The evidence that are my reviews of his films may suggest otherwise, but I don’t have anything against Zack Snyder. As I said in my review of the first Rebel Moon, he seems like a genuine guy and passionate filmmaker. However, the bleak visuals and insistent edginess of many of his pictures are traits that I find cynical and depressing. I did my best to go into Rebel Moon Part Two with an open mind. It would give me enormous satisfaction, and relief, to finally review a Snyder film positively. Sadly, this sequel is even worse than its predecessor.
Rebel Moon Part One, also known as Child of Fire, was basically Star Wars repackaged with thin wrapping. In a far away galaxy, controlled by a fascistic empire known as The Motherworld, a farmhand named Kora (Sofia Boutella), on a moon called Veldt, found the courage to stop running away from her past and recruit fellow warriors so that they could aid the defence of the village she has learned to call home. Part Two, subtitled The Scargiver, sees Kora and her new band of companions return to Veldt and begin to prepare for The Motherworld’s inevitable retaliation for their actions in Part One. This will see Kora and friends once again battle the brutal Atticus Noble (Ed Skrein), who somehow survived his prior encounter with them. The casual stealing from Star Wars is a little lighter this time around, but mostly so the film can make room for a plot that’s directly lifted from Seven Samurai.
It’s going to be hard to craft this review without sounding redundant, as Part Two suffers from many of the same issues as Part One. It’s visually hideous, overwritten, and self-serious to the point of second hand embarrassment. There is some mercy in that this part is shorter in runtime than the first, yet it squanders this silver lining by being split into two distinctive, yet equally lacking, halves. The first chunk of the film is tedious, while the back half throws so much action at us that it becomes a sensory overload.
During the first half, Kora and her team, consisting of bland love interest Gunnar (Michiel Huismann), the no longer disgruntled former general Titus (Djimon Hounsou), and the solemn cyborg Nemesis (Bae Doona) among others, prepare the village folk of Veldt for the oncoming conflict. Sprinkled around the combat training are festivities celebrating the village’s new heroes, and an endless stream of cringeworthy speeches on hope and sacrifice. It’s beyond pretentious, and will quickly become tiring for those who are here to see some scars get given, as the film’s subtitle implies.
Rebel Moon Part Two infuriatingly dictates everything to the audience, rather than letting them earnestly experience the characters, worlds or dilemmas. Bluntly, it treats its viewers like idiots who need to be force fed information. In the process, it goes against the audiovisual medium that makes cinema such an immersive device. Even when it does decide to show rather than tell, by clumsily going into the backstories of its rebellious warriors back to back (something that should’ve been covered in Part One), narration accompanies these sequences – narration which explains everything, despite the audience already being able to discern the spoken information from the visuals.
The film feels creatively and emotionally uninvolved with its story, and especially with its characters, who are largely boring, overseen archetypes. Even the most overused of archetypes can become captivating with the right script or creative choices, but that is not the case here. Where Kora arguably had an arc of going from coward to leader in Part One, she has no perceptible arc here, and the rest of the characters exist purely to monologue and yell aggressively. Hammy, pantomime-worthy acting, notably from the antagonistic characters played by Skrein and Fra Free, do the characterisation no favours, although their scene chewing is at least more entertaining than the frowns and brooding that personify the protagonists.
Like Part One, this film relies on slow-motion to an obnoxious degree. The intention seems to be enhancing the action, but all it really does is draw attention to the unconvincing CGI and lacklustre choreography. Spaceships float across the galaxy with no sense of authenticity, and the brawls that ensue lack punch or tension, further dulled by how little we care for any of the characters involved. When Kora and Noble eventually have what can only be described as a lightsaber fight in the climax, our investment comes not from the merits of the film, but from how it reminds us of a better franchise. Muddy lighting, revolting colour palettes, and, in the second half, cluttered setpieces only make the film and action harder to look at. Bizarrely, the slow-motion extends to the more mundane sequences, such as when the Veldt village begins to make preparations by gathering in the crops. The village folk work the land together and, every so often, the film slows down to take in the handiwork. This montage could be taking inspiration from Terrance Malick’s Days of Heaven, which is a fair creative choice. However, someone probably should have informed Snyder that Days of Heaven was filmed during magic hour and not during the Dust Bowl years.
What we’re left with is a film so utterly lifeless that the only sensation it excels in inducing are headaches. The script naively assumes that epicness is something to be explained rather than experienced, and that connection is generated through sulky dialogue instead of visual immersion. Ugly, emotionally hollow, and derivative to a barbaric degree, this is modern blockbusters at their worst. Exacerbating this is the film’s decision to end on a setup for the next film, in doing so failing to follow-up on most if any of the lingering questions or setups left behind during the epilogue of the first part. It’s the cinematic equivalent of hot air.
Rebel Moon Part Two is up there with Madame Web as one of 2024’s weakest films. It’s a complete mess that not only fails to replicate the thrills of the titles that it blatantly rips off, but it disrespects its audience while doubling down on all of Snyder’s worst habits as a filmmaker. Perhaps it’ll make his vocal fanbase happy, but Snyder needs to branch out and reevaluate his style if he wants to draw in new audiences, especially if, god forbid, we’re going to be saddled with more of this story. How these films cost $166 million to make genuinely boggles the mind. The catering must’ve been exquisite.
Rebel Moon Part Two is now streaming on Netflix
Rating: 
Director: Zack Snyder
Writers: Zack Snyder, Kurt Johnstad, Shay Hatten (Based on a story by Zack Snyder)
Starring: Sofia Boutella, Djimon Hounsou, Ed Skrein, Michiel Husiman, Bae Doona, Staz Nair, Fra Free, Anthony Hopkins
Country: USA
Runtime: 123 minutes
