Vvardenfell_Man

This film sucks. The acting sucks, the sets suck, the lighting sucks, the sound sucks, the writing sucks, and everything else sucks. There's no reason to think that the people who worked on this product should be held up for ridicule, though. They knew what they were making and they made it effectively.

Rarely is a SyFy original as spectacularly sub-par as this. It lacks everything that a real good bad movie needs to hold an audience's attention. The sound is really what kills it. Everything is too quiet, especially the music. With a better score and crisper dialogue (or lines delivered audibly) this might be better.

It's like a materialist version of David Lynch's Dune crossed with an episode of Star Trek TNG. The ideas at play in this film are wonderfully powerful. The more recently released version of this film is a choppy mess that fails to attain a coherent plot. By focusing on telling a story rather than pioneering a pointless visual style, the 1989 version manages to get the point across without sacrificing character. Locations are fairly bland but also excellent choices for this story. It's a sword-and-spaceship epic with important social and political messages. I would highly recommend watching this film whether or not you enjoyed Aleksei German's film of the same English title.

This is like Power Rangers meets Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles meets Spawn. It's not particularly inventive, it's not particularly fun, but there are people in monster costumes running around and fighting each other. The main draw is the costumes themselves, which are probably too good for this movie--way too much thought went into the giant sexy Furby suit. This is classic Brian Yuzna excess.

The largest problem (other than the boring characters) is the pacing. It feels like the plot barely moves until the end of the second act. There's an interesting twist at that point, but by the time it comes along the tone has already been set and it feels like an escalation in a bizarre direction. Visually interesting as it may be, this film offers nothing you haven't seen before in more tonally consistent superhero films; give it a watch if you want something that put too much thought into everything but structure.