It’s time to accept that those “Release the Snyder Cut” t-shirts aren’t aging well. Because as Joseph Campbell taught us, the most important element in any “hero’s journey” is to pick a hero worth following. Writer-director Zack Snyder isn’t that hero.

The clumsily-titled “Rebel Moon: Part One — A Child of Fire” is a sci-fi epic crippled by the limits of big budget sci-fi movie imagination. Whatever one thinks of Mr. “300,” “Justice League” and “Watchmen,” his “Rebel Moon” is corporate content engineering at its most cynical.

Campbell’s “Hero of a Thousand Faces” re-iterated the idea that there are only so many plots and basically only one heroine or hero to lead the reader, listener or viewer through them.

Fine. The “quest” can’t help but feel familiar.

But this Snyder exercise in “world building” for a new “Star Wars” or its ilk is basically “Star Wars” with fewer fresher faces.

It’s a humorless mash-up of “A New Hope” and “The Seven Samurai” (and its Old West remake, “The Magnificent Seven”) a tale of imperialism and brutal repression, with lawless towns and saloons (cantinas), Brit-accented robots, shoot-outs, swordfights and rumors of a “chosen one.”

The villains wear Soviet Bloc uniforms and Nazi attitudes, backed by the silent, acquiescent red-robed priests of conquistador Spain.

The tech is just a re-jiggering and somewhat more art moderne “streamlined” redesign of all the “rebels” vs. “empire” futurism of every sci-fi movie of the past 50 years.

There are gladiators and bounty hunters and farmers in bib overalls and undisciplined goons as soldiers wearing recycled “American Gladiators” armor, insectoids and humanoid insects and hints of inter-species kink.

Supernaturalism? Fascism? Native mysticism? Fantastic Beasts and where to find them? Sure. They’re mixed-in with gigantic “planet killer” space Dreadnoughts and Ed Skrein as a pasty-faced sadist out to foil a rebellion.

The fights are filled with slo-mo, the cast peopled with generic characters played by actors with skills and just enough cachet to merit their paychecks.

The story-beats follow The Book of George Lucas, almost to the letter, especially when it comes to dialogue.

“Kindness is a vice worth dying for.” “There is a difference between justice and revenge.”

The great Sir Anthony Hopkins voices an empathetic and utterly superfluous robot. Charlie Hunnam is an Irish-accented Han Solo substitute. Djimon Hounsou is a rebel general reduced to gladiatorial combat.

And fangirl and fanboy favorite Sofia Boutella of recent installments of “The Mummy,” “Kingsmen” and “Star Trek” is Kora, a space war survivor laying low on a Nordic-accented moon named Veldt, just a farm gal in overalls and a Parisian pixie haircut, waiting for the moment when we learn she is “the most wanted fugitive in the known universe.”

All that slo-mo as she fends off occupiers, imperial minions and treacherous locals of every stripe? It’s to minimize the incredubility of the fight choreography.

Kora’s village is visited by soldiers from The Realm who want their harvest. Don’t stop and ponder why this grain-“negotiation” would be carried out at an Eat Local level by a large, armed occupying force. It’ll give you a headache.

A murder or two and one vengeful slaughter later, Kora and sweet-on-Kora farmer Gunnar (Michiel Huisman) are off on a quest to find the Rebels, and get some help for their village.

They’ll need passage off-planet provided by a lovable smuggler-rogue (Hunnam).

As for other help. Toshiro Mifune and Yul Brenner aren’t available. Maybe this general (Hounsou), this sword-slinging vixen Nemesis (Bae Doona), a freed-slave Tarak (Staz Nair) and can be enlisted.

In flashbacks, Kora doles out bits and pieces of her past to Gunnar, and we see Cary Elwes as a bearded, uniformed heir to the Romanov crown, the powers of a possible “chosen one” “as prophesied,” and we never for an instant grasp anything resembling “what’s really at stake here.”

All these petty crimes against originality wouldn’t matter a whit if Snyder & Co. mashed it all up into something fun or at least more distracting.

I’ve liked some of these actors in other roles. But even with Hunnam’s down’tha pub accident, there is nobody here I’d care to follow down the primrose path of this heroine’s journey, no well-handled action beat that isn’t literally recycled from a thousand other action films and a dozen other “Star Wars” outings.

Not a note of this beast rings heartfelt, original and true, and I’m not just talking about the pedestrian, compose-by-numbers score.

With comic book and “Star Wars” content tumbling into over-saturation and finally losing their cultural currency, the timing of this imitation “galaxy far away” is pretty bad, as well.

But maybe “Part Two” of “Rebel Moon” will work better. If not, I’m sure some rocket scientist will start screaming for “The Snyder Cut” soon enough.

Rating: PG-13 for sequences of strong violence, sexual assault, bloody images, language, sexual material and partial nudity.

Cast: Sofia Boutella, Djimon Hounsou, Bae Doona, Ed Skrein, Sky Yang, Cleopatra Coleman, Ingvar SigurdssonCary Elwes, Fra Fees, Jena Malone, Charlotte Maggi, Cory Stoll, and the voice of Anthony Hopkins. kKurt John

Credits: Directed by Zack Snyder, scripted by Zack Snyder, Kurt Johnstad and Shay Hatten. A Netflix release

Running time: 2:13