed to be going for Deconstructor Fleet in talking about all the Muggle men and women caught up in the ceaseless wizards' religious war driving the series, but fell flat. We know from the outset that this is pretty much going to end badly for our gang of RedShirts, so no real time or effort is spent in characterization or making us care about them. The script is so obsessed with trying to go "gritty" that it more or less comes across like a dreary Oscar Bait WW2 film with palatte-swapped X-wings, mixed with a half-hearted Ripped from the Headlines in trying to draw parallels between the Rebel Alliance and contemporary Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters, which also falls flat in the universe's context. The only humor comes from the droid, and that's mostly due to Tudyk's mastery of Sarcasm Mode.
They bounce around planets and locations so fast that no effort is made to develop a feel for any of the locations. They probably could have cut about two planets and two characters and not lost anything. The music is anemic, which is very jarring; it's fine for Marvel films to have unforgettable elevator music, but Star Wars? Even if you couldn't get Williams, there are still composers like Jeremy Soule (KOTOR) that could have delivered a decent score.
Overall, a mess of a film that should have been better than it was.