Rebel Moon-Part Two: The Scargiver

• Directed by Zack Snyder
• April 12, 2024 (US) / April 19, 2024 (Netflix)

Kora and her crew of warriors help the farmers of Veldt defend their home against the forces of the Motherworld.

I am no Zack Snyder hater. I liked his Dawn of the Dead. I enjoyed Sucker Punch. And I think not only Man of Steel but Batman v Superman as well as his version of Justice League were good movies. I have no idea how the same person that made those films that I enjoy made this travesty. It starts bad and just never gets better.

The Scargiver gives the viewer a flashback scene towards the opening that’s laughably unbelievable. It feels like a flashback that is quickly revealed to be a lie. It explains how the hero Kora/Arthelais (a painfully unengaging Sofia Boutella) was framed and is now a wanted criminal. She aided with the assassination plot of the royal family and expected cover from her adoptive father Regent Balisarius (Fra Fee) who has a face that looks like it has some of the most low effort fake facial hair ever shown in film.

What is unintentionally funny is that during this whole flashback there is a string quartet playing along with the action. I guess it was intended as artistic but comes off as comedic. It is not that the action mirrors the music but that it comes off like the song was written for the killing. Like they had a meeting and the bandleader said, “Tomorrow we’re taking part in some regicide and need to write a ditty for it. Here’s what I got so far…”

But beyond that flashback not a whole heck of a lot happens in the opening of this two-hour and three-minute film. You’ve got impending doom coming to a farming planet to be defended by a handful of experienced fighters and villagers and Zack Snyder wants to do slow motion takes of harvesting wheat and getting water from a barrel? Yes, the wheat is part of their plan to fight back against the ship but is showing every little moment of its harvest really necessary? Maybe to bump it up to beyond 90 minutes I guess but not to tell an actual story.

Slow motion is used to a ridiculous amount. It certainly stretched this movie out to two hours and three minutes. I’m guessing the slo-mo alone added another 10 minutes or more. It is even used during moments that are already slow like, well, the extensive wheat harvesting. And that is in addition to the general padding of everything making what amounts to maybe 45 minutes of story into this movie.

Somehow apparently the villagers of Veldt bond with these complete strangers that will defend them all of whom I am hard-pressed to name. I really don’t know what they do besides harvest wheat that makes them care about these people. But they do. It is by necessity of the plot and not growth of the characters. It is just handed to the audience.

This feels like a bad attempt to make this film into a rough parallel of the original The Magnificent Seven, but it looks like Zack Snyder, Kurt Johnstad, and Shay Hatten only understood that movie in the most superficial terms. In that Western classic the characters were not just gunslingers doing a job but rather people with emotional baggage who saw their job as a chance at redemption of some type. They grew along the way. Our heroes in The Scargiver are gifted with baggage and no growth or minor narrative.

In that spirit in a narrative dump we get our heroes sitting around giving their sob backstories. We should’ve probably gotten some hints of those stories in the last movie. Now Snyder as storyteller must justify why these people are going to lay down their lives for a tiny village against the mighty Empire. I mean Motherworld in this barely changed Star Wars story. Kora/Arthelais’s squad factors in a smidge more than they did in the previous film, but they were completely meaningless to the story of the last film. At least here they do a little something.

The acting is often atrocious. There are only two bright spots in this-Djimon Hounsou as Titus and Ed Skrein as Atticus Noble. Hounsou can make anything interesting and Skrein turns Noble into an entertaining villain after his resurrection. Unfortunately Boutella never comes close to equaling his evil with her relative good. Boutella is never going to happen. Stop trying to make it so.

This has some of the most pompous and hammy dialogue of any Zack Snyder film. It is pretentious and laughably full of itself. Sometimes meant to be inspirational. Sometimes meant to be grandiose. Almost always dumb and delivered like bad community theater.

I had some hope that the second film could be an improvement over the first. Unfortunately it was not. Maybe the issue was that Snyder had a lot of control over this. I’m not sure how his other stuff for Netflix has performed but the use of “No” is important. “No” can force someone to rethink what they are doing and do it better. When you have no reason to stop and pause and justify then you use whatever excrement your mind poops out. Like that random bit added to the ending that feels pulled from the same place poop comes from.

Don’t suffer through Rebel Moon-Part Two: The Scargiver like I did. Save yourself two hours and three minutes and watch something better. Like paint drying.