Battaglia’s Drawing Board: Zack Snyder’s ‘Rebel Moon’ Is Sadly Half Of A Half Of A Cover Movie
Matt Battaglia
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While enjoying the silence of having the rest of the house napping, I packed away the ornaments from our wilting Christmas tree, and finally said “now I can watch Rebel Moon Part One: A Child Of Fire.”
Spoiler alert: I wish I hadn’t. Also there will be spoilers but the movie is paint by numbers so, can it really be spoiled?
I would like to set one thing straight before I begin – I generally like Zack Snyder movies. His DCEU films all worked for me. The Snyder Cut of Justice League is over-indulgent perfection, the Batfleck of ‘Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice‘ is the closest we’ll get to Miller’s Dark Knight Returns Batman on screen, and that warehouse fight is the best scene of cinematic Batman.
300 and Watchmen are both great adaptations, and his Dawn of Dead remake is a lot of fun. He’s a visually indulgent filmmaker and I enjoy his particular brand of excess, even Sucker Punch is redeemed with a lot of exciting visuals and action sequences.
His partnership with Netflix started with Army of the Dead, which was part heist and part zombie movie, and outside of gifting us with the mantra of ‘I shoot wide open, because I’m not a coward’ when referring to his choices of lenses and being his own DP on the film, it was mostly forgettable, but not a chore to watch.
Rebel Moon continues the tradition of the super bokeh’ed out look with an insanely shallow focus, and is less forgettable but… that’s more for some of the hilarity of its Star Wars subversions.
Unlike Army of the Dead — which was the complete movie up front — Rebel Moon was released with the promise of a second R-rated cut featuring two additional hours. Knowing this fact makes the missing footage all the more evident that Rebel Moon Part One: A Child Of Fire isn’t just a half of a two part movie; it’s half of a half of a movie.
This isn’t a case for the extended cuts of the Lord of the Rings movies where they feature additional footage but the theatrical versions make sense and still were good movies – this is clearly a movie missing all it’s meat.
But first what you’re really here for… bokeh and focus. Like I said above, Snyder is a visually indulgent filmmaker, Army of the Dead and Rebel Moon both share a really unique look that I think is really pleasing and unique for the genre.
In Rebel Moon Snyder is running camera again, and the lenses he’s using offer very little forgiveness with focus and everything on the edges of frame getting this really beautiful blur and distortion (as one friend who does compositing for film commented – “that had to be a b—h to match for the VFX artists”).
It’s a unique look that felt wasted on my home television. But this is where Snyder shines. He creates striking imagery and he’s doing so with some really unique equipment.
However, releasing this movie straight to streaming feels like a missed opportunity simply from that standpoint; Snyder makes movies that should be seen on large scale formats.
Additionally, from a filmmaker perspective, I think you have to respect Snyder’s hands-on approach to his films, they are uniquely his, especially this one which he wrote and developed, and he shot all himself, I think that’s admirable.
But where Rebel Moon Part One: A Child Of Fire falters is in story and casting.
We’ll start with casting…
First off – none of the characters beyond lead Sofia Boutella’s Kora, Charlie Hunam’s Han Solo stand-in Kai, and Ed Skrein’s villain Atticus get much to say or do. So part of my casting criticisms are tied directly to the script, but some of it falls on the choices of actors.
Sofia Boutella was either miscast or misdirected. She is the core of this film and is played so dry and remote that it’s hard to care or root for her. Granted, she is given the thankless task of playing new trope “unfeeling lady badass” but I wish that these roles would allow for a bit more emotional range than simply ‘cold.’
There are hints to a more fleshed out love story between her and Michiel Huisman’s Gunnar, this is likely contained in the extended cut, but since it’s not present here – Kora is simply a blank slate.
The movie rests on her shoulders and I think it would have benefited from some kind of ‘movie star charm’ which, I know, is undefinable nonsense, but I don’t know how else to put it. If the role is going to be this thin, I do think you need someone with real screen presence to make it work and Boutella doesn’t really have enough of that to make up for the thinness of the script.
A brief aside on idea casting, maybe it’s because I watch it every Christmas, but Lethal Weapon immediately comes to mind as a movie is perfectly cast. Everyone fits and works and they all bring their own memorable bits to it. The true queen of Christmas, Darlene Love, is totally memorable in her bit role as Trish Murtaugh, the coke dealers that Riggs takes out at the beginning are all distinct types, established and dispatched in one scene.
The crew in the police department are all memorable bit roles, everyone in that movie just feels right, it’s a true ensemble, which is what Rebel Moon sorely needed. What happened though is Rebel Moon’s cast could be totally interchangeable — even actors who I was familiar with are pretty much blank slates.
Djimon Hounsou, who is a capable actor and had charisma in his role in Gladiator, is barely there in this movie, his character is a disgraced general fighting in a gladiator arena (which we never see him do, oddly everyone else got their own intro action scene – I suppose this was cut for this cut’s runtime) and it’s only because of the mental note that Djimon was in Gladiator, you’d be hard pressed to remember him.
It’s like this with the rest of the characters that make up the crew that Kora and Gunnar recruit across the galaxy, except unlike Djimon they are all pretty much unknown, which could work if only they were given some time to show a personality, except even at over two hours, none of these characters get more than a few lines of dialogue.
The only exception in the cast is Charlie Hunnam, who has had a few shots at playing leading man and it shows. His character Kai is mildly memorable as a Han Solo type and he plays it up as much as the material allows. He also gets the most to say in the movie outside of Kora and Skrien’s Atticus.
Ed Skrein as villain is evil and creepy but he’s not particularly engaging, and I think the role would have been better served with some more scenery chewing. They also, purposefully — but confusingly (like my grammar) — have all the bad guys look pretty much the same so, during flashbacks, I had a hard time deciding if it was Ed’s character in the scene or not (it took till the final scene to figure this out, spoilers he’s not).
