Part 8/12:
The film tries to follow a hero’s journey but is hamstrung by shallow characters and inconsistent motivations. Sonia’s backstory is vaguely hinted at—her village gets raided when she’s a child, prompting her to flee into the forest—but this is never fleshed out, and she quickly becomes a generic warrior without clear development.
The villain, an "emperor" who has conquered the world, is portrayed as a boy-turned-tyrant with a toothless, millennial voice that makes him seem more pathetic than menacing. His obsession with collecting a magic book that contains advanced technology seems more like a plot device to justify CGI spectacle than a meaningful motivator.