2023’s Rebel Moon: Part One – A Child of Fire, the first entry in Zack Snyder’s potential new universe of Sci-Fi Space Opera films, has been a long time in the making for the auteur director. He and screenwriter Kurt Johnstad first began discussing the creation of a new universe of films way back in 1997. Then, in 2012, he pitched it as a new entry into the Star Wars universe shortly after Disney bought the franchise. After getting turned down, he decided, along with the power of Netflix, to make it his own. Thus work began on creating an entirely new universe of storytelling akin to Sci-Fi giants like Star Wars or Dune.
Rebel Moon starts with a voice over from the legendary Anthony Hopkins as he narrates the backstory of the film. The Motherworld, which gives not-so-subtle shades to Star Wars’ Galactic Empire, has ruled the galaxy for centuries through conquest and war, led by the “King and Queen” as they welcome a new baby, Princess Issa, into the world.
Issa possesses magical powers of healing and resurrection, and the royal family hopes to end their years of conquest through newfound compassion, but instead the entire royal family is murdered during the coronation. The Motherworld vows revenge under senator Balisarius.
The film descends onto the small world of Veldt, where Kora is tending the fields of a small village. When The Motherworld arrives, Kora and the rest of the village play host to them. Things go awry and village leader Sindri is killed by the sadistic admiral Atticus Noble and orders the village to prepare their harvest to feed the soldiers as they search for a group of rebels called Clan Bloodaxe. Kora leaves with fellow farmer Gunnar as they search for help to defend their village.
If that seems terribly wordy, unfortunately it is. While it is the nature of the beast when it comes to worldbuilding at this scale, Rebel Moon is wrought with exposition in each line of dialogue that overtakes the entirety of the film at times. It seems as if Snyder spent one film doing the world building and exposition that should span multiple.
The film is obviously heavily inspired by Star Wars and Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai, but it does neither particularly well. Flat acting performances and characters we are given little to no time to understand make it hard to really care about any of them. Each of these characters are given horridly shallow backstories that could have been copied and pasted from a fantasy subreddit.
The worst of all, though, is in Snyder’s directing style. Rebel Moon is so chock full of genre tropes, bad camera choices and so many slow-motion sequences mid-fight that really just tear the film down. Seriously, there are so many slow motion shots, unnecessary hero shots with triumphant music, and vast, sweeping landscape shots that don’t matter that it made me want to throw up. It was all obviously intentional, and it all hurt the film. It doesn’t help that visually the film has plenty of bad cgi backgrounds, even if it shows promise in some scenes.
Final Thoughts
Rebel Moon: Part One – A Child of Fire has some good ideas. Hell, it’s whole universe actually seems interesting. Yet, Zack Snyder ruins any promise the film – and by extension the franchise – had with his directing style. As a fan of the genre, I can look past some bad acting and a thin story. But many of the things here so greatly damage the film’s quality that I found myself hoping it would end before the credits rolled.
Plus, it feels like even more of a slap in the face that the “Snyder-Cut” is already coming. It was announced months before the film was released, essentially rendering the theatrical version useless.
