Rebel Moon 1: Child of Fire (2023)
I think I can sum up my thoughts on Rebel Moon: Child of Fire in one sentence and it'd be enough for plenty of readers: "Zack Snyder did it again". I can even give you a second one if that doesn't tell you all you need to know: "My favourite original space opera since Jupiter Ascending". If you still want to see it, you'll probably like it.
This was me being glib. Here's me being earnest: Zack Snyder is in an awkward situation where he's by all means a cult director, however one whose characteristic style all but requires a high budget. In this day and age there's really only one place for someone like that, which is in creating exclusive productions for streaming providers. After Snyder unsuccessfully tried to pitch Rebel Moon to Disney as a Star Wars spinoff, who predictably weren't interested, he approached Netflix who agreed to adapt it as a standalone project. Under certain conditions, which I'll get into later, but let's start off with the movie itself.
Rebel Moon is about Kora, played by Sophia Boutella, fugitive ex soldier of a galactic dictatorship, hiding out in a small farming village. When the army is threatening the village and killing its chief, she sets out on a journey across the galaxy to recruit a group of warriors to protect it. It's the old Seven Samurai setup and it's relatively obvious how it would have fit into a Star Wars spinoff.
Part of what makes Snyder a divisive director is that he works in a realm of broad genre pastiche. Which itself is not a controversial thing to do. But where directors like Edgar Wright or Quentin Tarantino do so with a great degree of winking self awareness, Snyder's movies keep an unflinchingly straight face, even when they soar to the heights of absurdity of his fist standalone project Sucker Punch. Pushing them into a territory where they are, not unrightfully, perceived as clunky, self important kitsch.
The way Snyder relates to genre fiction is not by grounding it but by exaggerating it to a larger than life bluster that I don't begrudge anyone for finding obnoxious. You might very well take Rebel Moon. The core premise of the Galaxy's greatest warriors coming together to save a tiny peasant village is eye rollingly goofy if you take it as literal. Almost all of its plotting and world building makes it basically the "saying the quiet part out loud" version of Star Wars. The officers of the evil dictatorship are wearing almost literal SS uniforms and it's soldiers are literal buzz cut sporting, tank top wearing US-Marines. Briefly, the movie goes to a planet that seems to invoke modern China and portrays it as a dystopian, polluted cyberpunk hell. Meanwhile the village that is meant to be saved is a pastoral village of pagan farmers that wear flower crowns and practice free love like some wholesome version of the cult commune from Midsommar.
It's all broadly allegorical and moralistic in a way otherwise only Cameron's Avatar movies dare to be, there is a flashback in Rebel Moon where it crosses over into straight up fairy tale imagery. Much like the aforementioned Jupiter Ascending, I think there's a beauty in its earnestness and much like the aforementioned Jupiter Ascending, it's exactly that earnestness that will register as cloying, preachy and annoyingly guileless to many viewers.
Needless to say, Snyder brings his trademark low saturation, high contrast visual style to Rebel Moon and his particle effect and slow motion saturated kinetics to the action, adding to the pulp scifi fantasticism of it all. Having taken the DoP position again, it is a definite evolution of his skills as a visual director. In many ways Rebel Moon is his strongest directorial effort so far, even if I feel that as a writer he's never gonna recapture that particular cinematic alchemy he managed to conjure with co-writers Chris Terrio and David Goyer that gave Batman v Superman its weirdly poignant political relevance, and that's been mostly absent in all of his later movies. including its direct sequel Justice League, unfortunately.
My main issue with RM is something I've been alluding to a few paragraphs ago. The way Netflix chose to distribute the project is, frankly, some real bullshit. The decision to split it into two parts is defensible, considering they're supposed to release only about four months apart, but here's the funny part: the version of Rebel Moon Part 1 that was released, and that I've been talking about is technically a family friendly version that's been cut by 45 minutes to an hour compared to the R-Rated extended version that's supposed to be released at some undisclosed point in time after Part 2, which in turn will also have an R-Rated extended version released at some point even later than that.
So, in case I just lost you: They split one movie into two parts with respectively two different cuts (that are supposed to differ in runtime to up to an hour of additional footage) they're planning to release at four different dates. And make no mistake, it is fairly noticeable that some action setpieces were cut completely from the currently released version of Part 1. And it makes me wonder, you know, just what has film making come to?
Rebel Moon is not alone in this, mind, even for something like Ridley Scott's Napoleon a two hours longer Extended Cut has been announced for streaming before the movie itself even hit cinemas. Straight up, this sort of thing is the reason I've given up on paying for film and television and started to maintain a perhaps not quite lawfully acquired collection of movies. There is, of course, an argument to be made that it's better for auteurist passion projects that wouldn't easily find funding otherwise to be released like this, rather than not at all. But honestly, that's cope. Movies shouldn't be a carrot on a stick used to string along subscribers for over a year till the story is complete. That's what television series are for.
It's a shame I have to dedicate so much space to how a movie I like is dragged down by its distribution method. Let me end on a more joyful note: between Rebel Moon, The Creator, the beginning of the live action One Piece adaptation and in a way even Dungeons and Dragons: Honour Among Thieves, it's been a fairly good year for new and new...ish fantasy and science-fiction productions that aren't preestablished film and television tentpoles. Regardless of how you might feel about them individually. It's too early to declare a paradigm shift away from the long running series (MCU, DCEU, Fast and Furious and Mission Impossible all seem to have seen a bit of decline in popularity) in favour of newer endeavours, but the fact that these endeavours exist at all is one that makes me happy. Rebel Moon is definitely one of the years winners for me, probably not gonna change the mind of anyone who didn't care for Snyder's previous movies, though.
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