MOVIE REVIEW: Rebel Moon part 1: A Child of Fire (2023)

Zack Snyder is a polarizing figure in Hollywood and pop culture, to say the least. From his feature directorial debut in 2004's Dawn of the Dead, to his grim-dark comic book film adaptations, he’s always put someone off — it’s like he’s doing it on purpose. That said, his ambition is always high. Recently, he tried to get a hand in contributing to the sci-fi epic genre; Mr. Snyder tried to get a directing gig with Disney for a Star Wars film and they said no, so he decided to make his own Star Wars with blackjack and hookers (just like the Bender gag from Futurama). Despite the desire for a grimdark Star Wars like only Zack Snyder could create, the unintentionally funniest movie I’ve seen all year was created and put out to Netflix (and select theaters): Rebel Moon.
A descriptor for the starting location of the film, the title sounded cool. To see Sofia Boutella (The Mummy [2013], Kingsman: the Secret Service), Ed Skrein (If Beale Street Could Talk, Alita: Battle Angel, Deadpool), Bae Doona (“Sens8” [TV-Netflix], Cloud Atlas) and Djimon Hounsou (Shazam: Fury of the Gods, Biker Boyz, Amistad) acting opposite each other with science fiction and fantasy elements would be RAD. It all looked great, but it came off so serious that it was laughable and off-putting. Allow me to paint a picture:

TWO FACES: Arthelais the Imperial soldier and Kora the farmer, both played by Sofia Boutella.

Humanity reached the stars, establishing a militaristic interstellar empire under the King of Motherworld (Cary Elwes, The Crush, The Princess Bride, Robin Hood: Men in Tights, Saw). In his quest to bring disparate humanity under his dominion, the King employed quite a few psychos, notably General Bellisarius (Fra Fee, Les Miserables [2012], “Hawkeye” [TV-Disney+]). Bellisarius nearly wiped out an entire planet of rebels, save for a small girl he would raise to become his protégé Arthelais (Sofia Boutella). She grew to be a fantastic warrior, but ended up abandoning the Imperium after the assassination of the Royal Family and crash-landed on a distant world. We never see this but we’re told this in exposition from Hagen (Ingvar Sigurdsson, The Northman, K-19: the Widowmaker), a local farmer who pulled Arthelais free from the crash wreckage and is helping her hide on a farming moon called Veldt under the name “Kora”.

FOR THE IMPERIUM: Ready to chew the scenery, Ed Skrein channels a Commissar from Warhammer 40,000 in the scene-stealing role of Admiral Atticus Noble.

When the Imperium comes calling in their Dreadnaught called the King’s Gaze, led by Admiral Atticus Noble (Ed Skrein), they demand everything Veldt has to be surrendered in 10 weeks…with a contingent of rapacious troops as overseers. Instead of running again Kora decides to stay and repel the Imperial troopers left behind, but realizes the people of Veldt need protectors and masters to train them in combat. So Kora grabs a local farmer and Luke Skywalker analogue named Gunnar (Michael Huisman, World War Z, The Age of Adaline) and hits the road to the port city of Mos Eisley — sorry, I mean Providence. Here we meet our Irish-sounding Han Solo analogue Kai (Charlie Hunnam, “Sons of Anarchy” [TV-FX], Pacific Rim) who can take them to all the planets they need in his dirty hunk-of-junk spaceship to pick up the party members, who are:

• General Titus (Djimon Hounsou), a drunk and disgraced Imperial general-turned-gladiator, who surrendered in some massive battle. Large and cantankerous, he is our Chewbacca analogue.
• Nemesis (Doona Bae), a cybernetic assassin on a mission to avenge her children who died at the hands of the Imperium. She wears robes and uses heated swords (aka lightsabers) as her weapons, making her our Jedi analogue.
• Tarak (Staz Nair, “Game of Thrones” [TV-HBO], “Supergirl” [TV-the CW]), the beefcake prince of a planet enslaved by the Imperium. He also has the ability to communicate with animals. He is a combination of Princess Leia and Obi-Wan Kenobi’s force powers.
• The Bloodaxe siblings—Darian (Ray Fisher, Justice League [2017], “True Detective” [TV-HBO]) and Devra (Cleopatra Coleman, “The Last Man on Earth” [TV-Fox], Cobweb) — are our Luke & Leia analogue, leaders in the greater Rebellion who join Kora’s cause. They volunteer several ships and troops, including
• Milius (nonbinary actor E. Duffy), a rebel soldier mentioned by name. Not sure if she’s supposed to be an analogue for Star Wars rebel pilots, but she does have orange pants.

