Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire – Review
133 Minutes, Rated PG-13
Written by Shay Hatten, Kurt Johnstad, Zack Snyder
Directed by Zack Snyder
**NOTE: You can read Mark’s review below, then listen or watch as he and longtime friend of the show Val Camercon discuss this movie and Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom in more detail. Remember, though, you can listen to all our discussions of this and every other movie directly over on ACAST. Stay tuned.**
Synopsis:
When a peaceful settlement on the edge of a distant moon finds itself threatened by the armies of a tyrannical ruling force, a mysterious stranger living among its villagers becomes their best hope for survival.
I sometimes feel as if I am one of the few not bat-shit-crazy Zack Snyder appreciators out there.
Yes, I have been down on a few of his later films (notably BvS and the “Snyder Cut” of Justice League), but I loved his version of Watchmen, enjoyed the darkly whimsical-yet-sexy Suckerpunch, and seem to be one of the few people that liked his version of Superman/Clark Kent in Man of Steel.
Heck, I even found his zombie apocalypse movie Army of the Dead entertaining in a popcorn-movie kind of way (also on Netflix, BTW).
So when word broke that Snyder was adapting his rejected Star Wars script into an original feature with Netflix backing it, I was intrigued and dare I say, excited about the prospect of seeing what he would do with it.
Well, now I know.
Having screened the movie last night, here are the biggest takeaways for me:
The writing crew (above) is responsible for some great movies (including Atomic Blonde, 300, and John Wick 3 & 4), but this script is atrocious. Rebel Moon has some of the most ponderous and clunky dialogue this side of anything George Lucas has ever put down on paper. At times formal, at others contemporaneous, it is always delivered like the cast was hung over: slowly, gravely, and without any real emotion behind their words.
“My best hope is that long-ago general is in front of me” is an actual line of dialogue. Smacks a bit of “General Kenobi. Long ago you served my father in the clone wars,” doesn’t it?
And let’s not overlook the fact all exposition is done in straight-up conversation. “Let me tell you…” kind of writing. It’s not good.
Zack Snyder STILL cannot go 3 minutes without something happening in slow-motion. Frankly, I realize that he’s not the only director to use this action technique, but he uses it ALL. THE. TIME.
Cool fight move? Slo-mo. Rapid gunfire? Slo-mo.
Heroine walking down a ramp putting a cloak on?
Super slo-mo with a dramatic flare of the cape, as if there’s a special wind to get the rippling fabric just right.
Fun fact: if you emphasize everything this way, you effectively emphasize nothing.
Visually, the film is evocative of just about any and all science-fiction films or television you’ve ever seen, from the all-too-obvious Star Wars to Joss Whedon’s Firefly ‘Verse, to Denis Villeneuve’s Dune. Considering Zack hates Whedon’s cut of Justice League, you’d think he’d be the last place he’d steal from.
Yet here we are.
Heck, at one point I almost had a feeling I was watching something influenced by Battlefield Earth.
We even get a nod to Lucas’ The Phantom Menace as Snyder riffs on Watto’s podracer bet as our heroes try to recruit someone.
Narratively, the story skims from the same visual influences (and I’m being generous with that word), along with the obvious Seven Samurai/Magnificent Seven parallels.
Overall, the CGI was good for me, with the spaceships and the not-at-all-lightsabers energy blades looking impressive. The only dodgy part of the FX was some of the hippogryff sequence.
Hippogryff. So I guess we’re cribbing from Harry Potter, now, too.
The biggest problem with Rebel Moon is that there is zero world-building. There’s world-showing, world-telling, but not world-building. We simply jump from world to world with a label on the screen but with no actual information about what place we’re going to. We just get a cool-looking planet with nothing behind it, like a Golden Age Hollywood Western with storefronts with 2x4s holding them up.
Only in this case, there aren’t 2x4s, there are equally flat and undeveloped character archetypes: lone surviving warrior, disgraced but talented honorable general, rogue with a heart of gold, unwilling savior, everyman…
It’s ridiculous. This is, admittedly, a gorgeous looking film. Snyder can shoot the shit out of a scene, and if I was making a movie, I’d want him looking through the lens for me…
But for the love of God, don’t let him touch the script or actually direct the actors. Let him frame your shot and and pull the trigger.
Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire (what a ponderous, superficially epic title) is the very definition of “visually stunning.” I named this podcast to mock the very phenomenon of beautiful pictures with nothing behind them (Jupiter Ascending, specifically, if you don’t already know), and Rebel Moon is a perfect embodiment of this.
A Jupiter Ascending for the 2020s, if you will.
Sadly, it’s my understanding that there is (yet another) director’s cut of this with an hour of extra footage that may–MAY–change the entire film, and now I’m going to have to be subjected to cries of #RestoretheSnyderMoon or some such fanboy nonsense.
And there will be a Rebel Moon – Part Two (“Scargiver”), whose title only makes sense(?) if you remember the one line of dialogue in Part One that uses that word…
Whoo!
One of my fellow critics said they “didn’t hate it,” to which I replied, “because you don’t care enough to hate it,” meaning that there isn’t anything to be invested in. this is Zack Snyder at his Zack Snyder-iest.
For good and ill.
Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire is available exclusively on Netflix beginning December 22 and stars Sophia Boutella, Charlie Hunnam, Ed Skrein, Michael Huisman, Djimon Hounsou, Bae Doona, Cleopatra Coleman, Jena Malone, Cary Elwes, Corey Stoll, Ray Fisher, and Anthony Hopkins.
And remember, if the BEST thing you can say about a movie is that it’s “visually stunning,” then they’ve done something wrong.
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