‘Rebel Moon’ Is the Snyder Cut of ‘Star Wars’

Do you like the Star Wars franchise? How about the new version of Dune? And what about Avatar, The Matrix, Starship Troopers, Lord of the Rings, and Game of Thrones? And also: Westerns, samurai movies, Inglourious Basterds, ancient mythology (Greek, Roman, and a smattering of Eastern), the Dungeons & Dragons monsters’ manual, those old-school Roger Dean album covers, Frank Frazetta’s paintings, Hideo Kojima’s video games, James Fenimore Cooper’s “Leatherstocking Tales,” the collected works of Robert Heinlein and Piers Anthony, and six out of the nine short stories that make up Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot?

All of this previously pop culture-tested, nerd canon-approved stuff will cross your mind as you watch the first chapter of Rebel Moon, Zack Snyder’s two-part space opera about an evil empire bent on totalitarian rule and a small, ragtag group of rebels who stand up against them. Having toiled away on remakes (Dawn of the Dead), revved-up graphic novel adaptations (300, Watchmen), and remarkably divisive intellectual-property series (DC’s “Snyderverse”), the writer-director has now fashioned a new, original sandbox with which to construct a self-made franchise. The use of “original” still requires scare quotes, however, as he’s not drawing from a single specific source à la the mother of all zombie movies or a long legacy of superhero comics so much as entire CliffsNotes histories of genres. What you’re witnessing here is an amalgamation of recognizable bits and pieces, all mashed together and supersized to the max. It’s essentially the Snyder Cut of every science fiction and fantasy touchstone of the past 100 years — a jam-packed, ransacked greatest-hits reel posing as a saga.

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Look, if we’re going to start dinging pulp blockbusters over their begged, borrowed, and blatantly stolen influences, we’d be putting the entire Geek Entertainment Industrial Complex on trial. It’s easy to forget that George Lucas’ game-changing story of a galaxy far, far away was itself equal parts Flash Gordon serials, Akira Kurosawa films, WWII dogfight adventures, hot-rod obsessions, TV-gunslinger hero worship, and scraps from a heap of exquisite miscellaneous trash. (It’s not a surprise to hear that Snyder originally envisioned this as a Star Wars spin-off of sorts.) Joseph Campbell should technically be getting royalties from every third Hollywood summer movie released since 1977. Don’t even get us started on Avatar.

It’s not what you’re drawing from, in other words, but what you do with said pilfered spare parts that make your pop universes snap and crackle. Per usual, Snyder applies his go-big-then-go-even-bigger methodology to this mood board of a moving picture, applying a signature style that can simply be described as an endless 10-ton KABOOM! His fans will love it, his detractors will automatically gnash their teeth and mourn the art form, and, like so much of Snyder’s back catalog, Chapter 1 (subtitle: A Child of Fire) will likely become an event movie for all the wrong reasons. We can say that it’s not as bad as early reviews would suggest — certainly not the kind of camp extravaganza that makes for mandatory hate-watching — nor as good as a gajillion online bots will inevitably try to convince you it is. What Rebel Moon‘s initial installment lacks in cohesion or vision, it more than makes up for with ambition. You just wish the seams of this patchwork quilt were stitched a little tighter.

“On the Mother World, 1,000 kings ruled in succession” — from the very first line of narration, given the full prestige treatment by Anthony Hopkins’ straight-outta-the-Globe-Theatre narration as a cosmic dreadnought hyperjumps into the frame, we’re off to the hard sci-fi races. Cut to Veldt, a fertile moon colonized by a community of farmers. At a seasonal celebration, the village’s bearded patriarch (Corey Stoll, looking like he just came from his day job making artisanal wax candies in Williamsburg) asks the villagers to thanks the gods for their bountiful harvest and to fuck like horny rabbits, though not in that order. One of the younger men, Gunnar (GoT‘s Michael Huisman), has been selling surplus grain to some off-planet resistance forces. He also has eyes for Kora (Sofia Boutella). The attraction is mutual if not consummated, given she’s being pushed to marry one of the more generic interstellar-Quaker types milling about.

Kora is the one who first notices a massive ship orbiting the sky, sounding the town alarm. “What do they want?” someone asks her. “Everything!” she replies. Soon, a visiting party arrives, in the form of heavily armed troops, heavily masked red-robed priests, and Admiral Atticus Noble (Ed Skrein), a Nazi-ish bad guy you can make at home by blending one cup of Hans Landa with six spoonfuls of Snidely Whiplash, then just add water. He represents the paramilitary arm of a royal dynasty that’s trying to rule over all of the other rulers, or at least we think that’s what’s happening; the dude is a villain is the point, really. Polite inquiries about that missing surplus grain lead to some much more impolite killing and threats to destroy the community if they don’t supply the army with virtually all of their bounty. Do you think someone asks Noble what he wants? Would you guess that his answer is literally, “Everything?”

It turns out that Kora has a complicated past regarding her life before joining the community (not to mention she’s apparently spent time training at the Themyscira Amazon School of Self-Defense, given how wonderful her combat skills are), and, after dispatching most of a platoon left behind to terrorize the locals, she and Gunnar go planet-hopping to recruit warriors to aid in their cause. That includes Charlie Hunnam’s charming rogue found lounging around in a cosmic cantina — his character is named Kai, but we’re still calling him Hunnam Solo regardless — Bae Doona’s swordswoman-with-a-grudge Nemesis, Djimon Hounsou’s disgraced General Titus, Staz Nair’s shirtless ex-nobleman Tarak, and the renegade Bloodaxe siblings. They’re played by Cleopatra Coleman and Ray Fisher, the latter of whom you may remember as Cyborg in the Justice League films. His heroic do-gooder gets slightly more to do here, thankfully. He still feels like he’s one more human being getting lost and/or eclipsed by the sheer Snyder-esque sturm und drang of it all.

There’s more, of course, including a spider-like creature, a squid-like regent, a crab-like bot used for interrogating prisoners, some extraterrestrial horses, a wild Griffin, Cary Elwes chewing CGI scenery, a sensitive robot (also voiced by Anthony Hopkins, so maybe he’s the narrator, or not?), and a half-dozen hints of things to come. Snyder has definitely concocted this out of his own imagination and a deep DVD collection, populated by all sorts of creepy-crawlies, familiar archetypes, and a whole lotta cool imagery. What you begin to suspect halfway through Rebel Moon — Part 1: A Child of Fire is that amidst all of this mix-and-match world-building, someone may have forgotten to pay attention to the storytelling aspect. By the end credits, that suspicion has turned to outright fear. That laundry list we namechecked up top may indeed be a collection of a sci-fi/fantasy/genre fanatic’s favorite things. But when you slop all of that into a narrative that’s somehow too basic and too confusing to follow — let’s just say that the sum of all those disparate, beloved parts does not equal anything resembling a whole. Part Two: The Scargiver hits Netflix next April. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.

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