A film review by Craig J. Koban December 29, 2023

REBEL MOON: 

PART ONE - CHILD OF FIRE

2023, R, 134 mins.

Sofia Boutella as Kora  /  Djimon Hounsou as General Titus  /  Charlie Hunnam as Kai  /  Michiel Huisman as Gunnar  /  Staz Nair as Tarak  /  Bae Doona as Nemesis  /  Ray Fisher as Darrian Bloodaxe  /  Cleopatra Coleman as Devra  /  Bloodaxe  /  E. Duffy as Milius  /  Anthony Hopkins as Jimmy (voice)  /  Jena Malone as Harmada  /  Ed Skrein as Admiral Atticus Noble  /  Cary Elwes as King of the Galactic Empire

ORIGINAL FILM

If Zack Synder went shopping on Amazon, added a lot of movies to his cart, got them delivered, disassembled and then reassembled them and tried to pass them off as something uniquely and originally his own, then - to quote its full title - REBEL MOON: PART ONE - CHILD OF FIRE would be the end result. 

Self-described by him as a new age STAR WARS with a harder edge, this Netflix financed and produced space opera pilfers from a plethora of classic and iconic sci-fi and fantasy cannon.  George Lucas' work is the most obvious, but there are also elements of DUNE, HEAVY METAL magazine, comic books, and the multiple works of Akira Kurosawa thrown in for good measure too (THE SEVEN SAMURAI figures in heavily).  The main issue that I had with REBEL MOON is not that it's an incompetent production.  This is really a film of strange contradictions.  It's a wildly ambitious, but wholly derivative space fantasy.   It's visually stunning (playing up to Snyder's strengths as a visualist), but sluggishly scripted and lacking in memorable characters.  REBEL MOON simply doesn't come together as a satisfying whole and, when all is said and done, won't linger with viewers long after seeing it.   

I've been one of the few critics that has more than come to Synder's defense over the years.  Long before he developed a zealot-like social media following with his foray into the DCEU and - most recently - his extended edition of JUSTICE LEAGUE, he began his career with a relative smash in helming one of the finest remakes ever in 2004's DAWN OF THE DEAD and followed that up with two of the most thankless comic book adaptation committed to celluloid in 300 and WATCHMEN.  Yes, he has had his share of misses (does anyone really remember his animated owl movie or SUCKER PUNCH?) mixed in with his qualitative hits, but he's fostered a better overall resume than most give him credit for as far as populist filmmakers go.  You can sense all the way through REBEL MOON that he really, really wants it to be the next hit IP that will strike a massive chord, and his reverence for those aforementioned sources is readily apparent.  But too much of this film comes off as a spiffy and expensive-looking fan fiction-inspired pastiche instead of something that is audaciously innovative.  That, and most of the pure enjoyment factor that people derived from classic STAR WARS (which this film rips off wholesale in many elements, more on that in a bit) is hopelessly AWOL here.  It's the kind of self-indulgently serious space opera that forgets to have fun with his fantastical premise, which oftentimes makes it a tough slog to sit through.

And - yikes! - do we ever get a lot of riffing on STAR WARS storylines, characters, and ideas here.  Synder - with co-writers Shay Hatten and Kurt Johnstad - cram their narrative with downtrodden space farmers, evil galactic space Nazi empires, a band of rebels gathered together to take on said space Nazi empire, and so forth.  The film is set in a galaxy ruled over by the fascist Motherworld, led by their military (The Imperium) and a sickeningly cruel higher up, Admiral Atticus Noble (Ed Skrein), who leads his empire in ravaging any planet that they come in contact with for any and all resources they have.  In the early stages of the film, Noble and his massive space freighters land on a modest farming colony on the moon of Veldt, which happens to the home of Kora (Sofia Boutella), who - like Luke Skywalker before her - lives a life of agricultural modesty.  The farming community collectively opts to be outwardly friendly to Noble and his thugs, but refuses to offer them any of their crops, seeing as they barely have enough to feed their own.  The sadistic Noble doesn't take kindly to this and brutally murders the clan head (Corey Stoll) to make an example of how the Motherworld won't take no for an answer.   

