I know it’s popular to hate on this nowadays, but some of the ratings on the top reviews are quite ridiculous.
I’m not a massive fan of it either, but some people rating this a 1 must be under the impression that it’ll gain them cinema snob credentials or something. In reality, it’s quite the opposite.
A lot of this is saved by the production: the filmmaking is top notch, action’s well helmed, cutting edge visual effects, impressive cinematography and lighting, standout score, all that stuff’s great and memorable. In fact, I’d argue very few movies are as immersive as this one.
The characters are ok (little too cartoony and cliché for my liking) but it’s the script in particular that brings a lot of the movie down. It’s way too tropey (both cinematic and literary), lots of bad dialogue, highly predictable and far too om the nose. It doesn’t have enough meat on the bones to justify the 3 hour runtime, and casting some better actors would’ve gone a long way as well (Zoe Saldana is the only person giving a legit good performance). You can hear Worthington’s Australian accent throughout the entire film, and it’s very distracting.
So, it’s fine, good on Cameron for making all the money in the world with an original idea. You could honestly do a lot worse than watching this. But you could also do a lot better.

6/10