Why Rebel Moon Can’t Recreate Star Wars’ Magic

Liz Shannon Miller
·6 min read
4
  • Oops!
    Something went wrong.
    Please try again later.

The post Why Rebel Moon Can’t Recreate Star Wars’ Magic appeared first on Consequence.

Watching Rebel Moon with the subtitles on is a wild experience. Zack Snyder’s two-part sci-fi epic packs in a lot of elements, dropping the viewer into a far-flung future world consumed by conflict. Lest you think that any element you see is just there at random, though, the subtitles often point to a greater depth of world-building behind the scenes.

The first living creature we see in Part 1 isn’t just an alien plowhorse — [Uraki whinnies and snorts], the caption tells us. In Part 2, we get a little song from Djimon Hounsou, or as the caption explain, [Titus sings in Fon]. And a key weapon doesn’t just stab into someone: [Krypteian blade trills], we see on screen.

What is a “Krypteian blade”? No idea, but the answer likely lies somewhere on Zack Snyder’s hard drive, where one imagines that an entire story bible of details exists to set up his strange sci-fi universe. It’s theoretically impressive to know that all those details exist, that Snyder has developed the language spoken by an oppressed people or come up with the names for all the planets ruled over by the evil civilization known as the Motherworld. Yet these details are meaningless to the casual viewer.

And when a new sci-fi franchise like Rebel Moon attempts to blast off in pop culture, all it has to begin with are casual viewers, those intrigued enough by the premise, the genre, or the talent involved to watch. If said franchise is lucky, those casual viewers become casual fans, maybe even the sort of devoted follower who might make a point of remembering what kind of blade it was that did the stabby-stabby. But Rebel Moon doesn’t feel like it’s going to be lucky in this regard.

Instead, Snyder’s space opera exists largely as a reminder that the space opera genre is not an easy one to conquer, especially considering what’s come before. Rebel Moon doesn’t bother with an opening crawl laying out the facts of this world in bold yellow print — instead, Anthony Hopkins narrates the story of a galaxy on shaky political terms, following the assassination of an unseen royal family.

From there, the film focuses its opening minutes on establishing the simple farming community of Veldt, with Corey Stoll’s bold performance and confusing accent work offering the only real spark of life; Sofia Boutella’s Kora, our ostensible protagonist, fails to make any impact as that protagonist. Kora’s a character who’s keeping a lot of secrets, which thanks to Snyder’s direction means that she gives the viewer nothing to engage with — this is a trait that defines pretty much anyone else in these films with significant screen time, even including the eclectic gang of warriors recruited to help Kora and her faithful pal Gunnar (Michiel Huisman).

Part 1, as Clint Worthington already pointed out last December, is just an overlong recruitment sequence, and perhaps the clearest sign that Rebel Moon should not have been a two-parter is that the opening narration for Part 2 barely requires a minute to sum up the events of the previous film (warriors recruited, Ed Skrein bad).

In both parts, all character development comes in the form of said character delivering a speech about who they are and why they do the things they do, though Part 2 does feature an entire sequence of characters taking turns to explain their respective backstories via flashback. It’s a sequence that could have almost been charming, had it not occurred three-fourths of the way through this epic, just before many of those characters ultimately die in battle.

Rebel Moon makes no attempt to hide the fact that it’s Snyder’s way to play in a Star Wars-esque world — hell, Snyder at one point actually pitched the idea to Lucasfilm as a potential part of the franchise. Now, even though it now exists in its own “original universe,” Snyder’s efforts to follow in George Lucas’s footsteps are far from subtle.

At the time of its premiere, Episode IV — A New Hope wasn’t exactly a paragon of originality, itself a pastiche of previously established tropes and elements. (One way in which Snyder directly emulates Star Wars with Rebel Moon is that he’s also borrowing the plot of a Akira Kurosawa movie — though Lucas riffed on 1958’s The Hidden Fortress, which is at least a little more obscure.)

Yet Star Wars became such a huge phenomenon because it was still singular — not in taking on a big sci-fi story, but finding an approach that riffed directly on one of our culture’s most established myth formats (the young hero discovers he’s special and sets out on a grand adventure) against a rich backdrop that offered just enough detail to draw in the viewer and a strong ensemble of charactes.

Those opening minutes of A New Hope are always worth studying again, because they so effectively set up heroes and villains even before we see a human face. The first major shot is of that small Rebel ship fleeing a much larger Star Destroyer; the discrepancy of scale makes it clear who the underdog in this battle is, emphasized all the more by the stormtroopers and Darth Vader’s violent capture of the Rebel ship and Princess Leia.

Rebel Moon Star Wars
Rebel Moon Star Wars

Rebel Moon — Part Two: The Scargiver (Netflix)

From there, we’re following two seemingly naive droids, whose arrival on a nearby desert planet continues the adventure — do we, the viewer, understand the political implications of Leia’s capture, or the full significance of the droids’ mission at this point in time? No, but the momentum of the narrative carries us forward, as well as the strong personalities already established that promise greater depth. It’s storytelling 101 — audiences care about characters. It’s such a simple fact, yet it so often goes overlooked.

Snyder is far from the only creator with a long-gestating passion project like this — as one example, Luc Besson dreamed up 1997’s The Fifth Element as a teenager — though Snyder first had the “Seven Samurai in space” idea in college. But like so many who have come before him, he failed to figure out why, exactly, people fell so hard for Star Wars. Why they continue to fall for it today.

I’m a huge Star Wars fan who’s always been crap at Star Wars trivia whenever it gets into the names of places and tech and species — I can identify a tauntaun on sight, of course, they’re smellier on the inside, but god help me if my life ever depends on telling you what race Babu Frik belongs to. (I looked it up, he’s an Anzellan, but I doubt I’ll retain that information an hour from now.)

The point is, the names don’t matter. The characters do. And if Rebel Moon put as much effort into developing those characters as it did into the naming of things, with a cast given the ability to bring their own spark to the screen, it might have had a chance. Unfortunately, like so many Zack Snyder projects before it, these are films that do look beautiful, but offer us no reason to care.

Rebel Moon Parts 1 and 2 are streaming now on Netflix.

Why Rebel Moon Can’t Recreate Star Wars’ Magic
Liz Shannon Miller

Popular Posts

Subscribe to Consequence’s email digest and get the latest breaking news in music, film, and television, tour updates, access to exclusive giveaways, and more straight to your inbox.