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Film Review: Rebel Moon - Part One: A Child of Fire

Welcome back to the blog readers. Zack Snyder has won me over ever since Man of Steel (2013) became the avenue for John Campea's man-crush on Henry Cavill. All joking aside, Man of Steel proved to me that Snyder was a different kind of director than your usual guys. Ever since his departure from Warner Bros Discovery, Snyder has been working with Netflix to create some new films which I has not watched in all honesty. But hearing all the buzz about this film, Rebel Moon, got me excited for it to be honest. Then the trailer came out and I knew I had to see it. Would Rebel Moon stand on its own as the next great science-fiction film? Stick around to find out.


Rebel Moon - Part One: A Child of Fire was directed by Zack Snyder from a screenplay by Snyder, Kurt Johnstad and Shay Hatten, and a story by Snyder. The film stars Sofia Boutella, Djimon Hounsou, Ed Skrein, Michael Huisman, Doona Bae, Ray Fisher, Charlie Hunnam, and Anthony Hopkins. In the film, a young warrior with a shady past recruits other rebels to join her on a quest to take down the benevolent Imperium before they return to further threaten a farming colony on the planet Veldt.


As I said in the intro, I was excited to see this film due to the action-packed trailers and the fact that it's Zack Snyder. However, when the reviews started coming in and they were less than positive, I got really nervous. And after watching the film, I was right to be because this film is bad. Its number 1 sin is that it is a sci-fi film that bored me to tears. None of the performances felt inspired, the action was bland as hell with way too much slo-mo and the overall plot just was not interesting and very cookie-cutter. Another massive disappointment for me in 2023.


The first negative that I want to highlight about this film is the acting. Most of the acting in this film is just bland, uninteresting, or bad. Sofia Boutella has been around the last decade or so, appearing in films such as the Kingsman films (2014-2017), Prisoners of the Ghostland (2021), The Mummy and Atomic Blonde (also 2017), but this is the first time she has been the lead in a film and it is absolutely forgettable. I honestly could care less about her performance because I found it uninteresting. She didn't even look like she tried guys! And a sequel is coming in April, so I cannot wait to not watch it. The rest of the actors seem bored as hell on screen, which is a real detriment to what is happening in the film.


The action, or lack thereof, is another lowlight of the film I want to highlight (I will be talking spoilers here, so read ahead at your own peril). First of all, there is barely any action in this film at all. The only real action we get is flashbacks of Kora's time within the Imperium and a boring fight between Doona Bae's character Nemesis and a giant spider-woman who kidnapped a child for...some reason. And the final battle of the film feels like something that would be in the middle of the film, as our heroes are captured and sold out by Charlie Hunnam's character and they wind up escaping this trade depot they were taken to. Also, one more gripe. Why did every other shot have to be in slo-mo? Did the producers ask Snyder how many times he wanted to hit the slo-mo button and he replied with "yes?" That right there proved to be enough to take me out of the film and its boring action.


Finally, the story itself is bland and boring, and feels like an amalgamation of a whole bunch of sci-fi outlets, including Star Wars and Star Trek. First of all, the galaxy is ruled by a benevolent empire with a soldier who becomes disillusioned with the empire and leaves? Then you have the egotistical leader of this empire who just happens to be the father (albeit adopted) of the main character, who also just so happens to be the soldier who became disillusioned with the empire and left? Then you have the empire's foot-minions who are just as bad as the egotistical leader and somehow are terrible shots, unless they are close enough to one of the heroes that they can get point-blank kills on them? Where have I heard this one before? Oh wait, that's Star Wars to a fucking tee. I could care less that this film was pitched as a Star Wars film, it feels like a bad bootleg with a script that is overly dramatic in places it really should not be. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention the terrible script.


In conclusion, Rebel Moon - Part One: A Child of Fire is a lazy, effortless Star Wars ripoff that does everything worse than it. Thank you all for reading, and rankings are coming up soon, so stay tuned for those.

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