OUR HEROES (l-r): Nemesis (Bae Doona), Darian Bloodaxe (Ray Wise), Tarak (Staz Nair), Gunnar (Michael Huisman), Arthelais/Kora (Sofia Boutella), Kai (Charlie Hunnam), Milius (E. Duffy), and Titus (Djimon Hounsou).

Their quest to defeat the Imperium is waylaid as Kai betrays them to Admiral Noble and holds them for ransom. Our rebel heroes will be executed if they don’t escape, and their only hope falls to Gunnar. The farmer pulls it off in clutch and our heroes repel the Imperium, with the treacherous Kai dead and Kora fighting and beating Admiral Noble. Unfortunately they lose Darian Bloodaxe, the rebellion’s fighter aircrafts, and all but one of the rebellion soldiers — only Milius survives. Kora steals the dead Kai’s spaceship, and flies everyone back to Veldt to receive payment and to train the villagers for when the Imperium comes for revenge. Knowing she has a home to fight for once more, the normally subdued Kora smiles. As the party rides into the sunrise of an unpredictable future they are being watched by the narrator of the show, a robot knight nicknamed “Jimmy” (voiced by Sir Anthony Hopkins, Mutiny on the Bounty, The Silence of the Lambs, Bram Stoker’s Dracula), who brings the story to an end —
IT’S NOT THE END, as we learn Imperium scientists retrieved Admiral Noble’s broken and mostly dead body. The scientists use dark tech to send Noble’s remaining consciousness to speak with Emperor Bellisarius in a metaphysical psychic realm of ice and gigantic koi fish. Upon informing the Emperor about his protégé teaming up with a former rival, Bellisarius informs Noble to destroy the rebellion and to bring Kora to him alive…so he can torture and crucify her body. Bellisarius promises Noble that failure will mark him as a target for Imperial retribution. This gives Admiral Noble ample reason to come back from the dead screaming in anger and fear.

THE END (for reals this time)…OF PART ONE.

SPACE GRIFFINS: Zack Snyder’s ramping slow-motion framerate was out of control in this one.

I will say the most creative thing about Rebel Moon is the blending and recombination of character archetypes. Yes, they’re ripped from MANY things, only to be reconstituted into something new-ish. From Games Workshop’s Warhammer 40,000 setting to Japanese jidaigeki films to the Harry Potter film franchise to the DUNE book series and the Star Wars film franchise (which itself borrowed from Akira Kurosawa’s jidaigeki film Seven Samurai at the outset) and so much more, you’ll find something of the usual sci-fi suspects and then some throughout this retread of an interpretation of the critically-loved (but not always necessary) Joseph Campbell’s “Hero’s Journey”.
Unfortunately there were a lot of times the movie could have showed us things, but the script just had to tell us in dialogue. Which is weird, since Rebel Moon spends so much time spewing backstory but saying nothing of note. Even worse, we don’t really know who our heroes are until the last 20 minutes of the movie when the script suddenly becomes a firehose of chopped-up exposition about the team before the final battle. It’s a shame this movie spent so much on visual effects only for the meatiest visual bits to be relayed in words. Snyder did this much better in 300, where we see the story told AND shown at the same time.

BIG RED: It turns out Veldt is a far-off moon orbiting this red gas giant —it’s a rebel moon, one might say.

I need to make something clear: I am not hating on Rebel Moon. I am pointing out what makes this movie funny on a para-textual level.

• This PG-13 movie started with bad movie reviews from film critics before anyone else but reviewers could see it (despite knowing the moviegoing audience makes viewing decisions based on said reviews).
• Before the viewing public could see Rebel Moon, it was announced there was a 3-hour R-rated director’s cut, to be released at a later date. This could only be meant to capitalize on the Justice League “Release the Snyder Cut” movements that started in 2017 and revived to take over the Internet in 2019.
• So not only did Hollywood critics try to diminish the release of Rebel Moon, Zack Snyder already knew the Netflix release would not be up to critical reception (whether due to corporate meddling, Internet spoilers, or other issues) and chose to direct audience interest to his preferred cut of the film. This means a viewer would pay to see the same movie roughly TWICE, containing things in later releases that should have been included in the first release.

