Zack Snyder has made quite the name for himself (or should I say his fans) over the past few years. Departing Warner Bros. and the DC Universe for a cushy new gig at Netflix. With a blank check and a head full of ideas, what could go wrong? Well, Rebel Moon is where it goes wrong. A bland and boring story that you’ve seen plenty of time before, filled with uninteresting characters who can barely be called that. If this is what is supposed to be putting Star Wars out of business, well then, I guess we can expect the next few years to be quite prosperous for Lucasfilm.
A Galaxy Far Far Away (Derogatory)
Rebel Moon kicks off on a farm planet where we meet Sofia Boutella’s Kora, a farmer with a dark past. The protagonist of the film sets off to find warriors to help protect her farm planet from the imperium, a tyrannical militant force that has ties to her dark past. Kora is just the beginning of this movie’s character problems. While obviously the protagonist is given the most to do, that doesn’t make up for the absence of character. She gets her time to kick some ass but never time to develop a personality.
This is the issue with most of the characters – some much worse than others. Almost all of them are kinda just…there? None of them really have any depth to them or anything that makes them stand. Most of the crew are quickly shoehorned into the film, given brief action sequences (if they’re lucky) and then just join the team without question. Characters like Bae Doona’s Nemesis, Staz Nair’s Tarak, and Djimon Honsou’s General Titus have potential but are just ornaments on a poorly lit Christmas tree. They’re the most interesting of the bunch that we just do not get enough time with.
Charlie Hunnam commits several crimes in this film for what might be his worst performance yet. Playing yet another character in this film devoid of any individuality, accompanied by a downright laughable attempt at a Scottish accent. A true recipe for disaster.
The robot voiced by Anthony Hopkins, who has maybe less than 5 minutes of screen time, has more personality than the rest of the cast, even he knew it was time to bugger off.
Schrodinger’s Cut
People have tried to discredit reviews and reactions to this film, saying that they need to wait for the director’s cut that supposedly has the answers to so many issues with the film. Well, we aren’t talking about the director’s cut, we’re talking about the general cut of the film, this film, and it is bad.
Netflix seemingly jumps into the terrible business decisions competition alongside Warner Bros Discovery with the Rebel Moon franchise. The choice to take these two films, supposedly cut important moments of plot and character development, only to package them into two additional “Snyder cuts” just feels like a desperate attempt at a gimmick. The attempt to do this in general is corny as hell.
Aliens, and Aliens?, and Orcs?, Oh My!
Like any good romp through the galaxy, you’d expect to see some cool and interesting alien species, and you do! but very minimally. There are some very cool creatures, including a little brain crab whose mind controls people and pumps them full of something that I do not know how to describe. A lot of the aliens are pretty generic, the work put into them is there, but they just aren’t anything to write home about. There is a weird squid king near the end of the movie which is pretty interesting but also not really because he also has some weird antlers and I cannot tell what the goal was there.
Also, a few of the aliens are just straight-up orcs from Peter Jackson’s Lord of The Rings franchise. I had to do a double take multiple times because these “aliens” were literally just orcs, hair and fangs and all. That is not necessarily a critique, I just thought it was funny.
Cheap, Tacky And Fake
At times this movie can actually look pretty good, and then it can also immediately not. There are multiple times in the film where the filter changes and it catches you off guard but you just have to keep rolling with the punches.
One of the bigger issues here is the volume, not everyone knows how to properly use it and I think we need to officially acknowledge that because it can stick out like a sore thumb here quite a bit. The CGI in general is very hit-or-miss. There are times when characters are brought to life flawlessly, most notably Jimmy, and then at other times look quite bad, (ex weird squid with antlers).
The other issue is that they want this film to look super expensive but everything looks super cheap and generic, like it rolled off the set of a SyFy original and onto the Netflix lot. This goes for costuming as well, everyone looks like they’re wearing some form of burlap sack, with the best looks coming from the Bloodaxe’s and Nemesis. I feel like there are much better looks for a lot of these characters, especially Kora, whose best look is when she dons the white cloak, but I feel there was definitely a better look for her somewhere.
‘Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire’ – Final Thoughts
While supposedly a better version of this movie exists somewhere in the galaxy, we’re not talking about that one, the one we’re talking about is full of bland and underdeveloped ideas and concepts that will leave you rolling your eyes. Many online claimed that this would be the franchise to finally kill Star Wars and that Lucasfilm “should be scared”… well, I will continue to wait for that movie, for right now all we have is this, I guess.
Rebel Moon – Part One is now streaming on Netflix. Check out a trailer below:
