Just writing the words Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver (now on Netflix) is exhausting. The script. The colon. The stupid made up compound word. The fact that four months ago I had to write the words Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire after eviscerating 133 minutes of Zack Snyder’s tumescent slow-motion sci-fi. The opening missive of the filmmaker’s sprawling love-it-or-hate-it franchise was slated to be a holiday season tentpole for Netflix, but it only managed the ninth-best spot. debut of the streamer in 2023, a disappointing figure that does not bode well for the future of these films. But Rebel Moon 2 was filmed at the same time as the first, so we move on, with R-rated extended versions of these pending films and pending plot threads that tease Rebel Moon – Part Three: Oh God, please, I’m not begging you, please, please..
REBEL MOON – PART TWO: THE CHARGER: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The essence: You almost certainly don’t remember what happened in Rebel Moon 1, considering how derivative and generic it is. Fortunately, we have a summary at the beginning of Rebel Moon 2; Unfortunately, the summary is not visual but verbal, via Anthony Hopkins’ voiceover, which immediately buries us in a pile of obtuse sci-fi proper nouns like Glornmar, Flerg, and Yttlbean. First rule of screenwriting: do not do this. It’s boring and stultifying and the narrative equivalent of putting lead boots on Usain Bolt and then firing the starting gun. Anyway, you’ve probably forgotten that our heroine Kora (Sofia Boutella) got into a furious fight with bad guy Atticus Noble (Ed Skrein) and left him for dead. But she should have made sure, because bad guys in movies who scam Star Wars without the slightest hint of shame you can always resurrect yourself with the fearsome evil science of the space nazis. And so, Atticus is pulled very alive from a goop and tube chamber, angry that Kora left a scar on his chest that looks like someone placed a very, very, very, very very hot cup of coffee right under his pectoral. And that’s why he nicknames her The Scargiver and swears revenge. Perhaps it’s worth noting that the first thing Atticus does when he wakes up is give exposition, because God help us if we don’t keep up with the plot.
To help fight the space Nazis in the first film, Kora, as you probably vaguely remember, assembled a terrific team of misfits for her 2 Space Fast 2 Space Furious crew: her lover Gunnar (Michael Huisman). Titus (Djimon Hounsou), a warrior with a knack for making grand expository pronouncements. Tarak (Staz Nair), whose abs could stop a freight train. Nemesis (Doona Bae), a cyborg who exercises lightsabers laser machetes. And Milius (Elise Duffy), who has a war-painted stripe over his eyes that tells us they mean business. The team takes refuge on Veldt, the adopted home of Kora, a moon populated by humble peasants who look like they belong in a production of Little house on the space meadow. They learn that Atticus is not kaput and will descend upon Veldt in his space submarine and legions of faceless laser fodder, bent on destroying everyone, thus allowing him to drink deeply of the crystalline waters of vengeance. and Crush the rebellion that threatens to bring down your beloved Motherworld empire.
And now we come to the matter of wheat. This will be an important point of discussion on Rebel Moon 2, because the sequence is very long and consists of shots bathed in golden hours of the heroes and the peasants reaping wheat and gathering hay and grinding the grain into flour and putting the flour into bags and throwing the bags over their shoulders and throwing the bags in the barns. . Something like spice in Dune, if you control wheat, you control the universe, though it’s never made clear why, other than the implication that said flour would make half-decent bread for toast, PBJ, and the like. Then comes a sequence where the warriors help the villagers train to become soldiers by setting up straw men and letting the rookies shoot them with laser guns, and voila, now they’re ready to maim some idiots. Then, on the eve of the big battle, we pause to let all the aforementioned warriors bore us with their traumatic backstories, a part of the movie that doesn’t really develop much of the characters, but takes up a lot of time, so Feel free to move forward quickly so you can get to the big battle sooner. And then there’s the big battle, with the ragtag misfit heroes against the imperialist monolith. Wow, I wonder who will win.
What movies will it remind you of?: Dune 2 and Rebel Moon 2 they fell into the realm of watching at home the same week and represent two methods of sci-fi storytelling: the shitty way and the good way. It’s up to you which is which.
Performance worth seeing: I’ll take this moment to state that I’d like to see the sublimely talented Hounsou do more than supporting or minor roles in mega-franchises (he appeared in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the DC movies, all the A peaceful placeyes, a Fast and Furious movie and some minor ones like Tarzan, King Arthur and Charlie’s Angels).
Memorable dialogue: This technically does not exist in Rebel Moon 2, where werdz people speak add up to an almost unscalable mountain of turgid exposition. But I do appreciate how stupid and funny they all sound when they don’t use contractions, for example, Kora gravely intoning, “Don’t talk about me when you talk about honor and bravery.”
Sex and skin: None, although the impending R-rated version supposedly has feral alien scenes.
Our opinion: don’t talk about rebel moon when talking about movies that are good and watchable. One of the few joys the public can derive from enduring this junkola is to dust off the old stopwatch and time the slow motion; It must be at least 40 percent of the movie, whether Snyder captures the heroic poses of our soot and blood. Protags covered in dust and dirt in the middle of battle, or the heroic poses of our protags covered in dust and dirt in the middle of cutting wheat. Wheat. Fields and fields of wheat. Wheat. Yellow wheat. Red wheat. Cream of wheat. Wheat.
Unfortunately, the only crop Snyder produces is indigestible. Looking Rebel Moon 2 It is the equivalent of being tied up and force-fed dry shovelfuls of the Veldists’ finely granulated flour. Of course, it is a simplified film in relation to the first. rebel moon, which was two hours of buildup with the occasional snippet of zaperoo sci-fi excitement; this one is structurally pided neatly in half, loaded at the beginning with tedious garbage and loaded with a long battle sequence with all the necessary sub-battles that allow the protagonist heroes their moments of glory. Can I call it the Battle for Grain? There is a moment when Atticus orders his little bird minions to destroy everything in Veldt, and one of his subordinates blurts out: “But sir, the grain!” This is the only time the film inspires anything in its audience besides boredom; Too bad it’s a mocking laugh.
The hour-long fight is clearly the main course of the film, and while Snyder dishes out some semblance of excitement, it’s extremely difficult to give a damn, considering the characters are lifeless, the dramatic stakes are confusing, and the director he frequently forgoes stunt choreography for editing. tricks in the room, and the whole thing would take about half as long if filmed at normal speed. I’d argue that the entire slow motion is Snyder engaging in self-parody, but it’s so excessive that he smothers the entire effort with false seriousness. It’s strange how his signature movement is so distinctive while the narration is sub-generic garbage. Star Wars and aliens and The seven samurai and many other movies.
Our call: SKIP IT. Snyder’s style isn’t as tacky as that of his closest competitor, Michael Bay, but it seems perfectly suited to this era of completely forgettable Netflix programmers who seem designed to be forgotten at lightning speed.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic living in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
