‘Rebel Moon — Part One: A Child of Fire’ Review: Zack Snyder’s Sci-Fi Epic Is Uninspired and Unoriginal
REBEL MOON. Sofia Boutella stars as Kora, the reluctant hero from a peaceful colony who is about to find she’s her people’s last hope, in Zack Snyder’s REBEL MOON. Cr. Clay Enos/Netflix © 2023
I opened Netflix on Friday to check out Zack Snyder’s Rebel Moon, already bracing for impact, and I was struck by the biggest twist of all: I couldn’t find it. It might be my own algorithm, but it’s definitely not a good sign of confidence when there aren’t at least three icons to check out one of Netflix’s biggest movies of the year as soon as I open the app. After scrolling down, I finally got to the “New Releases” banner and hit play. Awaiting me was one of the most unoriginal and uninspired big-budget films of the year — and that includes The Marvels or Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.
It’s not just that there is no resemblance of characterization or enthusiasm behind bringing a new fantasy world(s) to the screen, but the level of lazy writing is genuinely concerning. Zack Snyder has not been shy about this being the pitch he made Lucasfilm a decade ago, a story he was so passionate about he wanted to make it even if it was in a different galaxy. My question would be: What was exactly that pitch? The story of Rebel Moon, after all, is one Hollywood has remade over and over again over the years, one first told by Akira Kurosawa in Seven Samurai, only this time in space.
The Star Wars comparison is an apt one, though. Take the 1977 original, a movie that was influenced by a lot of stuff, from several Kurosawa movies (most notably The Hidden Fortress, of course) to Joseph Campbell’s The Hero With a Thousand Faces or Flash Gordon. But even being a mishmash of all of those things, A New Hope still had a great story that stood on its own and that felt exciting, new, and worth the time. Rebel Moon, at least Part One, is a representation of the Leonardo DiCaprio gif recognizing famous films that influenced Zack Snyder’s vision for it: Seven Samurai being the most notable one, of course, but there is also a lot of Inglorious Basterds in one of the first scenes, some Dune, Star Wars, and even Avatar. The result? A story without a soul that could have clocked in at 90 minutes long had Snyder removed all the unnecessary slow motion.
The film sees Sofia Boutella’s Kora living on a moon located as farthest from the center of the galaxy as there is, sustained on farming and a sense of community. But the evil Imperium one day comes knocking on their doors and, through Ed Skrein’s Hans Landa, I mean, Admiral Noble, they demand much more than they can ever provide. After promising to return, Kora and her hot but ultimately useless friend Gunnar (Michiel Huisman), embark on a galactic quest to find a team of ragtag heroes they can use to fight the Imperium once they return to collect. Does that sound at all familiar?
REBEL MOON: Sofia Boutella as Kora in Rebel Moon. Cr. Clay Enos/Netflix © 2023
The beginning of the film already sets you up for what’s to come. Remember that old story about George Lucas writing the crawl for A New Hope so long and so impossible to follow it took Brian De Palma’s “Hold my beer” moment to pen the one we actually got in the final version? This film’s equivalent is a narration by Anthony Hopkins (for reasons we don’t really understand since he voices a robot character that has no real relevance to the plot or motive to act as the narrator of the story) that feels like an even harder to follow version of what Lucas had originally written.
Snyder often gets praised for his visual style, but other than including so many slow-motion action sequences for no reason at all, I have to question what that means here exactly. Is it the oversaturated color palette that makes every scene even more depressing than it already is, effectively pulling us out of it as opposed to inviting us in? He is at least competent at staging action sequences — but for that to be effective they would need to at least be interesting and keep us on edge. The sole purpose of those sequences and the way they are shot is to make Sofia Boutella look like a badass, but even then, I would argue the slow motion and to some degree, the way they are choreographed, works against that intention.
Boutella does her best with what she’s given, but that was not remotely enough here. It’s not just that Kora is not exactly likable, but her backstory is so convoluted it’s kind of hard to follow once we’re given the whole picture, and thus, complicated for anyone to care. But at least she was given a backstory and something to grab on to, which is more than most other characters even got. Kora’s mission is to convince (soon-to-be) heroes that would rather die before thinking once more that fighting space Nazis could spring a better tomorrow, into joining their suicidal cause. The only problem, though, is that she’s so bad at it — thankfully, she has her friend The Plot to boost her chances.
For all its flaws, though, Part One: A Child of Fire does work as an isolated film that sets up an even larger-scale sequel (whose trailer, featured at the end of the film, promises us that Snyder did not forget about the Seven Samurai payoffs he did not provide in Part One). There’s supposedly a director’s cut coming as well that will solve all our problems with it — or generate even more.
Rebel Moon — Part One: A Child of Fire is currently streaming on Netflix.
Miguel Fernández is a Spanish student that has movies as his second passion in life. His favorite movie of all time is The Lord of the Rings, but he is also a huge Star Wars fan. However, fantasy movies are not his only cup of tea, as authors like Scorsese, Fincher, Kubrick or Hitchcock have been an obsession for him since he started to understand the language of filmmaking. He is that guy who will watch a black and white movie, just because it is in black and white.
