The first full trailer for Zack Snyder’s Rebel Moon is out and it’s a lot! Alasdair Stuart investigates…

In fact there are two parts coming to Netflix: Rebel Moon: A Child of Fire due out on December 22nd and Rebel Moon: The Scargiver, due out on April 19th next year. The movies follow Kora (Sofia Boutella) as she assembles a ragtag team to fight back against the oppressive armies of the Mother World.

Yes it’s a Zack Snyder movie. For a lot of folks, that’s going to be a turnoff. The criticisms of it looking like a Star Wars/Dune hybrid, also legit. But the roots of the thing actually go back a lot further back and speak to the fact it’s pretty likely to be a solid movie. Because that’s no rebel moon, it’s a Seven Samurai remake.

Akira Kurosawa’s all-time classic is the story of a team of seven samurai assembled to defend a village from the bandits who stole their crops. The seven ronin who take up the battle are complex, broken, brilliant warriors who do not all make it out alive.

Sounds familiar, right? The Magnificent Seven is a Seven Samurai riff. This time it’s cowboys but there’s the same deep discussion of violence, duty, honour and whether soldiers can ever truly come home. There’s a whole bunch of sequels too, with varying levels of success and a very short-lived TV show with a truly fantastic cast (Ron Perlman, in an earlyish role, is especially great). More recently Antoine Fuqua re-made it with another brilliant cast headed by frequent collaborator Denzel Washington and including the always excellent Vincent D’Onofrio and arguably the most interesting serious work Chris Pratt has ever done.

This is where it gets really interesting because while this is the foundation, Rebel Moon seems to be riffing off the other most famous Magnificent Seven remake, Battle Beyond the Stars. Jimmy T. Murakami’s eternal cult classic is notable for a great script by John Sayles and Anne Dyer and a cast including stalwarts like Robert Vaughan, George Peppard, John Saxon and Sybil Danning, not to mention a young James Cameron in the special effects team. It’s Magnificent Seven/Seven Samurai in space. So much so that the menaced villagers are called the Akira. It’s such a fun time, and was a formative encounter for me in both my journey into B-movies and the idea that the heroic myth sometimes has a price. The thing punches above its weight and, like all these movies, is definitely worth your time.

Rebel Moon is clearly built on these foundations and started life as a pitch that made its way to Lucasfilm for a possible Star Wars feature. When that didn’t work out, Snyder took it on as an individual project and it honestly looks stronger for it. Especially as Star Wars has arguably got its definitive Seven Samurai moment in Rogue One.

If you don’t like Snyder movies, there’s a good chance you won’t like this. The slow motion and mythical landscapes that have always been a part of Snyder’s visual language are clearly here as is the near-grimdark sensibility that drove me, and a lot of others, away from some of his work.

But there’s also daylight. Actual daylight! You can follow everything that happens in that trailer! Whether you want to see the rest is your call but I’m honestly really excited for this. It looks big and ebullient and fun and Sofia Boutella front and centre is a fantastic choice. Could it still be a hot mess? Of course, everything could. But for the first time with this duology, I’m really looking forward to finding out.