The Pitch: A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far, away… an evil empire led by a dastardly villain (Ed Skrein) hunts down the last vestiges of a growing rebellion, fueled by the death of their godlike emperor. One such outer world that must be brought to heel is a humble farming planet, where a young, beautiful villager (Sofia Boutella) fights back against the soldiers looking to take their grain to feed their troops.
Recognizing that retaliation is nigh, Boutella’s Kora drags her everyman farmer sidekick (Michiel Huisman) off to space, to collect a rag-tag group of ronin from across the galaxy to help her defend their village. How many? Oh, about seven will do.
Seven Samurai Bring A New Hope to a NeverEnding Story: Beware any filmmaker bragging that their hip new sci-fi property is “the next Star Wars.” Doubly so with Zack Snyder, an auteur frustratingly always threading the needle between idiocy and genius, a straightforward purveyor of Renaissance spectacle whose works often need a little… massaging to make work. So it goes with Rebel Moon Part One, a film already split in half before seemingly chopped down to a manageable length for theaters before it hits Netflix in a matter of days.
It’s a neutered work, one that wears its influences so brazenly on its sleeve it’s a wonder Kurosawa doesn’t rise from the grave and file suit. Oftentimes, that’s not so bad: at its most entertaining, Rebel Moon hearkens back to all those chintzy cult Star Wars riffs that burst onto the scene in the late ’70s and early ’80s, from Krull to Battle Beyond the Stars to Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn.
But where those films had the charms of a low budget and the brazen attitudes of a company like the Cannon Group, Rebel Moon does a poor job of mimicking the first half of two movies you already know you like. Part One – A Child of Fire essentially constitutes the bit in Seven Samurai where the villagers assemble their team: go to one location, get introduced to a specific warrior and their quirks, move on. Here, it takes the form of an “assemble the team” montage that lasts for two straight hours, after a sluggish first act that establishes the stakes (and a glimmer of a more interesting subplot involving a warrior robot, voiced by Anthony Hopkins, demonstrating a budding sense of compassion).
From there, we whiz from one goofily-named planet to the next, the second act feeling like you’re binging an entire season of Love, Death, & Robots. In addition to Kora and Huisman’s Gunnar, there’s Han Solo-type Kai (Charlie Hunnam, trying desperately to infuse a sense of charm into this thing, not that the sound mixing can help you make out the dialogue), who agrees to transport them on his Not-Millennium-Falcon. Staz Nair’s Tarek is a muscly mix of Conan the Barbarian and Atreyu from The NeverEnding Story, proving his worth taming a majestic black griffin we never get to see again.
Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire (Netflix)
Doona Bae’s Nemesis is a wandering dispenser of stoic justice, introduced facing off against a spider-lady played by a hissing Jena Malone. Djimon Hounsou’s Titus is a washed-up drunken general living out his last days in a gladiatorial arena — I guess voluntarily, since he just up and joins them after a single conversation. Rounding out the crew is Ray Fisher’s Darrian Bloodaxe, one half of a sibling duo of revolutionaries who brings some soldiers with him — including E. Duffy’s Milius, a character teased as a major part of the gang but who only gets a couple of lines by the end.
But by the time the gang is assembled, it’s already time for the movie to wrap up, so one fog-shrouded setpiece later Snyder’s already racing towards the end credits and a few creaky teases for the second half.
A Wretched Hive of Scum and Villainy: What separates Rebel Moon (thus far) from the aforementioned VHS fodder of the ’80s, and more recent swings at Heavy Metal-inspired sci-fi pulp like Jupiter Ascending or The Chronicles of Riddick, is that there’s simply no sense of fun to be had. Save for the occasional smirk from Hunnam’s rogueish Han Solo-type, everyone digs into their role with po-faced sincerity, spitting each line of the didactic, exposition-heavy script as if it’s Shakespeare.
Sometimes that works; other times, when the dialogue is full of silly names and clunky platitudes like “there is a difference between justice and revenge,” it just leads you to roll your eyes. One wishes it were nastier, actually: the PG-13 rating neuters the sex and violence Snyder teases out, a fleeting glimmer from the sleazy Metal Hurlant comics that so obviously inspired this fantastical sci-fi world.
Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire (Netflix)
There are glimmers of entertainment here and there: A fun bit of production design punctuates the gloom (Skrein’s evil battleship looks like the spitting image of Space Battleship Yamato), and Doona Bae’s wide-brimmed hat cuts an intriguing silhouette. The ubiquitous cantina scene features all manner of wild creatures, including a brain-like parasite that puppets a poor soul by digging its tentacles into his brain. But it doesn’t add up to anything we haven’t seen before, and the script leaves little room to develop any of our overstuffed cast of characters beyond the barest character beats.
The Verdict: In its current shape, Rebel Moon isn’t just boring; it feels hopelessly compromised. Releasing the film in this form, a neutered PG-13 cut when the inevitable “Snyder Cut” will drop on Netflix at some other point in the future, feels like a fool’s errand. Why even watch this when any real meat that might be there has been sliced off as if by one of Doona Bae’s not-lightsabers? It feels like an exercise in futility, a slightly-longer-than-normal trailer for the real thing. Until we get that, there’s little to appeal beyond seeing films and properties you already like reskinned through Snyder’s shallow-focused lens.
Where’s It Playing? Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire streams on Netflix on December 22nd, with Part 2 arrviving early next year. (The inevitable “Snyder Cut” you’re actually meant to see is TBD.)
Trailer:
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