Para-text aside, we’re being fed bad movies on purpose by “maverick” filmmakers and greedy film executives working in concert (consciously or unconsciously). This happens twice if we watch their unedited and “fully realized” versions of the films they release as better versions of the film, whether in terms of length or content or cultural significance. This kind of foolishness is how we end up with seven versions of Blade Runner (with home video versions sold repeatedly to ignorant consumers), precipitated the DVD sales of “Director’s Cut” versions of nearly every film ever made, even inspiring director’s cut of movies that didn’t have such a version (meaning the theatrical cut is repackaged as a director’s cut). Trying to assign a similar level of cultural importance to Rebel Moon— a movie almost nobody’s ever seen before that’s a poor copy of a 20th-Century science-fantasy classic with a director’s cut before the theatrical cut goes public— is comedy on the level of giving an emperor invisible clothing. We can clearly see it’s just like the other Star Wars knockoffs that did the same thing: Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam (aka “Turkish Star Wars”), Battle Beyond the Stars, Starcrash, Starchaser: the Legend of Orin, Battlestar Galactica, Message from Space (aka “Japanese Star Wars”) and so on — giving this film a Director’s Cut does not make it a MORE culturally important film. The only reason why anyone in the 21st Century might watch this is if they’ve never seen Star Wars and want to see it, but don’t want to get involved with Star Wars because of the toxic fandom.

Rebel Moon is the anti-Star Wars on so many levels, only some of which are positive. That’s what makes the movie and the whole circus surrounding it hilarious.

PROBLEMATIC: For a PG-13 movie made after the #MeToo movement, this movie is simultaneously a near-bloodless slaughter-fest and a masterclass on why using threats of sexual assault to mark your villains is a very bad idea.

CHOICE CUTS <<SPOILERS AHEAD>>

• The Warhammer 40K homage is strong, as the troops using blocky bolt-guns are just the Astra Militarum and Atticus Noble is clearly meant to be a Commissar. I half expected him to ride in a tank and ask the driver to get closer so he can hit enemies with his sword (or rather, gilded bone staff). Instead, he requests an Exterminatus action on a rebel-aligned planet.
• Kai is less like Han Solo and more like D.J. from The Last Jedi.
• Kai’s ship is not the Millennium Falcon; it has ZERO character or charm.
• I understand Zack Snyder’s “blackjack and hookers” moment was rolled into his homage to the Star Wars “Mos Eisley Cantina” scene, but the costuming and alien makeup was too good to be ignored in this manner. And no tell-tale music to boot!
• Speaking of tell-tale music, Zack Snyder loves his Mediterranean choral music. It was fine for 300 and DCEU Wonder Woman’s “Ancient Lamentation” theme, but not for this.
• Shoutout to Corey Stoll (Ant-Man, “The Strain” [TV-FX]) and Cary Elwes for doing your level best.
• Does that mean this story is the “Legend of Kora”?
• Bellisarius’ metaphysical psychic realm was familiar but weird enough to be memorable.
• You can attribute the mostly bloodless ranged combat to plasma bolts cauterizing the wound on impact, which makes some sense. Melee combat and wounds are still bloody, but they don’t spray blood with impacts— a firm example is the final blow against Admiral Noble which causes his back teeth to fly out and nothing else.

HEY, THERE WAS A SOCK ON THE DOOR: Atticus Noble (played by Ed Skrein) and his tentacled and eye-stalked non-humanoid alien girlfriend. That’s what it is; I don’t make the rules.

• The aliens were wide ranging and acceptably weird, going from near-human to humanoid, to non-humanoid and inorganic. There’s even a parasitic one that isn’t an enemy, which you rarely see in science fiction and fantasy. Such variety led to displays of inter-species relationships which did not follow the usual “human male links up with idealized alien humanoid female”, and I applaud it.
• Upon hearing that the inclusion of the Xanadites (one of the aliens featured in Rebel Moon) is an Easter egg to his 2021 zombie film Army of the Dead, I was not moved.
• The hero’s home planet isn’t a desert planet: that’s a revolutionary concept all on its own.
• There’s a story beat about the Royal Family — a princess with the gift to bring the dead back to life. It gets two mentions in passing but I can imagine the concept will be fully addressed either in the sequel or the director’s cut.
• DUDE CAUGHT A WHOLE ASS STARSHIP-MOUNTED TURBOLASER TO THE CHEST; he dead.
• Ray Wise and Cleopatra Coleman as the Bloodaxe siblings are officially the best-dressed and made-up in this movie.
• I laughed when the Motherworld ships retrieved Admiral Noble’s body — my brother and I joked he’s this movie’s Darth Vader and they’ll turn him into a cyborg so he can be in Rebel Moon, part 2: the Scargiver (coming in April 2024)! I’ll be waiting for it to watch it!
• Between this movie and The Creator, I’m beginning to think we do live in a simulation if this is the only kind of story we can come up with worth celebrating in this fashion.
• My bro was right: this should have been a TV series.