Decent special effects, horrible dialog, empty feeling movie

Rating: 2/10 (13 May 2008)

I admit, I've never read the book. So I can't comment on how well the movie stays true, other than to say that the director must be following something (other than normal "cinema story-telling") because this movie seems to make little sense. Moreover, any book-following following seems to stop at the basic plot outline only, and does not scratch the surface of the details or deeper meanings.
Yes, the plot is there; yes, you can follow the story and see what happens; but there is absolutely no explanation by way of dialog. It starts off okay, then about halfway through there's a paradigm shift and the characters stop conversing almost completely. It's as if the director/producers suddenly realized they had limited funds, so they eliminated the writers and decided to include only the special effects; perhaps at the same time, the director realized the movie would take 3 hours to complete, and so they cut-out everything not absolutely "essential".
What's left is a somewhat eclectic and disconcerted series of "pretty pictures", with no qualifications of any of the character's reasoning, motives, thoughts, or actions. They do what they do, things happen as they happen, and we're left to just "accept".
The resulting movie has little character development, a seemingly shallow plot, and leaves the viewer with an empty feeling.