It’s hard to know if Rebel Moon—Part One: A Child of Fire’s issues stem solely from its intentional truncation. How much blame can fall on director Zack Snyder, America’s sweetheart, and the embattled visionary behind The Snyder Cut (among other films, too, if you can believe it)? Long before Rebel Moon—Part One: A Child of Fire hit theaters prior to its streaming release on Netflix, it was obvious to those in the know that the film we were going to get was not the real film. Or, it was, but edited down by about 50% and then, seemingly, a little bit more, with scenes skipping merrily along from point A to B with no clear path which connects them; a two-hour-and-13-minute film that feels like five minutes, in a bad way. Characters appear and barely speak (Djimon Hounsou is maybe done the dirtiest in this respect), relationships are forged with little foundation and, somewhere along the way, we’re all meant to not only care about what we just watched, but care enough to watch a second film.
It’s difficult to even fault this most pressing issue, when the film that you just watched is both obviously a hack job and explicitly, intentionally made for the sole purpose of Snyder Cut 2.0: The Rebel Moon—Part One director’s cut, Snyder’s actual, intended film, will be released, allegedly, sometime next summer. As explained by Snyder himself, the director’s cut, which will be rated R, is “almost like a different movie”—well, because, it probably is a different movie, based on what I and everyone else has already watched. As of right now, Rebel Moon—Part One: A Child of Fire is less a movie and more a collage of barely-connected scenes. According to Snyder, it was Netflix’s idea to release the movie in two cuts, something he admits he had never experienced before as a director usually compelled to release his own cut after the demand for it presented itself over time. He further explains that Netflix’s reasoning had to do with the scale and cost not being “responsible” with an R rating, which just doesn’t make sense at all when the film wasn’t produced with a meaningful theatrical release in mind; the rating of the film shouldn’t actually matter if it’s just going to streaming.
At any rate, here is what Rebel Moon—Part One: A Child of Fire is about, for now. In a universe referred to as the Motherworld, Kora (Sofia Boutella) lives on the prosperous farming planet of Veldt, led by Corey Stoll wearing a fake beard doing a weird European accent, and his horny wife. On Veldt, Kora moves rocks, broods, speaks in platitudes and spurns the affections of handsome, good-hearted farmer Gunnar (Michiel Huisman). Kora was rescued and brought to live there many years ago, after working for and living with the Imperium. The Imperium are a bloodthirsty entity which hops from planet to planet forcing the inhabitants into subjugation, and whose armed forces had slaughtered Kora’s own family when she was a child. But the Imperium finally makes its way to peaceful Veldt, where Atticus Noble (Ed Skrein), the ruler’s right-hand man, carries out a brutal execution and announces his plans to overtake the community. After a bloody altercation, Kora and Gunnar break from Veldt and the Imperium’s presence on a mission to, one might say, “assemble a team” in order to take on the bad guys.
It’s weird. While watching Rebel Moon, scenes happen, characters are introduced and speak to one another, things move along. The narrative and visual rhythm are undeniably off, but I can understand what’s happening and why. In the moment, nothing feels terribly egregious. But when you step back, everything suddenly becomes amplified, and you see that Rebel Moon is held together with spit and glitter glue and pipe-cleaners. By the time the credits rolled, I realized I don’t think I’d ever watched a movie this long that still felt so brief and bewilderingly abridged; where so much happened and yet nothing happened at all.
Individually, scenes are often enjoyable enough, like the Star Wars Cantina rip-off scene, or the Harry Potter hippogriff rip-off scene, or the Jena Malone spider humanoid scene—the latter of which might be the best in the whole film. Malone plays Harmada, a grotesque arthropod monster whose home in a mining village was colonized to the extent that she now struggles to bear children. Like Harmada, there are other moments of unpleasant body horror; a patron at the Not Cantina who relays info to Kora and Gunnar is a netherworldly creature with tentacles affixed to a man’s body, using him like a puppet to speak. But as to be expected in a PG-13 movie meant for an R rating, it’s all missing something more. It’s annoying to know that we’re going to get it, and that it’s been withheld from us for nonsensical reasons.
