by Jake Hjort, Contributing Writer
Welcome back, loyal readers, to the second half of my review of Zack Snyder’s sci-fi/fantasy epic, Rebel Moon. Last December, I reviewed the first installment of the two-part film, A Child of Fire, and to briefly summarize my thoughts, I found it to be incredibly dull and greatly disappointing. In fact, when all was said and done, I had it ranked as the second worst of all the 2023 new releases I watched last year. Needless to say, I didn’t exactly have high expectations that Snyder would be able to turn things around in Part Two: The Scargiver and inspire any hope that his new wannabe franchise is one that will be worth keeping an eye on.
In the first part of Rebel Moon, our hero, Kora (Sofia Boutella), fugitive daughter of the Motherworld’s tyrannical despot, Balisarius (Fra Fee), teamed up with the humble farmer, Gunnar (Michiel Huisman), to protect the agrarian, vaguely Nordic moon, Veldt, from her father’s armies. To do so, they teamed up with Nemesis (Doona Bae), a cyborg adept with plasma swords; Milius (Elise Duffy), a generic soldier; Titus (Djimon Hounsou), a former Imperial general-turned-generic-soldier with a penchant for motivational speeches; and Tarak (Staz Nair), a nobleman with the completely unutilized ability to communicate with animals, who, against all odds, functions as yet another generic soldier. Together, this ragtag group of heroes is able to battle the forces of the Motherworld and seemingly kill Admiral Noble (Ed Skrein), right hand man of Balisarius, brining peace to the people of Veldt.
Early on in The Scargiver, both the audience and heroes learn that Noble was not in fact killed, and that he and the Imperial army will be returning to try and capture Kora and attack Veldt. The first half of the film is spent preparing for inevitable battle: harvesting grain, training the villagers to fight, and monologuing around a fire pit so that each character can explicitly lay down their motivations. In the second half, the army arrives at Veldt and we finally get the battle that Snyder has been building towards for over three hours now.
Much like with the first half of Rebel Moon, my biggest complaint to levy against the The Scargiver is that it is dreadfully boring. About halfway through the film, my wife asked me to take a break and help clean the bathrooms, as we were having some guests over later that night. This was a more enjoyable experience than any minute I had spent watching the film up to that point. The first half in particular is a slog, as it’s largely filled with exposition and montages of preparation, hardly providing any action or drama to keep the viewer engaged. The second half, on the other hand, is stuffed to the brim with action, and although I’ll admit that some of the sequences are fun to watch, the lack of investment I had in the characters or story made it hard to care about what was happening on the screen.
With any team-up movie, be it Seven Samurai, The Avengers, or Ocean’s Eleven, one of my favorite parts is seeing how everyone’s different skillsets and backgrounds can come together to form one cohesive team. In Rebel Moon, with the exception of Nemesis, who uses swords instead of guns, no character feels like they bring any particular expertise to the table. Despite their different backgrounds, when push comes to shove, every other member of the band of heroes is just a soldier with a gun, none having any more reason to be on the screen than any of the random farmers of Veldt defending their homes. The most interesting character in the series, a robot named Jimmy (Anthony Hopkins) who’s sworn to protect a royal family which no longer exists, only appears in a couple scenes. Now donning a pair of elk antlers for no discernible reason, Jimmy pops up to give Kora a pep talk and again later to help in the battle, and while I enjoyed his contributions and Hopkins’ vocal performance, I wished he could have been a more integral part of the team.
Snyder certainly has an eye for visual flare, and despite my issues with the story and writing in both parts of Rebel Moon, his style is present in abundance. As I said before, there are moments during the battle that I genuinely enjoyed, be it because of a well-shot stunt sequence or interesting visual effects. Speaking of the effects, I found them to be pretty solid throughout the film. This is certainly an effects-heavy project with a lot of sci-fi action, and I don’t recall a single moment when anything felt out of place in the world. Like with any Snyder project, there’s also a large amount of slow-motion shots and sequences. We get slow-mo explosions, slow-mo sword fights, slow-mo jumping and falling, and even an extended slow-mo sequence of grain harvesting. Some of this is fun and adds a lot to the action, but a lot of times it does feel over-the-top and gratuitous.
So, does Rebel Moon work as a single, four-plus-hour sci-fi epic? Well, no. Although I did enjoy the second half of the film more than the first, in large part due to the climactic battle, I can’t imagine anyone having the patience to sit through three hours of buildup and exposition to get to that point. Zack Snyder is certainly a talented cinematographer, but I really question his abilities as a writer and his restraint as a director. Against all odds, if Netflix green lights the other four films that Snyder supposedly has planned for this universe, I hope that he has the humility to step back and let someone else refine his story, as that’s the only chance I think it has at improving.
Rating: Didn’t Like it
Rebel Moon – Part 2: The Scargiver is currently streaming on Netflix
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