Visual effects overkill!

Rating: 3/10 (27 March 2011)

There is only one word to describe this movie, which is: overkill! The movie is like a long visual effects stravaganza, but it almost seems like someone forgot they where trying to tell a story.
Lets begin at the beginning. First of all, the opening scene is actually quite good. The almost non-spoken scene says more then enough, and the visual style sets the tone for the rest of the movie, which is fine. But once the movie gets started, things start to be unclear. The switch from fantasy to reality and back are unclear, and the it's almost as if Snyder forgot what story he was telling, and only focused on the visuals of the movie.
Now, the visual effects are stunning, as is the whole visual style of the movie. If only we would care about our main characters, and would understand the movie, things would've been much better. At one point in the movie, I actually felt in one point of the movie, I wanted to know how things ended in reality, in stead of the fantasy world, which I think is not the intend of the filmmaker. The whole purpose of the fantasy world, is to keep you at the edge of your seat, thrilled and amazed. But instead, I was only annoyed when they cut to this world, since this real world, was much more interesting then those fantasy pieces, which seemed to have no goal at all then just entertain the audience.
It is obvious the goal was to entertain with the huge spectacular visual effects, but to me it shows something different. Apparently the filmmaker was so scared his story would not be interesting enough, and therefore added in this whole fantasy world, to keep things entertaining. Too bad, because I would've rather seen the real side world, which I thought could've given a much more interesting world.
In my idea, this is a typical example of a director using visual effects, which he doesn't understand. He doesn't use them to tell the story, he uses them because he can.
Poor movie, poor script, wonderful art direction and visuals though. A clear case of a good team, but no good leader. Sorry Snyder.