Starring Sofia Boutella, Djimon Hounsou, Ed Skrein, Michiel Huisman, Doona Bae, Ray Fisher, Cleopatra Coleman, Charlie Hunnam and Sir Anthony Hopkins

Directed by Zack Snyder

Netflix

As political unrest grips the galaxy, Kora (Sofia Boutella), makes a life for herself on Veldt, a farming moon. But when Atticus Noble, an Admiral of the Motherworld and the right hand of the new ruler, arrives, Kora realizes her past has caught up to her. Aided by Gunnar (Michiel Huisman), she flees off world to assemble a team of rebels to fight Noble when he returns.

So let’s do the good stuff first, because there is some. Fans of Zack Snyder’s aesthetic are in for a treat as massive vessels collide with enormous armies clashing in colossal weather in two different speeds of slow motion. Snyder’s movies have two speeds; the frantic B-movie invention of Army of the Dead and slow mo spectacle-fests. This is the latter and if you like that, you’ll like Rebel Moon.

The cast are also uniformly strong. Boutella continues to patiently be better than whatever she’s given and gives Kora a physicality and depth that is one of the few reasons the movie just about holds together. Djimon Hounsou knows as little about turning in bad work as every single director he’s ever worked with knows about giving him stuff to do. Ed Skrein has tremendous fun, as he always seems to do, as a profoundly villainous space tory and Staz Nair is fantastic as Tarak, the softly spoken animal wrangler who joins the team. He has similar energy to Tom Hardy and Ramon Tikaram and, like so many of the cast, is clearly desperate to show what he can do. Ray Fisher feels like this too, getting more to do here than he got in Whedon’s Justice League cut but half what he got in Snyder’s. The cast is full of talented folks doing good work. The movie looks great too, and honestly if Games Workshop aren’t looking at Snyder and his team for a Warhammer 40K show, they really should be. None of these things are the problem.

The problem is the script, or rather, the lack of one. For reasons which it’s frankly impossible to understand, or bluntly, justify, Rebel Moon in its current form isn’t the director’s intended cut. That’s due shortly before Rebel Moon Part 2 releases later this year. It is purportedly much longer, much darker and has far more worldbuilding. I would, at this point, settle for ‘at least some’ in that regard.

Three things happen in Rebel Moon:

  • Kora leaves Veldt to raise an army.
  • Kora, Gunnar and Charlie Hunnam’s magnificently shabby Kai recruit someone. They turn them down at first but then instantly fold and agree to join the cause.
  • Enormous but inconclusive fight. Kora and her warriors return to Veldt to train the villagers.

That middle event is repeated. Four times. Five if you count Kai. The movie doesn’t have a second ac; it has a fetch quest re-skinned five times. Charlie Hunnam, Doona Bae, Fisher, Nair and Cleopatra Coleman are great but they get the same scene in a different dark room with occasional deeply odd surprises. Why in the blue hell Jena Malone is in this film for two minutes as a colossal spider woman who’s kidnapped a child and has no lines is utterly beyond me. Perhaps she gets something to do in the director’s cut. Along with Fisher, Coleman, Hounsou (who arguably gets the least to do) and Sir Anthony Hopkins. The latter is one of the most confounding, introduced as the story’s narrator, a newly pacifist robotic knight who then leaves before popping back to close the movie. Reportedly the novelization (by the truly excellent V Castro) and the Bloodaxe comic (by Snyder and the also truly excellent Mags Visaggio) have a lot of the context baked into them. I’m looking forward to reading them but I also remember ‘Oh you really need to read this tie in to really GET it’ the last five times it was used and it never ceases to be annoying. Snyder should know better.

My larger worry is he, and Netflix, do and are weaponising the hunger for Snyder Cuts at the expense of, bluntly, the movie and the audience. The fact this cut is deeply mean spirited and shot through with some profoundly unpleasant sexual assault subtext in the first few scenes is also a massive cause for concern. This is lazy, cheap writing and it looks it. The thought of there being more of it on the way is not the good news Netflix thinks it is.

Verdict: Rebel Moon is, in its current form, a massive step back in every way from the tremendously fun, and pretty coherent, Army of the Dead. It wastes a fantastic cast and a fun premise on a film that is, at times, tedious, incoherent and performatively cruel all at the same time. Maybe the director’s cut will fix it. But it shouldn’t have to. 4/10

Alasdair Stuart