Rebel Moon Review

Merry Christmas!

Minor spoilers ahead.

As part of the holiday (which was wonderful!), I watched “Rebel Moon”, Zack Snyder’s new sci-fi epic and Netflix’s newest big budget gamble. I think like a lot of people, with every new Zack Snyder movie I’m hoping he’ll return to the glory days of yore (Dawn of the Dead) and produce another masterpiece of cinema.

His body of work has a unique style, which is always welcome, but somehow his films since then have never really hit on all cylinders. “300” and “Watchmen” had great cinematography but stuck a little bit too closely to the source material and couldn’t really find their own identities outside of some meme-worthy scenes. I actually liked “Batman v. Superman” a lot even though almost everyone else hated it. Playing into the ambiguous vigilante nature of Batman and the Christ-like nature of Superman was smart (at least I thought so!). But it wasn’t close to “Dawn” at all.

Ok, so now we have Rebel Moon. This film was originally pitched as a Star Wars film, and while the world has some obvious SW elements to it (the Empire and the Rebellion), it’s more like a sci-fi “Seven Samuari” genre than a SW film. What I mean to say is that it was a smart idea to focus on the plot than on the world-building. Anyway, in order for that kind of film to be good, the cast has to be good and the dialogue between the characters has to be good.

The lead character is Kora (played by Sofia Boutella) who is absolutely fantastic and the perfect actress for this role. Her character is ex-military and she definitely looks the part: she is shredded and has the cold look of one-who-has-seen-too-much down pat. Her sidekick is Gunnar, a farmer who is not that convincing because he is way too handsome of a guy to be some regular joe farmer who’s spent his whole life in the dirt. He plays his role to the best of his ability, but because Kora is such a dominant force in the narrative he never really has the time to shine for himself. The rest of the cast is filled out by the main antagonist, Atticus, who is very sinister and plays his part well, as well as the other sidekicks, Nemesis, Titus, and Tarak. Most of the story is about Kora, so none of them get much time, which is too bad, but I imagine that they’ll get more screen time in the next film.

So are the characters good? Yes, I think so! Is the dialogue good? I would say it is. The film never overstays its welcome in any scene and the pacing is good. By the time the 2h 12m running time was finished, I felt like I had only watched for like 30 mins and was thirsting for more.

There really aren’t any surprises in the story, which is ok. The special effects are very good without being over the top. When you watch the action scenes, it doesn’t look like literally everything is CGI. It’s more like they used CGI to enhance what was already there. It’s subtle but I think it gives the film an aesthetic that is so welcome when the main blockbuster films today (Marvel) are just green screens the entire film (are the actors real?).

Ratings by Category (S is the highest and F is the lowest)

• Casting: B+
• Characters: B
• Acting: B+
• Plot: C
• Cinematography: A+
• Cultural Relevance: D

Overall I give the show a solid B+. I enjoyed it a lot and I’m looking forward to the sequel, which releases April 19, 2024.