Movie was fine and entertaining.
I'm not going to give lots of details about what happened in the movie but just wanted to comment about what a lot of other people had said about it.
It feels like much of the hate must be from people trying to just buck the trend or with some emotional spur of the moment thing going on lol. Some people gave it 1 star which... according to them... makes it one of the worst movies ever made (worse than Battlefield Earth, or Killing Spree?? lol), but there are a lot of 10 star ratings... (So it was as good as The Godfather, Shawshank Redemption, Pulp Fiction etc??)... too which always makes you think they were people involved with the movie but then again maybe people rate them in on their expectations of the movie compared to what they actually get, rather than rating in comparison to other movies?
It had a budget of $60 million and box office was around $76 million most likely way down on what they though it would be but not exactly a big flop, yeah there was probably millions spent on promoting but they probably made up for that and more with DVD and BR sales and rentals, and looking through various sites, the critics reviews seem to be around average or just below and cinema goers reviews seem to be average to above average. At the time of typing this it has a 6.1 rating on IMDb which shows that most here think it is at least better than average.
This movie is about getting to know the characters, an intro into the series if you like, there will be loose ends because there will be at least one sequel. The next movie will be much the same plus developing the characters with a big finale or if there is a 3rd and final movie the big finale will be there, that is usually how it works. There will always be similarities and comparisons... (Twighlight, Harry Potter, Stargate, Underworld... whatever!)... to other movies when especially when they are in the same genre, it would be almost impossible to make the movie 100% unique.
As for always comparing movies with books people will nearly always prefer the 1st version of something they read, see, hear etc which most often than not is the original, whether it be a book, movie, TV series or music. Its pointless reading the book and then moaning that it is not as the same. Making it exactly the same... which is hard anyway across the two completely different formats... would be also pointless as once you have read or seen one then there would be no point reading or seeing the other and people would still moan because its the same.
I agree it was a little too long and also agree with someone who mentioned the film score, it does seem somewhat out of place, like it was taken from another movie plus a lot of scenes were too dark, not much point spending money on filming a scene that no-one can see, but over all it was fine and entertaining. :)
BTW Took me a while to recognise Robert Sheehan, he was funny in Misfits TV series. :)