An unfortunate “Star Wars” imitation.

The story is a derivative mess that feels as though it was assembled from bits of plot picked off the carcasses of other, better films, and glued together with brain-numbing, pace-killing chunks of exposition.

There are endless hunks of spoken exposition. There is a lot of space travel. A great many uninteresting people are introduced. By the first hour all narrative drive has slackened into a limp connecting thread.

The world of Rebel Moon possesses potential as a darker and grittier reinvention of the space opera genre.