REBEL MOON - PT. 1: A CHILD OF FIRE -or- SUBPAR WARS: A TIRED HOPE AKA How much of that 166 mil went to mountains of flake?
Release Date 15Dec2023
REBEL MOON, directed by ZACH SNYDER from a screenplay co-written by himself with screenwriters KURT JOHNSTAD and SHAY HATTEN, is a shallow, dour, overlong mess.
The story concerns a faraway galaxy ruled by an evil dictatorial government called The Motherworld doing evil fuckery to farmers on their very Norwegian planet. One of their number decides to strike out and find warriors who - it's SEVEN SAMURAI, OK.
It frustrates me to no end the level of idiocy involved in even allowing this movie to get near a greenlight. Disney passed on it when it was offered as a possible Snyder-helmed STAR WARS movie. A rare smart move by the mouse these days.
This movie freely steals from better movies, even those with much smaller budgets - namely ROGER CORMAN's 1980 contribution to the SW knockoff trend, BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS. That movie at least had a goofy charm that made watching to the end often enjoyable.
Rebel Moon, offered as Mr. Snyder's homage to Star Wars, manages to miss every mark in understanding WHY the OG movies worked at all. That he came from an equally egregious misunderstanding of the quintessential superhero - SUPERMAN, another saturnine misinterpretation, is little surprise.
THE GOOD:
...Pass. Really, shaving your carpet (Code or no code) is preferable to wasting your time with this flick.
THE BAD:
Boy howdy... The story and presentation reads like it never went past a mood board and sticky notes. The "acting" is atrocious. Stop trying to sell me on SOPHIA BOUTELLA - there's nothing there. Everyone else barely registers in any line reading, most of which is expository nonsense that threatened to put me to sleep with every utterance. Nothing matters -NO ONE MATTERS! Things, places, and people are introduced then discarded because - kiss my ass. The design of the movie is forgettable at best. The orange/ tan filter over everything does no favors for an already lost cause. The FX are often cheap looking, especially the ROSS dress for less version of Buckbeak from Harry Potter. The music is forgettable and continues the trend of Hans Zimmer propelled homogenized, frappe and fuck-it we see in modern movie scores. Finally, the runtime is excessive... seriously. Why did this deserve 2 1/4 hours - and a sequel!? Cut out the slo-mo BS and you have at least 20 minutes of your life and self respect back. The fuck outta here.
SEE IT:
Set a standard, an example – DON'T.
DON'T SEE IT:
If incentivizing mediocrity isn't your jam.
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