Rebel Moon movie review: Zack Snyder’s spectacularly dull sci-fi epic is the worst film of his career

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Even the film’s protagonist, a rebel warrior named Kora (Sofia Boutella), isn’t spared from having to deliver lines like this. In one of her first scenes, she tells her friend, “I am a child of war… the very idea of family was beaten out of me.” They literally live in the same house; did he not know? Snyder is hardly known for his writing — more than his usual visual ticks, the director’s biggest tell is probably getting one of his characters to say the words, ‘the why of’ — but Rebel Moon often feels like a first-draft. It’s uncommonly lousy, even by his standards.

The filmmaker might cite respectable influences such as George Lucas and Akira Kurosawa, but you’ll never catch him admitting that Rebel Moon actually seems like it has been cobbled together from the rubble of his nemesis Joss Whedon’s short-lived television series, Firefly. Set in an alien universe ruled by a fascist regime — there’s frankly too much lore to keep track of — the movie opens on a peaceful planet named Veldt. This is where Kora has been living as a farmer for a couple of years, after having been discovered in the wreckage of a spaceship in the aftermath of a war.

Unbeknownst to the imperial regime, the citizens of Veldt are living on some of the most fertile farmland in the entire universe. But their cover is blown one day, when a squadron of soldiers arrives unannounced, and demands the entirety of their produce. Ed Skrein plays the commandant, Atticus Noble, as a cross between Colonel Hans Landa from Inglourious Basterds and Captain Russell from Lagaan. In his cruel demands, there are echoes of the Bengal famine, when British colonialists stole from India to feed their people and fund their war, leaving millions dead.

Snyder makes the odd decision to portray Kora as a reluctant hero, but after having backed himself into a corner, decides that she cannot remain passive any longer. As expected, Kora turns on a dime and finds the motivation to fight back after witnessing villainy firsthand. It’s disappointing to note that even now — years after being pummeled for the gender politics in Sucker Punch — Snyder relies on violence against women as a narrative trope to propel his plots. In Rebel Moon, Kora kicks into gear only after watching one of her friends nearly get gang-raped by the Nazi cosplayers who serve as the film’s antagonists.

Snyder also somehow finds a way to be homophobic in this faraway fantasy land — an impossible feat, you’d imagine, seeing as we’re talking about a world in which Jena Malone plays a humanoid spider-woman. But there you have it. The ugliness of Rebel Moon isn’t limited to its visuals.

It’s probably worth pointing out that Kora doesn’t lead the fight against the imperialists herself, but chooses instead to put together a ragtag team of warriors. She is joined on her quest by her suitor, a man named Gunnar (Michiel Huisman), and subsequently by a Han Solo-esque rogue named Kai, played by Charlie Hunnam with, who knows why, a Northern Irish accent. Rebel Moon’s origins as a Star Wars project are apparent. In addition to the shameless use of lightsabers and the Solo stand-in, Snyder also sends his protagonists to a cantina-style hive of scum and villainy, populated by skeevy characters whose faces seem to have been fashioned out of leftover prosthetics from his previous Netflix movie, Army of the Dead.

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It has been suggested — this is purely speculative, of course — that Netflix tried to reverse-engineer a Release the Snyder Cut-type movement for Rebel Moon. The version of the movie that has been presented to us was edited down from a more sprawling director’s cut, which will no doubt be released in some weeks. If this is true, it has to be the most comically inept decision made by a studio since, well, the Snyder Cut movement itself. Almost unbelievably, Rebel Moon might not be the best film about an armed conflict in a mythical kingdom this week.

Rebel Moon – Part One: Child of Fire
Director – Zack Snyder
Cast – Sofia Boutella, Charlie Hunnam, Michiel Huisman, Djimon Hounsou, Doona Bae, Ray Fisher, Cleopatra Coleman, Jena Malone, Fra Fee, Ed Skrein, Anthony Hopkins
Rating – 1/5