Spoilers: in a pretty blatantly telegraphed move, the movie has Hunnam’s Kai turn traitor, only to kill him off. As far as a story decision goes this is fine but, beyond Kora, he’s the only member of the ‘rebel group’ who had much of anything to say.
While required to make his turn to traitor mean anything, it doesn’t help that you never buy that any of the rebels who are recruited are even remotely part of a group. This is a loosely connected montage of character intro scenes without any build and when they are all faced with immediate death — you still have no idea who they are or why you should care.
This may be a dumb criticism, but, I feel like the movie would have benefited from some more familiar faces/movie stars in the cast of heroes so you’d have some past familiarity with the actor to have you root for them a little more.
Star Wars, which this began as an outcrop of, benefitted from this — with Alec Guinness and Peter Cushing bringing a certain level of gravitas to their roles. Harrison Ford has charm for days, and the same can be said of the late Carrie Fisher.
Even the all the random Imperial generals and the guy at the table who Vader chokes are pretty memorable and played with some flair. This all makes up for the lead of Luke Skywalker being kind of a dud, let’s be honest Mark Hamill isn’t exactly the most charismatic in A New Hope.
This also helped the prequels where you had a cast filled with Liam Neeson, Ewan McGregor, Christopher Lee, Samuel L. Jackson, etc. — all of whom put in memorable performances in spite of some weaker material.
Outside of a blink and you’ll miss it Cary Elwes as an ill-fated king and Anthony Hopkins as narrator/robo-knight, Rebel Moon doesn’t have that. George Lucas gets clowned on for his dialogue but at least his characters spoke to one another and had personalities — here they are just barely an aesthetic.
As has been alluded to throughout, the script is the problem, its influences are very clearly on its sleeve. The movie starts off Star Wars and then veers into Seven Samurai. It uses enough different visual inspirations to mix it up and make it somewhat fresh, but the cantina scene cover is just that, it’s a cover version.
There are some interesting bits and pieces of ‘lore’ going on in the movie, but I’ve always found that backstory you can read up on in a multitude of different places does not make up for what isn’t working on screen.
I mentioned this earlier but prior to release Snyder let it be known that not only was his R-Rated 4-hour cut on the way but also that it was a completely different movie. Upon watching the cut currently available on Netflix, I want to know why they bothered releasing this version at all.
Rebel Moon is not a family friendly space-romp. There’s an attempted rape that kicks off the action about twenty minutes in and the Mos Eisley Cantina Cover scene hinges on an argument over whether a space alien can purchase the farmer for sex.
So… instead we are stuck with this version which has cut out all the OBVIOUSLY-INTENDED-TO-BE-THERE blood VFX for multiple slashed throats and completely shattered arms and legs.
There is a clearly referenced sex scene at the beginning of the movie between Kora and the aforementioned farmer, Gunnar, which narratively would have been helpful to show in order to establish that the two were actually romantically linked.
Also, maybe in those two additional hours they would have done a little bit more of having characters talk to one another so we could understand who they are, see them get to know each other and feel a little like a team before Kai’s betrayal.
I guess it benefits Netflix to have people double dip? Although I’m not sure how, it’s not like my subscription price changed nor does it seem like they will be releasing it physically like was done with the Justice League Snyder Cut, they’re making the same money regardless.
So they release what is obviously a weaker movie, which is getting ragged on in reviews because it is clearly half of a half of a movie and it’s been released on a platform that is made FOR WATCHING LONG FORM EPISODIC THINGS WHERE RUNTIME DOESN’T MATTER BECAUSE YOU CAN PAUSE IT AND PEE WHENEVER YOU WANT AND RATINGS DON’T MATTER!
I would have completely understood the decision if this cut were widely released theatrically like Napoleon – but it wasn’t.
I recently appeared on Stephen Kent’s Bounding Into Comics YouTube program Skytalker, where we had a fun discussion and veered into talking about fan fiction. This movie is so very clearly ‘fan fic.’ When Snyder was contacted to make a Star Wars movie that eventually didn’t pan out, he took the script and reworked it into Rebel Moon.
While watching this it did crystallize, in my mind, what I wish people would do with their fan fiction — it also explains why the allure of fan fic is so obvious.
My dream is for people to take what would be fan fiction and tweak it just enough so it’s new, which is what Snyder has done with Rebel Moon. There are enough different ideas in it that it’s not Star Wars, but it’s also very clearly Star Wars.
It’s also very clearly Seven Samurai in the same way that Mandalorian is very clearly a lame version of Lone Wolf and Cub. They are new-ish things made out of the parts from other things, and I’d rather see the influences plainly than it just be another spin around the same old property we’ve lived with for decades.
I think it’s healthy for our culture to have an influx of new ideas and new stories rather than trying to mine someone else’s work. While Rebel Moon’s plot is a blatant rip-off, the aesthetics bring something new to the table at the very least.
However Rebel Moon also makes clear why you would want to keep playing with the old toys. Throw in a Star Destroyer, Stormtroopers, make the sword lady a Jedi, and all that brand ID makes up for the lack of characterization because you already know the world and the rules.
You’re covered in the warm embrace of nostalgia, and it can do just enough to paper over the narrative flaws, you’ll just forget the movie a few hours or a day later and it’ll just be another piece of content thrown down the hole.
I don’t like slagging on things, because I’d rather spend time writing about stuff I like, but I generally do like Snyder. If time were no object I’d consider giving the director’s cut a try but, as it stands, I found Rebel Moon Part One: A Child Of Fire to be disappointing and empty — a cover of Star Wars and Seven Samurai which never reaches the charm of the former and doesn’t belong in the same sentence as the latter.