The first entry in the Rebel Moon series, Zack Snyder’s 2-part cinematic project produced by Netflix, has been out for just about a week and the streaming giant has revealed that the film has had quite the cinematic debut — all the while being completely obliterated by critics and audiences alike.
Netflix announced this Tuesday that Rebel Moon Part One: A Child of Fire had managed to generate up to 23.9 million views worldwide in three days after its official debut on the night of the 21st of December — becoming the most-viewed film of the week.
Snyder, who is credited as both the writer and director of the project, addressed the news in a statement, declaring, “It’s been a truly unparalleled experience introducing Rebel Moon to global audiences and I’m thrilled that the movie is #1 around the world.”
“We have the most dedicated and loyal fans across the world that any filmmaker could ask for, and seeing them consistently be supportive has been an enormously rewarding experience,” he concluded.
According to Netflix’s own Top 10 of the week report, the second most-viewed title of the week was the Obama-produced Leave the World Behind apocalyptic thriller starring Julia Roberts and Ethan Hawke, which garnered 19.7 views in seven days after its debut, followed by Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget with 14.9 million views.
While the number of views Rebel Moon has been getting since release is a reason to celebrate for Netflix, it is the film’s reception with audiences and critics that should raise some concerns, since the scores for Snyder’s science fantasy epic have been abysmal across the board.
On review aggregator site Metacritic, Rebel Moon got a very disappointing score of 32/100 based on reviews provided by 38 approved critics. With one positive review (3%), 21 mixed reviews (55%), and 16 negative reviews (42%).
The reception was slightly more favourable among users, who gave the film mixed to average ratings that translate to a 5.8/10 based on the scores of 426 users.
Things weren’t looking any better on Rotten Tomatoes, where the film is certified Rotten with an abysmal score of 25% based on 144 reviews. The audience score for Rebel Moon: Part One – A Child of Fire fared slightly better, scoring a 63% based on the ratings of over 5,000 users.
An extended cut of Rebel Moon — Part One: A Child of Fire has already been confirmed, with Snyder revealing that his cut of the film is rated R and “a full hour longer” than the original version, further explaining, “It’s not just slightly different or a little bit more. There are big chunks of the movie that are different.”
Furthermore, this Monday Netflix released a teaser trailer for the film’s sequel, Rebel Moon Part Two: The Scargiver, which is expected to release worldwide on the 19th of April next year.
RELATED: Netflix Film Boss Scott Stuber Admits Company Did Not Focus On Quality, Promises Course Correct
Just last month, Chairman of Netflix Film Scott Stuber admitted that the company had not been focusing on quality but on quantity, promising that changes would be made moving forward.
“We were growing a new studio. We’d only been doing this for a few years, and we were up against 100-year-old companies. So you have to ask yourself, ‘What is your business model?’ And for a while it was just making sure that we had enough. We needed volume,” Stuber told Variety at the time.
Albeit without naming them, Stuber would go on to allude to studios such as The Walt Disney Company, Warner bros. Discovery, and Paramount as the reason Netflix favoured focusing on quantity over quality, declaring, “It was clear that these companies were about to take back their own movies and keep them in their own ecosystems.”
“So we had to go all over the world buying as much as we could to make sure that we had the volume our consumers were used to seeing,” he went on, elaborating, “Right now, we’re not trying to hit a set number of film releases. It’s about ‘Let’s make what we believe in.’”
Stuber then asserted, “And let’s actually put forth a slate that we can stand behind and say, ‘This is the best version of a romantic comedy. This is the best version of a thriller. This is the best version of a drama.’We’re a machine that was built to go, go, go. And that doesn’t always result in quality.”
“A lot of streaming companies made the mistake of moving so fast that we made a lot of things that weren’t ready to be produced. I want to avoid that,” the Netflix Film boss concluded.