Too derivative

Rating: 4/10 (28 June 2014)

The visuals were stolen from the work of Roger Dean who designed many album covers for bands in the seventies -significantly Yes whose Close to the Edge album and Fragile's covers are the template for the floating islands in this movie. The story is a B-movie fifties western set in space. The script is lousy - who in their right mind would use Unobtainium for a rare mineral that the earth people want? Maybe in a draft script but not in the finished article.
A shedload of money was spent on this film and while it looks great and is fairly visually appealing nothing makes up for a dull story and script and unsatisfactory acting. That said the actors did as well as they could with material given that it must have all been done against green screens. I am rewatching this film again with few expectations - the visual plagiarism of Dean's work seems even more blatant and inexcusable. The script is full of clichés as are the characters but on bluray there is no denying the quality of the image. The blatant theft of Roger Dean's artwork still makes my blood boil and to read that a court action brought by Mr Dean failed beggars belief. I find it hard to believe that 4 more movies are made out of this material as there was only just about enough of a plot for this first one and that was stolen form a 50's B western.