Not A Rebel Yell at All

• Rebel Moon (Also known as Rebel Moon-Part One: A Child of Fire)
• Directed by Zack Snyder
• December 15, 2023 (US) / December 21, 2023 (Netflix)
• Based on a story by Zack Snyder

A vessel from the conquest hungry Motherworld threatens a farming colony on the moon of Veldt where Kora, a former Imperium soldier, begins a quest to recruit warriors to protect her new home.

To call Rebel Moon-Part One: A Child of Fire ‘rough’ would be a bit harsh but not too far from the truth. There is just so much wrong or poorly done. Snyder dives headfirst and full throttle into all his hallmarks as if he is saying to those that do not like his style ‘I’m doing twice as much of it this time!’ Slo-mo and unnecessarily dark are taken to extremes.

I had mid-tier expectations going in. I didn’t expect anything great, but I expected to be entertained. More often than not for me in my humble opinion, Zack Snyder delivers entertainment. He may not deliver great movies, but he delivers entertaining movies. Some may count as guilty pleasures, but you still like them.

This is not any of that. It is slow and plodding and just, well, more often than not boring. It’s two hours but it feels so much longer than that in part because the people just won’t shut up. This is perhaps the most dialogue heavy film Zack Snyder has ever made. It is a great many scenes of motivational speeches that fall flat and long discussions that really don’t add too much. I’m not against heavy dialogue nor am I against long films but what we get here is some weird cross between padding and a strong need through the actors to hear themselves talk.

Despite all that talking the characterization is absolutely awful. I can’t say I got a real sense of where anyone comes from or their motivations-especially our lead character of Kora (Sofia Boutella). Despite two hours of film we learn absolutely nothing about her other than she feels bad about failing. TWO F****N’ HOURS AND ALL WE GET IS SHE IS SAD!

Sofia Boutella is one of the least charismatic actresses I can think of. It’s okay when she’s a supporting character like in Kingsman: The Secret Service but when she is a more significant character like in Star Trek Beyond she makes you indifferent to whether her side wins or loses.  Boutella spends a lot of the movie looking like she’s irritated that she must do whatever she’s doing. I cannot say if it was a choice on her part to make her character look tough and hard or the actress was really regretting her decision to star in the movie. Her expression translated to her performance and thus she gives Tessa Thompson a run for who can look most bothered to be on camera in a film.

Kora-the greatest soldier in the history of war (or something to that effect is said)-is hiding on the farming planet of Veldt because she was the bodyguard of some young blonde space princess (Stella Grace Fitzgerald) who was the heir to the Motherworld throne. Her parents were weary of war and thought their toddler daughter could unite the galaxy with compassion rather than conquest. Nice idea that completely denies the reality that their people caused.

When defending a young blonde by killing some Imperium soldiers left behind by a passing ship, she decides to gather together a few mercenaries to defend Veldt. So she’s going to chase away a galaxy spanning empire with dreams of galactic conquest from a small planet by using a few soldiers? By the end of the movie though this becomes about starting a revolution but there is already fighting going on against the Imperium forces so they really did nothing in that department.

Ever see the movie Battle Beyond the Stars or The Magnificent Seven? I have discussed both here once or twice. So much of this reminds me of a less fun version of either of those movies. I dare say it leans more into robbing from Battle than Magnificent. And this is for a movie that started out as a possible Star Wars movie. But the skills such as bonding with animals of generic space prince or the tactical skills of the general really are of no impact here because they are never used.

The number of characters that are pulled together feels very bloated. With super capable super soldier Kora they just feel superfluous since she can do just about everything.  What do they add. In A New Hope each character fulfilled a role. Luke was the hero who was to do the daring do. Obi-Wan Kenobi was the teacher. Princess Leia was the leader. Chewbacca was the muscle. Han Solo was the pilot as well as being the cynic who injected a differing opinion in order to get the group to think a little. R2-D2 and C-3PO were sources of information that helped shortcut things a little bit. Here Kora is all of those making all the others unimportant. I do not even care about their names nor are they different enough that you can tell them apart anyway.

Some of these people she finds appear to fight for money and they all have an axe to grind against the Motherworld. But for what reasons they fight are not clear. They just join forces for reasons. Is it a chance at redemption or revenge or a meager bag of grain as payment?

Our main villain of Admiral Atticus Noble (Ed Skrein) spends a great deal of the movie looking like Cillian Murphy but not being much else. He is meant as cold, crazed, and sinister but is largely indifferent and more interested in doing weird space stuff like plugging glowing hoses into him or getting sucked on by a tentacled creature. No idea what the purpose could possibly be in either instance.

One of the greater sins of this movie is the use of slo-mo. As I mentioned earlier this film is over two hours and I’m of the belief they could’ve shaved 20 minutes or so off this by not slowing the movie down as often as they did. Slo-mo has its place and its use but the number of places it is used and the number of times it is used is one more thing that brings this movie to a crawl. 

Rebel Moon started out as a script for possible Star Wars film that Disney eventually passed on. This looks like it would’ve been a very boring Star Wars movie that was maybe aiming to be a bit more like Dune. The problem is this never quite gets to either one. It’s never quite mature enough or quite fun enough to go in either direction. And because of that nothing feels as if it really matters or impacts any of the characters in any great way. It just all kind of is.

I had really wanted this to be good. Not great. Just good. I felt that good was a, well, good place to start. If it started good it could most certainly end great but it’s all just kind of bad. There are plenty of good ideas, but the execution is so halfhearted and more often than not it falls flat.

And it’s far too long. Remove/shorten the scenes by excising that excessive dialogue and speed up the footage and you could’ve cut the movie down without losing anything and gain a much tighter story. All the excess time leaves the viewer time to contemplate and understand just how not good this is rather than getting the endorphins flowing.

Rebel Moon-Part One: A Child of Fire is far too long and far too boring. It is saddled with poor characterization and attempts to be substantive when it’s not. As of right now it’s not worth checking out. And I’m kind of upset by that because I was really hoping for the start of a new film universe.