Rebel Moon Part Two: The Scargiver review — humongous final showdown, but a slog getting there

With Rebel Moon — Part Two: The Scargiver, the second half of his epic two-part science-fiction fantasy, Zack Snyder picks up where he left off at the end of part one. His space opera's kick-ass heroine, Kora, played by Sofia Boutella, and her rag-tag band of warriors believe they have extinguished the threat against the community of farmers they have vowed to defend.

However, as Rebel Moon — Part One: A Child of Fire revealed in its final moments, Admiral Noble (Ed Skrein), the ruthless military commander of the story’s tyrannical galactic empire, the Motherworld, didn’t die following his climactic fight with Kora. Thanks to some icky sci-fi jiggery-pokery involving a chrysalis and a bunch of tubes, he’s been resurrected. Now, he's aboard The King’s Gaze, the Motherworld’s all-powerful dreadnought, heading towards Veldt, the moon that is the farmers’ home.

If Rebel Moon — Part One: A Child of Fire — which saw Kora assemble her band of fighters — was The Magnificent Seven in space, then Part Two: The Scargiver is very much a war movie. Yet before this film’s tremendous battle between the forces of good and evil can kick off, Snyder has more than half the two-hour runtime to fill.

He does so with scenes of bucolic harmony — reminiscent of the barn-building montage in Witness — in which the villagers and their new friends bring in the community’s wheat harvest. This harvest, viewers of the first part will recall, was the saga’s plotspring. Admiral Noble’s demand for almost all of the farmers’ grain and his promise to return in 10 weeks to collect it, was what prompted doughty villager Gunnar (Michiel Huisman) to set off with enigmatic refugee Kora in search of battle-seasoned fighters in the first place.

Alongside the backbreaking harvest — carried out in record speed with scythes and flails, there being no combine harvesters on Veldt — work goes into preparing the village’s defenses and teaching its peace-loving inhabitants how to fight. There is also time for Kora and her companions to reveal the tragic backstories that have led them to seek revenge and redemption by coming to the villagers’ aid. And for them to find through contact with the humble farmers a cause worth dying for.

These scenes should add emotional depth and weight to the forthcoming action, but the film’s screenplay — co-written by Snyder, Kurt Johnstad and Shay Hatten — lacks the spark to achieve this. Snyder’s cast — which includes Djimon Hounsou as guilt-stricken former General Titus, Doona Bae as grieving swordswoman Nemesis and Staz Nair as impressively buff fallen royal Tarak — do cut striking figures, but their dialogue mostly falls flat, and they can't prevent the film’s first half from dragging. Unsurprisingly, Anthony Hopkins, who voices the character of antiquated robot soldier ‘Jimmy’ and supplies the odd spot of catch-up narration, is the only cast member who manages to give his speeches anything approaching a sonorous ring. 

The lack of zingy dialogue didn’t hold back Child of Fire, which moved rapidly from one vivid episode to the next, dropping hints along the way of its characters’ pasts that suggested they possessed more depth than was, it now seems, actually there. Sadly, The Scargiver’s first half is overly ponderous, with nothing in it to match that thrilling scene in A Child of Fire in which Tarak rode that giant, griffin-like winged beast.

Indeed, it is not until The Scargiver reaches its humongous final showdown that Snyder really gets to show his chops. And, as you would expect from the director of 300, the action is spectacularly staged - with lashings of his trademark slow-motion to the fore. Even so, aspects of the climax - including the sudden reappearance of characters from the first film - appear muddled and rushed.

Still, at a time when Hollywood blockbusters are almost exclusively franchise fare, Snyder deserves credit for striving to create a piece of original IP rather than a remake, a reboot, or a sequel — even if he did, decades ago, originally conceived this tale as a Star Wars film. Of course, when Rebel Moon — Part One: A Child of Fire appeared, it was immediately dismissed in some quarters as a Star Wars rip-off, although the absence of cynicism in the project let more generous viewers see it instead as a fanboy’s loving homage. If only Snyder had had someone to do what Lawrence Kasdan did for George Lucas on The Empire Strikes Back and give some pep and fizz to the film’s boilerplate dialogue.

Rebel Moon — Part Two: The Scargiver is now streaming on Netflix.