"Rebel Moon — Part One: A Child of Fire" review — 'Star Wars' and Kurosawa riff is uninspired and dull
“This small act of defiance gives voice to the voiceless.”
Satirical news website Hard Drive recently ran an article with the headline “Rebel Moon’s Marketing Budget Mostly Spent Reminding People It’s Not Star Wars.” It was a funny comment prior to the film’s release, with the influence of the elder space opera quite apparent in the new film from the marketing alone. Upon seeing the movie, it’s evident how much truer this joke is. Now, it’s hard to create grand science fantasy without taking at least a little bit of influence from George Lucas’ 1977 classic. Rebel Moon actually began its life as a proposed Star Wars film when Disney first bought Lucasfilm in 2012, although was eventually redeveloped into something original. But there is a distinct difference between homage and unimaginative rip-off. Unfortunately, this film falls into the second category. Compared to some of Snyder’s other films, Rebel Moon is rather easy to discuss. My previous Snyder review, which was for 2021’s Zack Snyder’s Justice League — clocked in at over 2100 words, but Rebel Moon is not nearly as interesting and results in being a pretty forgettable affair.
In a galaxy far, far away, the Motherworld rules over the known universe with an oppressive grip, thanks to its strong military force, the Imperium. On the fringes of the galaxy lies the independent farming moon of Veldt, a world home to a small community of poor but content villagers who pride themselves in staying as far away from the violence perpetrated by the Motherworld and its enemies. One day during the planting season, the moon is visited by the King’s Eye, the devastating military vessel under the command of Admiral Atticus Noble (played by Ed Skrein). Noble demands that the village turn over all their harvest for Noble’s troops when they return to the moon in nine weeks after a campaign against a rebel militia. After the army leaves the moon, villagers Kora (played by Sofia Boutella) and Gunnar (played by Michiel Huisman) take off on an intragalactic odyssey to recruit the galaxy’s best freedom fighters and soldiers to defend Veldt from the coming invasion.
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| Left to right: Charlie Hunnam, Michiel Huisman, and Sofia Boutella in Rebel Moon. Photo via Netflix. |
The careful reader may also notice trails of not just Star Wars, but also Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai (1954) in the narrative as well. Snyder is not the first filmmaker to take liberal narrative inspiration from Kurosawa’s masterpiece. John Sturges’ The Magnificent Seven (1960) transports the story to the Wild West, Pixar’s A Bug’s Life (1998) shifts the story to be about a colony of animated ants, and even The Mandalorian used the concept for an episode in its first season. George Lucas’ original Star Wars film was also inspired quite heavily by a different Kurosawa film, The Hidden Fortress (1958). But where the best riffs on Kurosawa take these familiar narrative beats and use them to develop new and exciting characters, Snyder forgets to put in any work of his own. The recycled narrative just comes off as lazy when the film’s universe is not well defined, its characters are mere impressions of real, interesting people, and the visuals are as uninspired as they are.
As its full title suggests, Rebel Moon — Part One: A Child of Fire is the first of a two-part sci-fi epic, with the second half set to arrive this April. The one-half nature of this story feels excruciatingly awkward. Just when the film finishes its mad dash through establishing the Seven Samurai Soldiers recruited by Kora and Gunnar, it pushes a forced final action sequence to give A Child of Fire some semblance of a conclusion before rolling credits. The film rushes through its road trip across the stars, desperate to introduce as many new worlds and faces as it possibly can, totally overcrowding the runtime with narrative filler. The film features at least seven distinct planets, but at no point are any of them particularly engaging or distinctive. They each feel like “generic sci-fi location #3,” without any real defining characteristics. And there are plenty of technical problems at fault here beyond just the scripting, although the rapid-fire script and editing certainly don’t help. The costume and set design is particularly dry, with the filmmakers not putting in the effort to truly define and develop each of the many locations.
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| Ed Skrein in Rebel Moon. Photo via Netflix. |
Because of how poorly paced the film is, it’s impossible for the viewer to invest themselves in the characters, with the screenplay resorting to archetypes. There’s the “mysterious Asian woman who’s good with swords,” the “muscular gentle giant,” and the “shadowy warrior with a heart of gold.” And that’s as far as their characterization goes. Kora is our most interesting character, a former and highly skilled Imperial soldier who deserted the army, but between the screenplay not giving much to do beyond her fetch question and Sofia Boutella’s performance dragging the character into the mud, Kora isn’t particularly interesting either. The best performance is from Ed Skrein, who plays the central antagonist, Atticus Noble. Noble is one of the few highlights of this film. He isn’t a particularly detailed character with, again, the script relying on “generic fascist villain” tropes, but Skrein chews so much scenery to dominate every scene he’s in that his character feels more captivating than he actually is.
While it is by no means a good movie, Rebel Moon is not nearly the worst in Snyder’s divisive filmography. It never reaches the visual ugliness of Army of the Dead (2021) or the self-serious melodrama of Batman v Superman (2016). But even then, it seems like a far cry from Snyder’s most interesting work. While Snyder has never been one to write complex characters, where he excels is in creating visually distinctive and evocative worlds, often to the point of stylistic self-indulgence. But that sense of visual supremacy is gone from this film too, making it feel like one of the most empty Snyder films to date. The visual effects are poor quality and underdeveloped, the worldbuilding is lacklustre, and the film is devoid of interesting shots or action. Despite Snyder serving quadruple duty as co-writer, co-producer, cinematographer, and director, Rebel Moon feels afraid of taking on a sense of style.
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| A still from Rebel Moon. Photo via Netflix. |
I’ve always been a sucker for large-scale, highly imaginative science fiction. It’s why there’s such a soft spot in my heart for Star Wars and it’s why I connected so well with Denis Villeneuve’s Dune. It’s a shame for me that I didn’t at least have a passing appreciation for the first half of Zack Snyder’s Rebel Moon. I cannot even endorse it as a “shut off your brain and enjoy the action” sort of film because the action and visual style are so boring. I think that’s the first time I’ve ever used “boring” to describe a Snyder movie, but here it is tragically true. So, instead of spending two hours on this and another two on its sequel this April, spend that time with Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai, a film that deserves better than this lazy, lifeless rip-off.
Rebel Moon — Part One: A Child of Fire is now streaming on Netflix.
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