Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver – My Thoughts
I know this came out a few weeks ago, but I wasn’t ready, intellectually, to talk about it. After some of the comments I made about Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire, I wondered if I could be objective about the sequel.
**NOTE: There is ZERO chance this post is updated with audio. There’s no way we’re going to actually waste our breath talking about it. But you can read Mark’s review below. Remember, though, you can listen to all our discussions of this and every other movie directly over on ACAST. Stay tuned.**
122 Minutes, Rated PG-13
Written by Zack Snyder, Kurt Johnstad, and Shay Hatten
Directed by Zack Snyder
Synopsis:
Kora and surviving warriors prepare to defend Veldt, their new home, alongside its people against the Realm. The warriors face their pasts, revealing their motivations before the Realm’s forces arrive to crush the growing rebellion.
I mean, what I really didn’t want to do was end up simply jumping on the uber-negative bandwagon of internet hate and trash the film because that’s what people were doing, and probably expecting after the first film cratered so dramatically.
There was more drama in the crash than the entire first film.
So I took some time and let it stew, and now I’ll tell you what I think of it.
It’s worse than the first film.
And that’s a f*cking accomplishment. We all know it. There’s no point in denying it, unless you’re a complete Snyder simp.
I said it.
Look, I said in the review of Part One that I actually enjoy Snyder’s films, generally. Do I have issues with his over-use of the drama-walk slow-motion? Damned right, I do.
In the pantheon of things that are cinematically overused, JJ Abrams’ lens flare sits in the throne of Zeus, but only slightly below that is Snyder’s damned slow-motion.
It’s terrible. It’s horrible. It’s no good.
And I don’t care if Snyder says that he uses it because it makes cool scenes last longer and have more impact. He’s wrong.
How a clearly talented director can say something like that with a straight face is beyond me, but he apparently said it.
Zack, you use it so much that you’ve effectively emphasized everything, and when everything is emphasized, NOTHING is emphasized.
And if that wasn’t a big enough cinematic sin, we’re still being treated to the propaganda extolling the virtue of the thus far unseen R-rated cuts of both films, promising completely different movies.
What the hell, then, is the point of even releasing these two films? Netflix has some explaining to do, because it’s corporate malpractice to have greenlit these projects in this way (if they have indeed done so).
To spend money on projects with the understanding that they’re not even the “real” versions of the films is madness. You not only insult your stockholders by wasting their money, you insult your subscribers, effectively treating them as if they weren’t smart enough to realize what was being passed off on them in the name of “entertainment.”
And, assuming one could get past that damnable slow-motion and (to my eye, at least) special FX that were worse than the first film’s (which I didn’t actually have a problem with except for the hippogriff scenes), then the remainder of the two hour runtime contained mostly character exposition, something which should have been done in the first film, but which here is handled like something out of an Intro to Creative Writing course, in which our heroes sit around a table eating dinner, with Djimon Honsou’s character literally asking each person about themselves in turn.
What in the actual f*ck kind of writing is that?
It’s mind-bogglingly bad. It’s stupid and lazy and further insults the audience.
And I haven’t even talked about the actual narrative yet.
As a writer and editor, one of the biggest sins (for me) is when a writer can’t keep simple, key things straight: things like distance or time.
Here, Snyder asserts our heroes have FIVE DAYS to:
- bring in a crop that would normally take weeks to harvest (requiring “all hands on deck”),
- build hidden and visible defenses around the village, including a tunnel system,
- evaluate and train the villagers to determine how they can be prepared to defend themselves against a foe which is numerically and technologically superior to them,
- a villager has time to (while harvesting and building defenses and training, mind you) to hand-embroider a half dozen intricate, character-specific, banners for our heroes, most of whom she has only just met.
While I realize my last point above may seem a bit petty, realize that it’s not a hard thing to catch if anybody had bothered to look at this script with even a casually critical eye.
And it is in the middle of this incredibly tight schedule that our heroes have time for a sedate dinner at which to solemnly share their deepest secrets to one another.
What the actual hell, Zack?
Snyder is teasing a Part Three to this “saga,” one which will (if greenlit by Netflix) almost assuredly include yet another R-rated “alternate” (read: “the version I wanted make anyway”) version to be released at some ephemeral future time.
The amount of gall Snyder (and by extension, Netflix) has when it comes to this project is astounding. It is perhaps the most astounding thing about the Rebel Moon films.
And none of what I’ve just written forgives for even a moment the fact that almost nothing happens in this film. Nothing.
If there is, in fact, a Part Three, then this movie will be exposed as simply two hours of expositional fluff, which is a series’ trope that needs to die.
If there’s not a Part Three, then this is merely a whimper of an ending to what might have been a truly unique moviegoing experience.
I hope to God it’s the second, because I’m about out of patience with films that seem to deliberately waste my time.
Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver is currently streaming on Netflix and stars Sophia Boutella, Djimon Honsou, Ed Skrein, Michiel Huisman, Dae Doona, Ray Fisher, Anthony Hopkins, Staz Nair, Fra Fre, Cleopatra Coleman, Stuart Martin, and Cary Elwes.
Make sure you run right out to your TV and skip it.
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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