Zack Snyder’s Rebel Moon Part 1 is now available on Netflix, which is heavily inspired by Star Wars and Seven Samurai but unlike those two great movies, Rebel Moon fails to deliver big time.
The main problem is the movie doesn’t make you care about any of the characters. Zack breaks the cardinal rule of writing: Show don’t tell.
The problem is there are just way too many characters and not enough time to develop them; it really should have been an epic TV series on par with something like Game of Thrones.
Note: Spoilers follow.
The only character that is sort of developed is Sofia Boutella (Kora), but only through flashback scenes. Imagine if this would have been a TV series instead, where they could have started with Kora’s journey as a child getting taken, then her training and tutelage under the “Emperor,” and then she rebels, lands on the planet with the farmers no one gives a shit about and goes from there.
Instead, Rebel Moon starts off on the planet of farmers no one gives a shit about, introduces us to Michiel Huisman’s Gunnar, who is as worthless as can be, and gives us Corey Stoll (Sindri) as the leader (let’s be honest, Zack obviously couldn’t get J.K. Simmons). The only really good scene is the scene between Charlotte Maggi’s Sam (the young girl) and the android, cooly voiced by Anthony Hopkins — however, both Maggi and the Droid are quickly removed from the rest of the movie.
So as Sam gets attacked by goons, Boutella is revealed to be OP as fk, and then Kora decides to help the farmers defend themselves by recruiting other warriors to help. So Kora’s grand plan is to take the worthless Gunnar (not the one hunter in the village, Alfonso Herrara’s Cassius???) to a Cantina and recruit other rebel scum just like herself. At the Cantina, we get a weak scene involving a gay alien who sexually harasses Gunnar where Kora, of course, comes to the rescue (this doesn’t even f’n close to Ben saving Luke with the lightsaber scene, lol). They’re searching for someone to join their team, so they question some drug-addicted wacked-out dude they never met before and believe him. Enter Charlie Hunnam (Kai).
So Charlie Humman is all about money, blah, blah, blah, but he is going to help the broke AF Kora and Gunnar and recruit ALL the team members of the rebellion anyway? Okay. Han helped out Luke and Obi-Wan because they at least had a down payment and promised more, and Han was on the run. What does Kora and Gunnar offer? Jack shit other than the reason being to fight the Emperor. Did anyone else catch the look on Hunnam’s face (which is really a representation of the reaction to this movie)? Yeah, no red flags here.
From there, they meet other people who just like them want to take down the Empire so they decide to help the farmers, too. Yeah, they all hate the Empire, but I guess no one decided to form a rebellion before? Oh, there are rebels, the ones whom the coward Gunnar has been giving grain to, but none of them decided to join up before, it’s only when they hear about the story of the farmers no one gives a shit about does everyone decide to come together. Remarkably, the official rebels question the plan as they are facing a world-destroying MOFO battleship.
So let’s break down the team so far:
- Kora (Sofia Boutella): At least we are shown her backstory; she was taken as a kid and raised as the daughter of the Emperor, her lover died, now she hates the Empire
- Gunnar (Michiel Huisman): again worthless AF (yet he’s jacked and has awesome hair for a farmer)
- Kai (Charlie Hunnam): the guy making everything happen, because, you know, otherwise there wouldn’t be the rest of the movie
- Nemesis (Bae Doona): we’re told about her background as she uses lightsabers to kill the Borg Queen
- Titus (Djimon Hounsou): He used to be a General, again, we are told
- Tarak (Staz Nair): another guy we don’t know jack squat about yet we are again told he’s a badass and hates the Empire
- Bloodaxe: (Ray Fisher): again, we are told everything about him, he’s the leader of the rebels, blah blah blah
How about the bad guys:
- Atticus (Ed Skrein): we don’t know much about him other than he’s a Nazi-looking MOFO. Yeah, he’s the bad guy who apparently loves f’n tentacle creatures or some shit
- Balisarius (Fra Fee): He’s the Emperor, doing whatever he is doing for some reason; Atticus even calls him Master
Okay. So everything above is the first 90 minutes of the movie. There’s some cool fight scenes, but there’s around a dozen characters introduced, and again not enough time to develop them to make me give a shit about any of them.
It’s further downhill from here.
Turns out Hunnam’s character sold them all out and made a deal with Atticus to capture them all. Atticus shows up with his scorpion contraptions and captures them all. Awesome! Atticus is going to f’n kill them all and win! Now that would have been an ending!
Instead? Hunnam wants Gunnar to kill Kora, the love of his life, but we all know where this is going. Gunnar somehow knows how to use the scorpion contraption even though he’s from a farm that no one gives a shit about. Kora breaks free, goes OP as fk, and breaks everyone else out.
Wait! The Empire still has its MOFO world-destroying battleship right the f’k above them! Holy shit! No, wait! It’s Ray Fisher!!! He does a Zack Snyder slo-mo super jump (there’s lots of Zack Snyder slo-mo moments!!!)! He has a f’n spear! He spears the guy controlling the MOFO world-destroying gun! No, wait! The guy controls the whole entire ship! Holy fk! The entire ship goes down when Ray Fisher moves the joystick! This is some epic f’n shit!
Obviously, that is sarcasm, and as I tweeted, I was left scratching my head about this scene, a key moment of the movie. The guy controlling the gun is shown outside and attached to the ship. Earlier scenes show the guns blasting a planet, etc. However, all this time that lone guy on the outside of the ship was controlling and flying the ship the entire time? So the guy on the outside of the ship is the easy target (lock on target) and all you have to do to take down the ship is take him out? Then, of course, move the joystick? That doesn’t make sense and I think Snyder f’d up. The ship actually has two of those guns: one on each side of the ship. So taking out one of the guns wouldn’t have caused the entire ship to sink. I think when the joystick was moved it maybe should have blasted the ship which caused it to turn and plummet. Here’s another: How about it’s a MOFO battleship that flies through f’n space, yet the glass can be broken with a spear?! TG no debris hit the ship as it flew in space, right?!
So it’s the end of the movie, Kora is OP as fk and kills Atticus — or so we thought! Get Atticus to the Bacta Tank! Atticus is saved by a Bacta Tank and has a meeting with The Emperor in The Force who wants the rebellion put down but demands Kora be captured alive.
Guess what? We are again told by The Emperor that Kora and Titus are cool and badass.
The end! To be continued!!!
Final thoughts: Rebel Moon has weak character development, the story is so-so, there needs to be more attention paid to detail, it’s boring for the most part, and I would have liked a better cast (Michiel Huisman and Fra Fee don’t fit at all; Boutella comes off as a statue). The visuals I felt were good, which is pretty much on par with anything Zack Snyder does. Rebel Moon is more Man of Steel, Batman vs. Superman, and Army of the Dead.
