Rebel Moon—Part One: A Child of Fire (2023)
6/10
Critics have brought out their torches and pitchforks for Zack Snyder’s new space opera Rebel Moon, currently streaming on Netflix. Rebel Moon—Part One: A Child of Fire, to give it its full title, currently has an abysmal 24% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a 32 metascore on Metacritic, competing with Sucker Punch for the title of Snyder’s worst-reviewed movie ever.
To be sure, Rebel Moon presents an easy target. This movie doesn’t have an original idea in its head. The film tells the story of Kora (Sofia Boutella), a warrior turned farmer who must recruit warriors to defend the moon of Veldt after imperial admiral Atticus Noble (Ed Skrein) demands her village supply his armies with grain, which will cause the community to starve. As the first of a two-parter, A Child of Fire isn’t even a full movie. Much of the running time is devoted to assembling Kora’s team. Aside from a climactic action sequence, the film sets up all the pieces and characters, then ends before they do anything related to the main story.
Snyder originally pitched Rebel Moon to Lucasfilm as a Star Wars flick by way of Seven Samurai, then rejigged it as a blatant Star Wars knockoff. It’s obvious where the script made slight revisions to what was clearly a Star Wars movie: just switch out “Empire” for “Imperium”, etc. One of the characters has laser swords. The main protagonist begins the film as a farmer on a remote homeworld. There’s a rogue in a cantina filled with bizarre aliens who offers our leads a ride in his ship to their destination. The antagonists are space Nazis, including a high-ranking villain who serves as right-hand man for the ruling imperial tyrant. And on and on.
The film gives free reign to Snyder’s worst instincts as a director. Its characters are poorly developed, glorified action figures. Our hero Kora (Sofia Boutella) and her farmer friend Gunnar (Michiel Huisman), spend much of the film recruiting warriors to defend their homeworld of Veldt, mainly by giving speeches about honour or revenge. Once characters join the team, they have little to do. The threat of sexual assault is repeatedly used as a source of character motivation and impetus for fight scenes. The dialogue is clunky and filled with exposition. Snyder co-wrote the script for his story with Kurt Johnstad and Shay Hatten. There’s a howler of a line where Kora is explaining her backstory to the audience—sorry, to Gunnar—and says, “I’m only telling you this so you know who I am.” Got it, thanks.
The version of Rebel Moon currently on Netflix is also a neutered PG-13 version, with Snyder promising a longer R-rated cut later on. No one has abused the concept of a director’s cut more than Snyder. He’s done this with almost every one of his movies. The director’s cuts are always superior to the theatrical cuts, most famously when Snyder was allowed to complete his own four-hour cut of Justice League. It’s frustrating that Netflix didn’t just release the R-rated director’s cut to begin with. Snyder is an edgelord who loves his sex and violence, so let him go full edgelord.
Most shocking is some truly terrible cinematography. Much of the film is shot with lenses in which only the people and objects closest to the camera are in sharp focus, with the rest blurry. Rather than collaborating with cinematographers like Larry Fong as in previous films, Snyder served as his own director of photography here. For a director whose greatest strength is visuals and making things look cool, it’s stunning how bad the lenses makes many scenes look. This flaw significantly hurts the effectiveness of Rebel Moon.
And yet. And yet. Despite its significant faults, unoriginality, underdeveloped characters, and often shoddy cinematography, I enjoyed Rebel Moon. There’s a quality to most of Snyder’s films that makes them compulsively rewatchable, even as you’re aware of his weaknesses as a storyteller. The film is exactly what it promises to be: Zack Snyder’s take on Star Wars, mixed with Seven Samurai and whatever other influences he wanted to incorporate—Lord of the Rings, Dune, Avatar, Heavy Metal magazine, you name it. Even as mixing and matching so many disparate elements can occasionally feel incongruous, there’s something joyous about watching a filmmaker with a unique style and love of genre fiction being able to fully indulge himself and play in his own sandbox. Yes, Snyder offers us plenty of his trademark slo-mo, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
The best reason to watch Rebel Moon is as a showcase for Sofia Boutella, who makes for a great action hero and brings the requisite physicality to the role. She acquits herself well during the fight scenes. As Grace Randolph pointed out in her non-spoiler review, Snyder’s casting is often concerned in large part with an actor’s look. Boutella looks great kicking ass. But she also brings a charisma that goes a long way toward making us invested in Kora and the defence of Veldt.
The other actors do what they can with underwritten roles. Skrein makes the biggest impression as the sadistic Admiral Noble. He’s got the high cheekbones, the fashy haircut, and the arrogant sneer of his space Nazi villain down pat—though the choice of the costume designers to outfit Noble in a standard white shirt and necktie is a bit unimaginative for a a space opera. Huisman, who bears a striking physical resemblance to Zack Synder, acts as something of an audience surrogate, the everyman along for the ride. It’s funny how often his character is referred to as a “simple farmer”. However, Gunnar ends up lacking much more dimension than as a love interest for Kora.
Charlie Hunnam is fine as Han Solo—sorry, Kai—with the exception of his sloppy attempt at an Irish brogue, which is all over the place. Cyborg swordmaster Nemesis (Doona Bae) and buff blacksmith Tarak (Staz Nair) are effective in introductory action sequences, then fade into the background. Ray Fisher and Cleopatra Coleman offer presence as the splendidly named sibling revolutionaries Darrian and Debra Bloodaxe, making up for dialogue that consists largely of exposition. Multiple Oscar nominee Djimon Hounsou, on the other hand, is wasted as former general Titus. He isn’t even introduced with a cool action scene. Was this left on the cutting room floor? Kora promises Titus revenge and that’s all it takes for him to join her squad.
Maybe my expectations were low. Maybe it’s because I wasn’t paying to see this in a theatre, just watching it on Netflix. But despite all its flaws, I had a lot of fun with Snyder’s pulpy space opera. If it pales in comparison to the original Star Wars trilogy, it’s still better than any of the Disney Star Wars movies. While I’ll always respect the 1977-1983 trilogy, otherwise I’ve gotten to the point where I hate Star Wars. It’s inescapable presence in pop culture grinds my gears considering how bad most Star Wars is—and while I’ve heard good things about shows like The Mandolorian and Andor, that’s all Star Wars is to me at now: Disney product. I’m happier watching a Star Wars knockoff filtered through the unique sensibilities of Zack Snyder than I would be seeing just another Star Wars movie.
Despite the blurry lens, when Snyder gets a good shot he can still produce those awesome tableaus and visuals that make me such an apologist for his work. If the farming community on Veldt makes little sense—they supposedly abhor technology, yet still have those futuristic Star Trek-style sliding doors—a sex-positive old Norse community with a giant Saturn-like planet in the sky is an amusing concept that’s pure Snyder. “Make love tonight, for the harvest!” an elder says to cheers at a village feast. “For the very food we eat! For the gods!” Sex is completely absent in Star Wars, so it’s a nice change of pace to see it acknowledged. There are fun action set pieces throughout, like a battle against a giant spider woman played by Jena Malone.
Even shorn of the graphic violence, sex, and blood that will no doubt characterize the R-rated director’s cut, Rebel Moon still has all the elements needed for an entertaining space opera. Let’s not forget that the 1977 Star Wars was hardly high art. Like Snyder, George Lucas was a fanboy who wanted to make a fun tribute to old sci-fi serials and Akira Kurosawa films. The critics are being too harsh on this one.