Kora, rather predictably, won't sit idly by and let Motherworld take whatever they want and terrorize her people, so she very lethally dispatches with some of Noble's men that were left behind and then decides to partner with fellow farmer Gunner (Michael Huissan) to venture off-world to seek out a band of freedom fighters that could help them take their farmland back.  The rest of the movie becomes a video game-like fetch quest, so to speak, to locate and hire personnel, with the first being a mercenary named Kai (Charlie Hunnam), who they hook up with in a very Mos Eisley-esque space bar filled with aliens (he also has a fast ship they can use, but doesn't have a hairy co-pilot).  They then welcome others into their group, like an empath named Tarak (Staz Nair), a cyborg that utilizes what really does look like lightsabers in Nemesis (Donna Bae), a disgraced outcast general, Titus (Djimon Hounsou), and a battle hardened warrior, Bloodaxe (JUSTICE LEAGUE's Ray Fisher).  Everything culminates with inevitability as Kora and her new kick-ass squad must do battle with the always-in-pursuit Noble.

One of the glaring issues with REBEL MOON is that - for such a relatively long movie at two-plus hours - we never really grow to learn much about any of these supporting players (outside of Kora herself) throughout most of the narrative.  They're all distinct insofar as action figure toys have their unique look and abilities, but not much more than that.  So many of these people are introduced so quickly and then the film segues to the next team member that is picked up that we rarely have any time to get to know them and/or develop any rooting interest in them.  They look cool, yes, but as distinct and well realized characters, we're left wanting more.  And because the character dynamics and interplay are relatively shallow, it becomes hard to get taken up in the emotional stakes of their very mission, because most of them are so regrettably disposable.  Kora is given the most as far as a thorough backstory here, and Boutella makes for an endlessly striking presence as her one-woman army (she's a more than plausible action hero here), but she displays so little charm in the lead role that I had to remind myself that she's the main protagonist of the piece.  Some of the cast fare better, like Hunnam, who displays ample rouge charisma, but in a terribly underwritten role.  The only actor here that seems to be genuinely enjoying himself is Skrein as the main baddie, whose pomposity is matched only by his viciousness.   

It probably doesn't help that most of these actors have to utter so much wooden cookie-cutter dialogue.  There's...so...much...explaining...here, and the sheer enormity of the exposition dumping on display flies in the face of one solid movie-making truism: Show, don't tell.  Far too many scenes in REBEL MOON have characters delivering monologues or expanding upon some of the film's more wonky world building, which doesn't really help with generating solid forward momentum.  Lucas was wise in the very first STAR WARS film to deep dive us immediately into the thick of things with his well textured universe and let viewers take it all in at once.  REBEL MOON does the opposite, to its detriment.  The basic particulars of this universe are decently established, to be sure, in terms of whom the villains and heroes are and why the Motherworld needs to be stopped, but I still found myself asking too many questions, like how a squad of half a dozen or so warriors could possibly take on the limitless scope and power of The Imperium forces and their Star Destroyer sized dreadnaught ships.

Having said all of that, Synder deserves some credit for making REBEL MOON a visually arresting galaxy hopping odyssey.  Where he lacks storytelling chops, he more than makes up for it with robust and mesmerizing imagery, and his film is littered with that (he makes his film feel suitably and believably epic).  On top of directing and co-writing here, he also served as REBEL MOON's cinematographer, and there are way too many mightily impressive visual touches here to write off (I especially liked the early sequences of the farmer colony moon with its panoramic vistas of larger planets looming large on the horizon and in the skies above and a later scene of Tarok taming a giant griffin).  The visual effects are reliably proficient under Snyder's eye, and the set/sound design, art direction, and costumes are most assuredly stellar.  This is a routinely opulent film to lovingly gaze at, but the superficial pleasures of REBEL MOON can't hide the underlining creative lethargy on the story/character conception front.  STAR WARS was absolutely a hodgepodge work of varying genre influences, but Lucas was shrewd in how fluidly and confidently he homogenized them all to make his universe feel familiar and completely fresh at the same time.  By comparison, REBEL MOON is a slavish patchwork piece without much of its own personality; it doesn't know how to stand proudly on its own two feet.