Rebel Moon Director’s Cut Review: Head-Splode Into Space

It takes the chutzpah of a Zack Snyder to look at Akira Kurosawa’s 3.5 hour masterpiece Seven Samurai and imagine that the same basic story needs an additional three hours to truly do it justice. But that’s what at least some of us love about Snyder — he’s insanely ambitious, yet never half as deep as he thinks he is. He reaches for the stars but winds up grabbing you by the balls instead, more often than not resulting in gorgeous inanity calculated to give teenagers an insta-boner. That Rebel Moon ever existed in PG-13 form is up there with the thinking that anyone would watch an edited-for-network-TV Saw movie. It’s beside the point entirely.

Both uncut Rebel Moon movies now have completely new secondary titles: A Child of Fire is now Chalice of Blood, while The Scargiver has become Curse of Forgiveness. Given that the movies are telling the same basic story as their edited iterations, this feels like a way to scam the stupid into thinking they’re viewing different films entirely, especially since the first one has an all-new, mega-expensive opening sequence. If you’re entirely new to Rebel Moon, it’s safe to ignore the original cuts, which would now feel like reading an issue of Heavy Metal magazine with all the nudity excised. Somehow the gleeful stoopid-with-a-capital-“oo” tone works a whole lot better when it’s augmented with constant melting and exploding heads, plus boobs.

The Story so far

In case you missed anything that came before and still care about Rebel Moon, here’s the gist. In a galaxy ruled by the fascist Motherworld, which just recently overthrew an increasingly benevolent monarchy, pervy general Atticus Noble ( Ed Skrein ) seeks to hunt down and crush the rebellious Bloodaxe siblings. Realizing they’ve been trading with the agrarian Irish-ish planet called Veldt, he shows up demanding all that world’s grain. Unbeknownst to him, Kora ( Sofia Boutella ), the unjustly framed adopted daughter of space dictator Balisarius (Fra Fee), is hiding out on that particular planet, and after she kills a few occupying troops who are attempting sexual assault, she decides she’s all-in for a fight. A la Kurosawa — and Jimmy Murakami’s previous Roger Corman produced ripoff, Battle Beyond the Stars — she sets off into space to assemble an expert team of warriors.

She also now has explicit sex in both movies, which sort-of shows character development (along with a whole lot of skin) — the first time, she’s just with a local hunk for funsies; the second, she’s genuinely sort-of in love. Not that the intended audience is likely to be there for any reason beyond seeing Boutella naked, but maybe after a few rounds of freeze-framing, the plot point might sink in. A similar key development in the director’s cuts is that Snyder’s signature slo-mo actually serves a purpose this time — he uses it primarily to clarify action beats that would otherwise go by too quickly to register. It’s a side bonus, and again, probably the main focus of the intended audience, that it also allows him to Jackson Pollock the bad guys’ brains all over the screen.

Stupid? Offensive? Why Not?

Watching both movies back to back in their uncut forms feels more like binging a streaming show than watching a movie. The second part still doesn’t really work as a standalone, and yes, the interminable grain harvesting sequence is still there. (You might half-root for the ghost of Michael Landon to start singing, “Bringing in the Sheaves.”) But at least the absolute most idiotic plot point is clarified — what looked like a steam-powered starship is actually Nazi-style crematoria designed to feed the sentient onboard computer. Going from stupid to offensive is something that often happens in Snyder-world; consider it a feature, not a bug. Just like when characters randomly break into song, a la the Aquaman number in his Justice League, or numerous moments in J.R.R. Tolkien’s books.

Everyone also swears like a 12 year-old who’s just discovered it. Corey Stoll’s doomed overseer Sindri now blesses his planet’s harvest by exclaiming, “F**k hard tonight! F**k for the harvest! F**k for the very food we eat! F**k for the Gods!” Churches, if you want to bolster the youth attendance, this is one potential roadmap.

Jimmy the Baptist

Subplots that now get more time include more backstory for Aris (Sky Yang), the Motherworld trooper who rebels against his team; and the side adventure of robot Jimmy (Anthony Hopkins), who no longer narrates the main action, but does offer voice-over poetics while frolicking in nature and losing his religion, Thin Red Line style, during a war. His longer scenes elicit a strong suspicion that Zack Snyder read The Wild Robot to his kids at some point.

They also hint at a far more interesting story than the one at hand, as does the blatant sequel tease that these 6.5 combined hours lead up to. Snyder does some effective universe-building in the first part, operatic and insane universe though it may be. Yet the glimpses he provides make the viewer wonder if we aren’t being shown one of the least interesting possible stories in this realm. What comes next has the potential — as implied in Jimmy’s monologues — to be brazenly sacrilegious in the most brutally dumb way possible, and I for one would rather see that than Seven Samurai redux.

Blood Code on

In the meantime, Snyder’s insistent focus on what Star Wars-style laser weapons would actually do to the human body keeps everything gorily watchable. For those old enough to remember when Mortal Kombat first hit home systems, and Nintendo insisted on a bloodless version with sweat instead, that’s what you got the first time around. The newest Snyder cut plays like the most mindless faux-machismo video game in the universe, and that’s exactly what it wants to be. No stars for forcing us critics to watch the watered-down versions first, especially in a streaming era where theatrical age restrictions don’t matter.

If you have any inner cinematic bloodlust, however, this should feed the beast. Pagan space Gods help me, but I kind of want to see what comes next, if anything.

Grade: 3.5/5

Every version of Rebel Moon is available on Netflix starting today.