Zack Snyder thought he was making Dune. That’s the only reasonable conclusion I can reach. How else can he justify making Rebel Moon: Part One (as opposed to ending it right here)? I thought Denis Villenueve showed brass balls by insisting that he had two movies worth of material with his Dune remake. Zack Snyder didn’t even have one quality movie in this material, and yet, we have to wait on pins and needles to see if whatsherface or whatshisface does the thing they wanted to do … whatever that was. I’ve already forgotten; better re-read this review.
This film is a mess. And it’s a derived mess at that. Did I say Dune? Because writer/director/mortician Zack Snyder clearly wanted to remake a combination of Star Wars: A New Hope and The Magnificent Seven with just enough distraction to pretend that’s not what he was doing. None of that matters when you make a terrible movie, of course. Nobody cares if you rip off The Godfather with the same skill that went into making White Chicks.
Stop me if you’ve heard this before …
In Rebel Moon: Part One – A Child of Fire, the Empire, sorry the Imperium invades a farming community. They harass the locals, pick fights with robots, and generally act like dicks. So a grown-up child local with orphan issues immediately pits themselves against the Empire, er Imperium, but needs help to take them on, so immediately seeks out a retired general, and collects some uniquely talented friends along the way.
What does that sound like to you?
So let’s get rockin’ and rollin’ with this sad, meandering, uninspired rip-off: Darth Vader here is Atticus Noble (Ed Skrein); he’s more Nazi than Darth-y, but it’s the same damn thing. The orphan here is Kora (Sofia Boutella), who doesn’t use the force so much a kicks everybody’s ass. Kora goes searching for former general Titus (Djimon Hounsou), even stirring up trouble at a local bar to get answers … and just when I pondered aloud, “when does Han Solo show up?” the next table over pans to Charlie Hunnam.
The difference between Harrison Ford and Charlie Hunnam should tell you exactly how far below Star Wars this sad piece of crap is. Yeah, we got a pathetic human-ish rebel robot. It’s voiced
by Anthony Hopkins. BTW, doesn’t a robot have to programmed to be a rebel? Yeah, we got sword and knights and shit. At this point, you’re probably saying, “ok, so what? It’s just a bad Star Wars rip-off.”
And you’re not wrong, although Zack Snyder wasn’t done ripping off films. Late on, there’s an irrelevant Pegasus/Hippogriff taming scene that is straight out of Avatar … which, of course, ripped off Clash of the Titans and Harry Potter 3 in the first place.
None of that tells you, really, how bad this picture is. I could deal with a straight rip-off. That happens all the time. The biggest problem with Rebel Moon is not blatant theft; it’s the poor presentation. The introduces about 15 different characters and assumes each time that we know and love them already. Except we don’t. And we have no reason to. There’s no superlative acting or writing in this film, so the assumption that we care before we do is maddening.
I want reasons to like the film I’m watching. Rebel Moon gave me none. Literally none. And then it had the audacity to announce it wasn’t finished; there’s a whole other shitty Part Two out there to bookend this listless intellectual property theft. This film was so bad, I may not even watch Part Two. Think about that statement for a moment. I may not even watch Part Two. You know what is actually the biggest problem with this film? 300. Because we liked the fresh take on action and defiance in Snyder’s unique coming out film, we overlooked how problematic it was. Every Snyder film since has been a collection of underwhelming attempts either to recreate the magic of 300 or defy it. I can’t help thinking that if we’d just told Snyder after 300 “this is a great looking film, but not actually a well written one, and promotes some highly questionable ideas” we could have avoided films like this twenty years ago.
There once was an orphan named Kora
Who found farming life quite the bore-a
For in secret, she vied
To take on a side
Oops, this actually isn’t Pandora
Rated PG-13, 133 Minutes
Director: Zack Snyder
Writer: Zack Snyder, Kurt Johnstad, Shay Hatten
Genre: Good Lord, you’re not finished with this mess?
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Ed Skrein’s mom; “oh, you were so evil, honey!”
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Anyone who has seen classic sci-fi drama
