Zack Snyder’s sci-fi movies were supposed to be Netflix’s Star Wars. But it’s hard to imagine a Rebel Moon Part 3 release after the new sequel.
Last December’s Rebel Moon Part One: A Child of Fire was a paint-by-numbers space opera filled in with Zack Snyder’s maximalist colors. Pitched as “Seven Samurai but make it Star Wars” (literally, to Lucasfilm), the finished product was at best a violent B-movie mashup and at worst an expensive Asylum-esque mockbuster. Not a great movie, but a little promising? Its most glaring omission: an ending. After two hours of hero Kora (Sofia Boutella) wrangling a crew to defend a farming planet from Imperium forces, the showdown didn’t actually go down; Snyder held on to the payoff for Part Two: The Scargiver.
Unfortunately, anyone buckled in for a propulsive action-forward finale should adjust expectations: The Scargiver, now on Netflix, is a blaring stinger sustained for two hours. The characters in A Child of Fire were basically walking, talking RPG class types, but, you know, they went places — from space brothels to ranch planets to the inner sanctums of the Imperium. In Part Two, Snyder and his co-writers, Kurt Johnstad and Shay Hatten, contain, and suffocate, the drama on Veldt, the home to an agrarian society defined by the Malickian poetry of touching wheat. An hour is spent preparing for war, with obligatory training montages and vapid reflections on the state of the universe. The back half is brown-hued, smoke-filled militaristic combat occasionally cut through by red-plasma gunfire. It is ugly, it is repetitive, it is severely lacking in stand-up-and-cheer moments.
Help, the Rebel Moon franchise has fallen and it can’t get up!But for real… what happened here?
After nodding off with 20 minutes to go, waking up, rewinding, and then watching to the end, I found myself more infuriated than expected as Junkie XL’s percussive anthem wailed over the credits. There was potential here. I don’t count myself among Snyder’s biggest fans, but Dawn of the Dead remains excellent, his Justice League redux was a major improvement, and his first Netflix movie, Army of the Dead, won me over. I had low expectations after A Child of Fire, but in theory, The Scargiver was a final act where a splash-page-maker could really go to town. A down-and-dirty bare-bones sci-fi action movie should be a check for Snyder to cash. Instead he delivered a bare-bones, dirty downer of a movie.
There is so much potential glimmering through the dust of the two Rebel Moon movies. Sofia Boutella has action bona fides and can convincingly plow through hordes of bad dudes in patented Snyder slo-mo — and she does it with a tangible humanity. Her character, Kora, went from the adopted daughter of the Emperor Palpatine stand-in, Belisarius, into a high-ranking Imperium officer, into an on-the-run fugitive who hopes to redeem herself by protecting the people of Veldt and dismantling galactic tyranny.
