The worst was Rebel Moon. The film’s director, co-writer, and (amazingly) cinematographer, Zack Snyder, dispensed wisdom as though he were writing a Wikipedia entry rather than a screenplay. It was clear that he had no idea how to create interpersonal dynamics and give people life. Snyder also showed complete incompetence in front of the camera. Rebel Moon’s impossibly wide vistas and shoddy visual effects gave the impression that the film was produced in a massive parking lot. All of this is possible even with the simplest of templates—a film about assembling a group of intergalactic fighters.
There is no purpose for Rebel Moon 2.
With Rebel Moon 2, that is essentially what we get. The conversation in Part One is delivered by Shay Hatten, Kurt Johnstad, and Snyder, and it isn’t very good. AI models could have created the lines because they are so general and lacking in specificity. Hell, AI could perform better. The epic soundtrack that goes with it is fitting because Snyder feels like he’s giving something epic, but what he’s really offering is mediocre.
Rather than being open and honest about their feelings for one another while they lay in bed together, the characters continue to introduce new details. Not because of what they are saying but more because they are trapped in a Snyder film; you almost feel sorry for them. Furthermore, he takes the entire situation so seriously that he fails to see the humor that permeates his news dumps.
In the end, a badly adapted third act from the first Rebel Moon film is expanded into a full-length feature. Its existence is meaningless.
There’s a fight ahead. Let’s farm first, though!
Rebel Moon 2 begins with yet another clumsy narration by Anthony Hopkins that does the same job as the Star Wars opening crawl. (The Rebel Moon films were originally intended to be a Star Wars pitch, but Snyder seems reluctant to draw too much inspiration from them.)
Unfortunately, that is just the start of an utterly pointless first hour. Rebel Moon 2 begins where Part One left off, with Ed Skrein’s resurrected villain Atticus Noble. However, the film wastes much of its running time on slow-motion agricultural scenes and endless exposition.
Hey, tell me about your tragic past.
You may have noted that because the characters are interchangeable, I haven’t yet mentioned a single one by name. Even the two-line descriptions that were provided for the majority of them in Part One are now irrelevant. Remarkably, Rebel Moon 2 brings fresh, significant features to a few that the first film simply ignored. In other scenes, Titus (Djimon Hounsou), the head of the village uprising and a former imperialist commander, sits everyone down and encourages them to talk about their pasts. How obvious can Snyder get anymore?
Sadly, the eagerly anticipated action set pieces are nothing exceptional. They lack ebb and flow, are two-dimensional, and convey no sense of the layout of the battlefield.
Snyder hopes to make four more Rebel Moon films.
The main issue is that the characters are useless and have no purpose. This eliminates the excitement and prevents you from becoming involved in the action.
Now, here’s the thing: The intention was to combine these two films into one. (At most, neither would have been obtained.) However, Snyder intends to produce four more movies in the same style, with the last scenes of Rebel Moon 2 hinting at a more intense conflict in Part Three. Snyder blatantly fabricates the franchise construction, evident in dividing each of the next two trilogy films into two parts. The Scargiver and A Child of Fire both allude to the same gory character in Kora, which demonstrates just how much work and imagination went into this.
Maybe we should start a new movement called #ReleaseSnyder if Netflix believes that this is a good use of the money that its subscribers pay. Rather than requesting extended cuts of unwatchable films, perhaps it’s time for Netflix to fire Snyder from his contract.