There’s a story here, but all we have right now is a corkboard covered in photos tacked on with pins and connected by a series of strings. And yet, is the story that Snyder gave us going to be any better with nearly two more hours appended? Rebel Moon—which the director began cooking up when he was a child—was explicitly intended as a Star Wars project, before his pitch to Lucasfilm went bust and Snyder was forced to go back to the drawing board…and it feels it. Like George Lucas, Snyder took inspiration from Akira Kurosawa. There’s a chosen, orphaned warrior destined to save the galaxy, a snarky pilot they need to help them, a fascist movement seeking galactic domination: What does the “Imperium” sound similar to?
Yet it’s all missing the juice of the Star Wars universe—not terribly surprising, even as a part-time Snyder apologist myself. Acting as his own cinematographer (as he did for Army of the Dead), Snyder’s scenery is as dour and neutral-toned as ever, alternating between gorgeous setpieces like the Harmada sequence and a truly overbearing lack of imagination or visual flair for a movie that’s billed as a space opera. The action and violence, Snyder’s notorious wheelhouse, are full of his usual trademarks but boring to look at and poorly paced. And on top of the iffy visuals and even iffier story, every character seems woefully miscast, aside from Skrein’s Cosmic Hitler Youth. Boutella excels in fight scenes and she can be an incisive presence, but she doesn’t have the charm to be what is essentially a female Luke Skywalker. Her lines fall flat, spoken like she wants to will gravity into them. In her defense, they were written flatly. And who the hell gave her that fuck-ass bob in space?
Towards the end of Rebel Moon—Part One: A Child of Fire, after the epic battle has been fought and won, Hounsou’s character delivers the perfect victory monologue and says that their situation feels like it’s “the beginning of something.” He might as well have turned to the camera and said, “Stay tuned for Rebel Moon—Part 2: The Scargiver, streaming on April 19.” I admire Zack Snyder, partly because he’s a difficult guy to dislike and primarily because he’s ambitious, confident and singular in his artistic vision, even when it doesn’t always work for me (and for many, many other people). I’m a huge fan of Watchmen, I really enjoy Army of the Dead and 300, and all his DCEU installments make me want to kill myself (but his Nick Cave needledrops in Zack Snyder’s Justice League are legendary). Artists are more interesting when they’re divisive, and some might say Snyder’s career has become defined by that word. Whether or not the extended version of Rebel Moon is much of an improvement on the initial version, I’ll always be eager to see what kind of division Snyder’s cooked up next—it’s just disappointing to see his work cheapened by Netflix meddling.
It’s clear that the savvy geniuses over at Netflix Incorporated were eager to cash in on the frenzy of the Snyder Cut phenomenon by manufacturing their own in Snyder’s epic space opera. Of course, as other studios will likely realize once they try to artificially replicate the success of “Barbenehimer”—which we all know they absolutely will—corporations cannot replicate the organic fan momentum of grassroots social media movements like “Barbenheimer” or “Release the Snyder Cut” (no matter how toxic the latter has proven to be). There’s no zealous demand for “Release the Snyder Cut: Rebel Moon—Part One: A Child of Fire” and not just because the title is far too many words. We all know that it’s already coming. It’s cheap. It’s being handed to us willingly. It wasn’t won after a hard-fought battle. It wasn’t made by the people, for the people—it was made by Ted Sarandos, and who the hell wants that?
Director: Zack Snyder
Writer: Zack Snyder, Kurt Johnstad, Shay Hatten
Starring: Sofia Boutella, Charlie Hunnam, Michiel Huisman, Djimon Hounsou, Doona Bae, Ray Fisher, Cleopatra Coleman, Jena Malone, Fra Fee, Ed Skrein, Anthony Hopkins
Release Date: December 15, 2023; December 21, 2023 (Netflix)
Brianna Zigler is an entertainment writer based in middle-of-nowhere Massachusetts. Her work has appeared at Little White Lies, Film School Rejects, Thrillist, Bright Wall/Dark Room and more, and she writes a bi-monthly newsletter called That’s Weird. You can follow her on Twitter, where she likes to engage in stimulating discussions on films like Movie 43, Clifford, and Watchmen.