While searching for rebels and in need of resupply a Motherworld dreadnought "The King's Gaze" comes to the agricultural settlement Veldt and Admiral Noble (Ed Skrein) demands the locals hand over their entire harvest.
Leaving a small contingent behind the dreadnought departs with Noble promising to return in ten weeks.
Following a fatal altercation with the ill-disciplined Motherland troops, Kora (Sophia Boutella) an offworlder they've taken in, makes it clear that this now means the Veldt will be razed to the ground and they must recruit people able to fight and defend themselves when "The King's Gaze" returns.
Kora and the farmer Gunnar (Michiel Huisman) begin their search for rebels, mercenaries and outcasts willing to stand up to the Motherworld.
Enter the Snyderverse.
None of this makes any sense.
Why does a huge galaxy conquering empire need the grain from a settlement of space-Amish who must number 200 at most. Motherworld seems to have near instant FTL travel, sentient robots and entire other worlds at their command, surely some of them have functional modern agriculture that is plenty productive they could visit. Sure they're Nazis but it would be more efficient as they're already busy looking for rebels so why waste time to go threaten some space-Amish?
Then we get to the quest for allies. Kora and Gunnar blunder about asking people out loud for the location of infamous wanted killers, rebels and deserters and get given directions on a plate. There's a few fights but these exist mostly for Kora to do hot-murder-pixie stuff in slo mo. They don't seem to have any resources or convincing arguments but everybody joins up.
Much exposition happens and wouldn't you know, Kora is the most wanted fugitive in the Galaxy, but it's no revelation because if you hadn't guessed it was mentioned in the trailer.
All the scale is wrong, at one point somebody you know is going to die because they've had too little buildup attacks a quite sizeable spaceship with a javelin and somehow causes it to crash. There's a meeting with a CGI-heavy "King" of a world that seems to happen on an empty plain with just concept art as a backdrop.
Then there's the length. After over two hours all that's happened is the stage is set, there's been an initial skirmish and you have to wait until April for part two.
Some of the visuals are decent though, the Motherworld are channeling the Imperium of Man excellently and there are reasonable creature effects.
At the end of the day though all my review scores are relative to the waters a particular fish swims in and when you press play on part one of a Zak Snyder "epic" you know what you signed up for.
I got exactly as formulaic and derivative a fish as I expected so it's a 5/10 because it was just slo-mo, lens flare and that whoop whoop noise he thinks bit of metal make when they fly through the air. Just like I expected.