Rebel Moon - Part One: A Child of Fire
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 Star Wars, but without the charm, and also Zack Snyder's biggest disappointment yet.
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Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire, or simply Rebel Moon, is a 2023 American epic space opera film directed by Zack Snyder from a screenplay he co-wrote with Kurt Johnstad and Shay Hatten, based on a story Snyder conceived. Its ensemble cast features Sofia Boutella, Djimon Hounsou, Ed Skrein, Michiel Huisman, Doona Bae, Ray Fisher, Charlie Hunnam, and Anthony Hopkins. The film is set in a fictional galaxy ruled by the imperialistic Motherworld, whose military, the Imperium, threatens a farming colony on the moon of Veldt. Kora, a former Imperium soldier, ventures on a quest to recruit warriors from across the galaxy to make a stand against the Imperium before they return to Veldt.
An R-rated director's cut, titled Rebel Moon – Chapter One: Chalice of Blood, will be released on Netflix on August 2, 2024.
Plot
Atticus Noble, the sadistic admiral of the militaristic Imperium, arrives on the backwater moon of Veldt on behalf of the Motherworld, an interstellar empire fueled by centuries of conquest and war. He explains that his troops are hunting for a band of rebels led by siblings Devra and Darrian Bloodaxe, and offers to buy the village's surplus grain. The village's leader, Sindri, refuses the offer, claiming they barely have enough to survive. A farmer, Gunnar, ignores earlier warnings from Sindri and farmer Kora and indicates that the village might have some surplus. Noble kills Sindri and orders Gunnar to prepare grain for them in ten weeks, which would not leave the village with enough to survive. Noble departs, leaving a handful of soldiers and a "Jimmy" robot to oversee the harvest. After being harassed by a peer, Jimmy starts to become independent. One villager, Kora, finds the other soldiers holding another villager hostage, preparing to rape her and kills them with help from Jimmy, who has defected from the soldiers. Kora warns the villagers that Noble will massacre the village once he returns unless they mount a defense.
Kora and Gunnar depart for the port town of Providence to recruit warriors for the village's defense, including Titus, a disgraced Imperium general. During their journey, she reveals to Gunnar that she once served the Imperium as a soldier, having been adopted and renamed Arthelais by Balisarius, an Imperium commander, after he killed her family and eradicated her home planet's population. She became bodyguard to Motherworld princess Issa, who was expected to usher in an end to the Imperium's conquests. She was unable to protect Issa during her coronation, when the royal family was assassinated, and Balisarius subsequently declared himself regent before renewing its conquests.
Arriving at Providence, the pair meets smuggler and criminal Kai, who agrees to take them to recruit Titus. On the way, Kai takes them to two additional warriors: Tarak, a beast tamer, and Nemesis, a talented swordswoman enhanced by cybernetics. The group arrives at a gladiator arena on a remote moon and finds Titus in a drunken stupor. Titus initially refuses but agrees to join them after Kora suggests that he avenge his fallen soldiers. Using Gunnar's previous dealings with the Bloodaxes, they then arrive at planet Sharaan to meet them and their rebellion, intending to recruit them. Darrian agrees to defend the village and brings with him a handful of rebels, including Millius, while Devra and the rest of the rebellion leave Sharaan. After they depart Sharaan, Noble arrives and eradicates its population as punishment for assisting the rebels.
Kai tells Kora that he has been moved by her quest to abandon his illicit life as a smuggler and that he has one last shipment to drop off to leave that life behind him. He takes the group to a trading post at which Noble's ship has arrived and restrains them save for Kai, betraying them to Noble and revealing he had always intended to do so for the bounties on their heads. Noble identifies Kora, Tarak, Nemesis, and Titus for their history: Kora and Titus as deserters, Tarak is a criminal and former prince, and Nemesis as the killer of several Imperial officers in revenge for her murdered children. Kai demands that Gunnar paralyze Kora; Gunnar instead frees her and kills Kai. The other warriors are unshackled as well. Darrian is killed in the ensuing battle and Kora kills Noble. Afterward, the surviving warriors return to Veldt together, with Jimmy watching them from afar on their way to the village.
Noble's corpse is recovered by Motherworld forces, and he is resurrected after having spoken on an astral plane with Balisarius, who demands that Noble end the insurgency against him and bring Kora to him alive so he can execute her himself.
Why It's Not a Rebel
- The characters are forgettable and boring. It also doesn’t help that there are too many characters. In this movie's current state, there's not enough time to give them meaningful depth, leading to a massive waste of character development, which is unacceptable for a movie trying to take inspiration from Star Wars.
- This movie contains surprisingly terrible dialogue.
- Even some of the weaker Star Wars films like The Rise of Skywalker and The Phantom Menace had much better dialogue than this, and those released in 2019 and 1999, respectively.
- Despite clocking in at 2 hours (3 hours for the director's cut), this film's pacing is too fast, adding to the lack of character development, as explained above.
- Terrible CGI, with some instances of it looking like a cheap Disney+ show, is shocking because Zack Snyder films are known for having great CGI.
- Ironically, even Disney+ shows such as The Mandalorian, What If, Loki, Goosebumps (2023), Ms. Marvel, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Moon Knight, Star Wars Visions, Ahsoka, WandaVision, Andor, Cars on the Road, and even Percy Jackson and the Olympians (which released in the same month and week that this movie released on Netflix) all look much better than this.
- Just like in many Snyder films, 10% of the movie is filled with slow-motion sequences, but unlike Zack Snyder's Justice League, most of the slow-motion scenes are completely wasted, pointless, and even jarring here which is frustrating as the action scenes are the highlights of Zack Snyder films.
- Much like Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, the movie is outright boring due to having an overly grim, sour mood that tries too hard to be dark and serious, and has very few lighter and humorist moments.
- The cinematography is no better, as it looks like it came out of a PS4 game cutscene at times.
- It also doesn't help that an actual adaptation of a PlayStation game, The Last of Us has much better-looking cinematography than this, and that was released on the same year.
- While Sofia Boutella does a good job with her performance as Kora, the performances and acting with everyone else is piss poor here.
- This movie can be described as Seven Samurai meets Star Wars. A helpless community is under attack by an evil military and the hero organizes a rag-tag group of misfits to stop them. It does nothing new to its premise and it feels more like a setup for sequels than its actual movie.
- Due to all these problems listed above, it is also worth considering this movie a major downgrade from the Snyder cut of Justice League.
Redeeming Qualities
- Say what you will about this movie, but it’s nice to see Zack Snyder bring life to a completely original story, while also taking inspiration from Star Wars, which is especially nice, considering that other major releases seem to be part of an already established IP, so seeing stuff like this is a nice change of pace.
- "If not redemption, what about revenge?" is likely one of the only good dialogues of the whole movie.
- As mentioned above, Sofia Boutella does a good job with her performance as Kora. Plus, some characters are still decent like Gunnar and Jimmy.
- Although not by much, the director's cut is an improvement over this film
Reception
Although it was the #1 most viewed English-language film on the service from December 18 to 24, it was an immense disappointment for critics and audiences alike, who lambasted stuff like the storytelling and the character development.
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 22% of 165 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 4.2/10. The website's consensus reads: "Rebel Moon: Part One – A Child of Fire proves Zack Snyder hasn't lost his visual flair, but eye candy isn't enough to offset a storyline made up of various sci-fi/fantasy tropes." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 31 out of 100, based on 40 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable" reviews. First reviews of the film were mostly negative, praising its worldbuilding and action sequences but criticizing its storytelling, character development, and derivative nature