well... hm.
I enjoyed the approach, but... I wanted more elaboration of the future settings. I suppose it's my natural reaction. When dealing with historical periods, and present day periods, there isn't so strong of a need to know everything about that period, because I already know enough about the past and present to fill in the gaps. But when it comes to futuristic periods, like say, a hundred or two hundred years from now, I can't shake the need for wanting to know everything about that time period, because I have little to go on except what I can deduce.
Overall the movie did a good job in splicing together past present and future events despite the timing being a little awkward in some parts, but I felt a little out of touch with the future periods because it just seemed like such a huge leap. And the signifying endeavors that linked each time period didn't always lead directly to the state of affairs in that time period. Some connections were subtle, a button off someone's shirt finding itself to be a keepsake hundreds of years later, for instance. There's multiple grades of connections in other words, strong connections would be ones such as the replicant turned messiah. Weak connections would be ones such as the button.
Then on top of that you have the interconnections of roles. The evil one, the hero, etc. In each instance evil is portrayed by the same actor. The hero is portrayed by different actors, and then the one actor whose characters go from evil to good (this being the example of how one can change over time and over reincarnations.)
Anyway I did like it as I said, I just wished such a large spanning tale with so much to say and such a unique way of saying it wasn't forced into a 3 hour time slot because even still the movie seemed to drag in parts and I think it'd have been far more successful a story telling had it been in a mini-series or at the very least a trilogy of movies.