Rebel Moon
Part One: A Child of Fire
Year: 2023
Director: Zack Snyder
Starring: Doona Bae, Sofia Boutella, Ray Fisher, Anthony Hopkins, Djimon Hounsou, Michel Huisman, Charlie Hunnam, Staz Nair & Ed Skerin
Runtime: 134 mins
BBFC: 15
Director: Zack Snyder
Starring: Doona Bae, Sofia Boutella, Ray Fisher, Anthony Hopkins, Djimon Hounsou, Michel Huisman, Charlie Hunnam, Staz Nair & Ed Skerin
Runtime: 134 mins
BBFC: 15
Just before Disney acquired Lucasfilm back in 2012, Zack Snyder pitched a new Star Wars trilogy to George Lucas. It was going to be a darker and grittier take on the franchise, and by all reports it seemed like Snyder had been given the green light. But when Disney came along every Star Wars project in the pipeline got canned, and so Snyder’s trilogy was dropped. Snyder didn’t give up hope as over the next decade his space opera epic was going to become a TV series and even a videogame before being acquired by Netflix who agreed to finance Rebel Moon as a series of films.
Hoping to make a big first impression, Snyder elected to split the first film into two parts. Part One: A Child of Fire, and Part Two: The Scargiver that will be released just a few months apart.
I caught a special preview screening of Rebel Moon Part One at the Prince Charles Cinema on 70mm film of all things, and despite being a bit of a Snyder fanboy, it kind of sucked.
Following the death of the King and his daughter Princess Issa, the Regent Ballisarius (Fra Fee) claims control of the Motherworld and forms the Imperium, setting out to conquer and claim ownership of any world he encounters.
On the farming colony of Veidt, Kora (Sofia Boutella) lives a peaceful and humble life. That is until the Imperium come searching for a rebel army. Taking the colony by force, the Kora and fellow farmer Gunnar (Michel Huisman) escape in search of the rebels, hoping to assemble a strike force that’ll be able to disable the Imperium on Veidt.
Hoping to make a big first impression, Snyder elected to split the first film into two parts. Part One: A Child of Fire, and Part Two: The Scargiver that will be released just a few months apart.
I caught a special preview screening of Rebel Moon Part One at the Prince Charles Cinema on 70mm film of all things, and despite being a bit of a Snyder fanboy, it kind of sucked.
Following the death of the King and his daughter Princess Issa, the Regent Ballisarius (Fra Fee) claims control of the Motherworld and forms the Imperium, setting out to conquer and claim ownership of any world he encounters.
On the farming colony of Veidt, Kora (Sofia Boutella) lives a peaceful and humble life. That is until the Imperium come searching for a rebel army. Taking the colony by force, the Kora and fellow farmer Gunnar (Michel Huisman) escape in search of the rebels, hoping to assemble a strike force that’ll be able to disable the Imperium on Veidt.
Rebel Moon’s greatest issue is in its two-part division. We’re only getting half a story here, and honestly it’s not a particularly interesting one. Every single aspect of its story is a carbon copy of something from any number of sci-fi properties such as Blade Runner, Dune, Guardians of the Galaxy, and of course Star Wars. In fact it almost feels like a Star Wars story set in the universe of Dune. Whilst originality is certainly scarce in modern Hollywood blockbusters, usually creatives have the decency to make their theft seem worthwhile by making it appear original. Here though Snyder has literally lifted characters and tropes from popular sci-fi franchises, done nothing to change them, and decided that was good enough.
A Child of Fire has this weird problem where so much happens during the two hour twenty minute runtime, but at the same time nothing happens. We are introduced to countless people and places but none of them have any context or meaning. The bulk of the film is a rushed series of character introductions for the band of rebels that Kora is assembling, none of whom I could actually remember the name of come the end of the film and few of whom had more than a couple of lines of dialogue in the whole film.
It does almost feel like Snyder got his toy box and just dumped it all over the floor to show you as much as he could in one go without ever thinking to connect any of this stuff to give it meaning. This is something I hope that The Scargiver will rectify, but it means that A Child of Fire fails to stand on its own two feet as an individual film.
A Child of Fire has this weird problem where so much happens during the two hour twenty minute runtime, but at the same time nothing happens. We are introduced to countless people and places but none of them have any context or meaning. The bulk of the film is a rushed series of character introductions for the band of rebels that Kora is assembling, none of whom I could actually remember the name of come the end of the film and few of whom had more than a couple of lines of dialogue in the whole film.
It does almost feel like Snyder got his toy box and just dumped it all over the floor to show you as much as he could in one go without ever thinking to connect any of this stuff to give it meaning. This is something I hope that The Scargiver will rectify, but it means that A Child of Fire fails to stand on its own two feet as an individual film.
You could argue that A Child of Fire shouldn’t need to stand on its own as a Part One of a two-part Rebel Moon feature. But there are so many multi-part films that do deliver a strong first part. Compare Rebel Moon to Dune for example, the latter spends the first film establishing a few major players in the story and only establishing the mechanics and politics of Arrakis. Part Two meanwhile is set to introduce the wider universe. The first film sets the scene by fleshing out the most important characters of the story, the second film meanwhile handles the bigger picture. Rebel Moon is doing this in reverse, giving us the big picture straight away but giving us no personal connection to it, no reason to actually care about what we’re witnessing.
But as many a Snyder fan, myself included, will often say in defence of a lacklustre story; his appeal is in the visual style, and the way he constructs a film. Unfortunately, Rebel Moon also suffers here.
Snyder certainly has his staples, desaturated colour palettes and extensive slow motion, but in Rebel Moon neither of these are used to as great effect as they are film his other films. The film looks drab, tired, and boring. It probably doesn’t help that artistically it rarely has an original bone in its body, but even with Snyder’s staples it lacks that punch that films like Watchmen and his version of Justice League have in spades. The slow mo is also used at all the wrong times, Sucker Punch times all the slow motion perfectly to highlight the best possible shot, here in Rebel Moon it’s just there, and often highlights how messy the shot that’s used is.
At its most base level, A Child of Fire does that the first film in a planned franchise should do. It introduces places and people to set up a vast space opera. But it does so in the most plain and lifeless way it possibly can. It has zero personality or original identity, and even the stuff it does well just reminds you of other films that have done it better. Long story short, Rebel Moon doesn’t make the best first impression, but I hold out hope that Part Two will be a better film because of this one’s failings.
But as many a Snyder fan, myself included, will often say in defence of a lacklustre story; his appeal is in the visual style, and the way he constructs a film. Unfortunately, Rebel Moon also suffers here.
Snyder certainly has his staples, desaturated colour palettes and extensive slow motion, but in Rebel Moon neither of these are used to as great effect as they are film his other films. The film looks drab, tired, and boring. It probably doesn’t help that artistically it rarely has an original bone in its body, but even with Snyder’s staples it lacks that punch that films like Watchmen and his version of Justice League have in spades. The slow mo is also used at all the wrong times, Sucker Punch times all the slow motion perfectly to highlight the best possible shot, here in Rebel Moon it’s just there, and often highlights how messy the shot that’s used is.
At its most base level, A Child of Fire does that the first film in a planned franchise should do. It introduces places and people to set up a vast space opera. But it does so in the most plain and lifeless way it possibly can. It has zero personality or original identity, and even the stuff it does well just reminds you of other films that have done it better. Long story short, Rebel Moon doesn’t make the best first impression, but I hold out hope that Part Two will be a better film because of this one’s failings.