Rebel Moon - Part One: A Child of Fire

Without the slow motion, it would have been half the running time. But okay. Let's just say I had a pretty decent time for the first half at the expense of Zack Snyder trying to embrace the concept of The Magnificent Seven and graft onto it some mythology that would stand up to many sequels. It didn't annoy me, even the graphic sequences from the panels of some overstuffed comic book somehow survived unscathed. But then it starts flying around planets, making do with a few ugly CGI settings, even darker, perhaps to make the digital clutter not so in your eyes. Snyder stuffs in a few generic fights that won't get a normal viewer out of their chair, without any suspense, let alone a hint of atmosphere, and with a villain that looks like out of a classy S&M club. Everything that happens after the scene of the monster taming is one big visually ugly waste, and that's pretty much the entire second half, with one slow-motion sequence after another, where Snyder must have thought that if it worked in 300, it must work here. No, Zack, it really doesn't, maybe in your wet post-pubescent dreams. (2024-01-05)

Zack Snyder really needs to stop directing his own scripts. It's not doing him any favors, and it's certainly not doing any favors for those of us who, fifteen years ago, thought he was an up-and-coming filmmaker whose work we’d always want to see. Now, I know I don't want to see any more. Rebel Moon should never have been made. The producers of Star Wars, who Snyder originally pitched this to, knew exactly why they didn't want to turn this idea into another story episode. And others also sensed that this was going to be a mess. But then Netflix stepped in, knowing they could draw in viewers based on the names attached to the project, regardless of the film’s actual quality. People might watch it once, but many will struggle to finish it. This film is an absolute disaster. It has all the hallmarks of a decent sci-fi flick, but all the good elements are things we've seen before — and enjoyed more elsewhere. Here, it’s just an embarrassment. If only Zack could accept that screenwriting isn't his forte and instead adapt a well-regarded sci-fi novel. That, I believe, he could pull off — provided he doesn’t meddle with the story. As it stands, this film is a complete mess. How am I supposed to get excited about this universe after such a poor start? Maybe Zack will clear things up in the second part, but I’m not holding my breath. (2023-12-27)

Unfortunately, my expectations were not even halfway met. I can confirm that this is one of the biggest disappointments of the past year. Zack Snyder really missed the mark this time, and by a wide margin. Don’t get me wrong, it's not a complete disaster (I don't understand some of the reviewers here who think so). The visual effects occasionally surprise positively, and there are a few interesting sequences (like the fight with the arachnoid). But the story? What was that supposed to be? I didn’t understand the motivations of the characters at all, and why they joined the protagonist to defend the tiny village. The antagonist is more of a caricature. The acting doesn’t offer much either (considering the script, I suppose I couldn’t expect more), although Sofia Boutella performs decently. And the ending? I’m really not looking forward to the sequel. It had such potential. What a shame. I give it 5/10 (mainly because of the soundtrack... Junkie XL didn’t disappoint). P.S. The slow-motion scenes were more often laughable than anything. (2024-01-11)

Zack Snyder used to be a director whose films I alternately rated very high or very low until about 2013, but in the last decade or so my acceptance of his films has settled more on the lower star numbers, with Rebel Moon clearly being the culmination of that trend. It basically can't go any lower than that, everything here is wrong except that it roughly keeps the technical parameters of a Hollywood blockbuster. Good luck trying to build a new cinematic universe around this shit, because I can't imagine who will realistically care about these characters and their world. (2023-12-23)

I really didn't expect it to be that shit, but I've been trying to find something that would be at least a little bit good for Rebel Moon for about an hour now. Well, let's just say the make-up effects and Ed Skrein's overacting bad guy are pretty cool, other than that, though, it's a complete monstrosity. If anyone was living in hope until recently that Zack Snyder was a lousy writer but could still be at least a decent director, they'll lose that hope here, because almost nothing in Rebel Moon was good. The questionable quality of the visual effects would be the least of the problems, as would the shoddy rip-offs of just about every major sci-fi film from Star Wars to The Fifth Element, Flash Gordon to The Matrix to Jupiter Ascending. The bigger problem is that, audiovisually, the whole thing is uglier than the fifteen-year-old Mutant Chronicles, and you can't see a damn thing in the action scenes. Snyder as a cameraman keeps relying on the already pretty annoying slow-motion effect, but most of all he can't even get a proper picture of the characters who are currently fighting, and that none of the heroes have any personality or motivation. And I don’t mean a believable motivation, but any motivation whatsoever, because recruiting galactic badasses usually goes along the lines of "Can you help us? - I don't know, more like no. - How about revenge? - Ah, okay" . The result is two hours of boring characters running around the screen, bossed around by a perfectly bland Sofia Boutella, all set in an ugly world that looks like a twenty year old sci-fi flick that was already bad back then. Considering Snyder got a blank check from Netflix and could do whatever he wanted and he made this, it's obvious he's completely useless as a filmmaker. (2023-12-22)