To demonize or deify Zack Snyder? Which do you choose? Well, to be blunt, the correct answer is obviously neither, but the manufactured mystique that encircles the controversial director is starting to get ever more baffling with the release of Rebel Moon on Netflix, an epic space opera that was touted as Snyder’s attempt to “do” Star Wars. Once again it ended up only courting yet more annoying controversy as a vocal minority took to defending a movie that, at best, was rather dull and, at worst, a tremendous waste of time.
Still, like death and taxes, Rebel Moon Part Two dutifully arrived to keep those online arguments churning when the real question is staring us all in the face.
Is it actually any good?
The answer is no, but then, does the quality of these films even matter when Snyder and Netflix has seemingly engineered them to fail.
For those playing catch up to this expansive universe of farmers and space Nazis, the villainous hordes of the Motherworld, who had evil designs on the simple farmers of the planet Veldt, had been beaten back by a rag-tag band of warriors that had been assembled to avenge their personal demons and wipe out the dastardly Admiral Noble. The group made up of Kora, an ex-Motherworld soldier running from her past; mountainous disgraced general, Titus; laser sword twirling Nemesis; ex-nobleman turned liberated slave, Tarak; and freedom fighter Milius, return to the moon they’ve been hired to protect with good news, but unbeknownst to them, the deceased Noble has been resurrected with a renewed desire to capture Kora and return her to the Regent Balisarius for her crimes against the Motherworld.
Realising that their celebration is horribly premature, the warriors inform the people of Veldt that they only have about five days to train themselves to form an army and make the preparations they need and get stuck in farming the wheat the Motherworld originally arrived to take.
Before you know it, Noble has returned with a hefty force ready to raise the place to the ground in order to locate Kora, but just what is it the warrior is hiding that makes so special and what does it have to do with the assassination of the royal family? As the action heats up and the film speed slows down, other questions other than “who will survive” become apparent. What significance will the ancient robot known as Jimmy have on the battle? What will the survivors do once the shooting stops? And why has it taken Snyder two whole movies to adapt Seven Samurai when it took the likes of Akira Kurosawa, John Sturges, John Lasseter and Antoine Fuqua only one to nail it on the first try?
It obvious that both Netflix and Snyder have high hopes for Rebel Moon to continue sprawling long after the credits have rolled on this second film in this highly detailed, yet strangely bland series. Anyone hoping that Part Two would perk things up a bit after the first film got all the vast amounts of back story out of the way will find that the director has merely doubled down on his mistakes. Straight off the bat, we’re sort up brought up to speed thanks to a voice over from Anthony Hopkins’ robot, Jimmy; but as the Welsh legend relates a string of names and places that sound more like the great actor has had a stroke, you begin to realise why George Lucas started Star Wars with that famous crawl.
From there, it’s fairly standard stuff. Snyder commands his DP and effects houses to make everything look as pretty as they possibly can, yet neglects to make us care a single iota for any of the characters involved. Long sequences of the characters tending to the land does less to endear them to us as three dimensional beings it does resemble a bunch of sweaty cosplayers play a farming sim, and worse yet, the script tries to leech more sympathy for them by literally having them all sit around and narrate their tragic origin stories like an AA meeting shot by Michael Bay.
It’s at this point that you really start to worry, because at this point we’ve sat through around a movie and a half of build up for these characters and chances are you’ve built up as much empathy for them as you would a NPC in a GTA game. Still, it’s too late now, and as the big battle finally begins in order to liberate a bunch of people who’s names I literally couldn’t remember, I found myself praying that Dawn Of The Dead, or 300 Zack Snyder has turned up to at least give us some stirring sci-fi war shit.
However, to the detriment of everything, the final battle is regrettably directed by Sucker Punch Zack Snyder, which essentially guarantees that even though the visuals are expansive and epic, they’re are also horribly empty and hollow as they go through the motions. The score demands that you give a shit when one of the characters fall with soaring strings to accompany their sacrifice, but you’ll be damned if you actually feel it at any point and the endless slow motion and borrowed beats from other, better, sci-fi/fantasy epics just start to wear fairly quickly.
So is there any good points about this second orbit around Rebel Moon? Despite my apathy, it does look really pretty, and I’m still a big fan of someone giving Sofia Boutella a chance to be the lead of a big, tentpole film – but aside from a brief moment where the pulse actually rises a little when Jimmy joins the fray and a half-decent finale that sees Kora and Noble square off in the flaming landing bay of a rapidly capsizing, it’s nothing you haven’t already seen before in various Star Wars, Transformers and other sci-fi flicks.
However, the real problem exists when you realise that both Snyder and Netflix already had plans to eventually release a pair of director’s cuts later in the year and while I’ve already had this rant after viewing Rebel Moon Part One, I truly can’t fathom they wouldn’t just release the “complete” versions first, other than Snyder is hopelessly addicted to director’s cuts and Netflix cynically trying to score more views.
Still, they’ll get their views and chances are we’ll get more adventures of a bunch of characters I’m already starting to forget despite the fact that I only watched the film about an hour ago. I genuinely believe Snyder has at least one more good film in him, but if he doesn’t drop his obsessive need to cater to his own director’s cuts and stop believing his own hype, the chances of him once again making anything worthwhile that can stand on it’s own merit will only come around once in a blue moon…
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