Rebel Moon Part One: A Child of Fire review – That’s no… good

Rebel Moon is the Fifty Shades of Grey of Star Wars. It’s not even hyperbole to call it that because Zack Snyder’s sci-fi epic began life years ago as a failed pitch to make a grittier, R-rated Star Wars film. Much like E.L. James did with her trashy Twilight fan fiction, with Rebel Moon Snyder has just reskinned his inspiration, while also throwing in liberal references to genre siblings of the Galaxy Far Far Away, such as Dune, Avatar and even Warhammer 40K. Plus, there are nods to other blockbusters as well, ranging from Gladiator and The Lord of the Rings all the way back to Seven Samurai.

It doesn’t have a particularly complicated story, but Rebel Moon has been divided into two films, with Part One: A Child of Fire now on Netflix, and Part 2: The Scargiver arriving on 19 April. The gist of the tale is that the military forces of the Motherworld arrive on a backwater moon called Veldt. Under commander Atticus Noble (Ed Skrein), the imperialist army has two aims: hunt down rebels in the area, and force Veldt’s humble farming population to turn over their entire harvest. They’ll starve, but oh well.

Kora (Sofia Boutella), a former soldier who found refuge on Veldt, is ready to flee until an instinctual act of defiance causes her to endanger the people who took her in. With timid farmer Gunnar (Michiel Huisman) at her side, our heroine sets out to recruit celebrated warriors who can train and defend the inhabitants of Veldt. These include Djimon Hounsou’s former general Titus, cyborg swordmaster Nemesis (Doona Bae), shirt-allergic kinda-Native-American beast master Tarak (Staz Nair), and commanding warlord Darrian Bloodaxe (Ray Fisher).

And that’s it. After 134 minutes, Rebel Moon Part One: A Child of Fire pretty much ends there, demonstrating a fundamental structural problem. The movie snaps up its band of heroes with surprisingly little resistance, but these characters are purely archetypes who say little, don’t interact, and will only have their motivations explored in Part 2. But why would viewers return after a four-month wait when they don’t care about anyone on screen right now? Rebel Moon feels like it should have been a series given everything it’s trying to cram in.

Ultimately, the fact that Rebel Moon is wholly derivative is less a problem than the fact that Snyder’s film could also be titled The Emperor’s New Clothes. Rebel Moon Part 1 gives off the strong impression that, following the success of Snyder’s zombie actioner Army of the Dead (also for Netflix), there was nobody involved in the making of Rebel Moon with the power to rein in Snyder’s signature creative idiosyncrasies. Here they’ve been dialled up to a twelve with a damaging carry-over effect.

In Rebel Moon, expect a relentless washed-out colour palette, an overload of slow motion applied to the even most mundane actions – evidently to give gravitas, but mostly sapping energy – and rape as a character motivator. This last inclusion was unsurprisingly missing from Snyder’s DC Extended Universe films like Man of Steel, Batman v Superman and Justice League.

The result is that Rebel Moon Part One: A Child of Fire manages to be heavy-handed, painfully self-indulgent and substanceless, all while being touted as a future multi-media franchise. Snyder seems to have forgotten that such a status is earned through audience appreciation, not proclaimed at the outset. In fact, Rebel Moon appears to be all talk – self-promotional behind the camera and weighed down with clunky voice-over in front of the lens. No assumptions here.

To be fair, it’s not all terrible. Snyder does have a flair for world building visually. Part One: A Child of Fire is a bowl of eye candy, with a distinct aesthetic for each place that Kora and Gunnar visit. Viewers are mostly teased with the treats though, as the most jaw-dropping moments in the trailer for A Child of Fire are just that: left as cool but otherwise meaningless flashes of something more interesting.

As for performances, best of the bunch by far is Skrein, who relishes his role as the film’s unhinged, knobkerrie-wielding villain; followed by Charlie Hunnam’s rogueish starship pilot Kai, who is supposed to be Han Solo but comes across more like a SHEIN Brad Pitt. Everyone else stands around sombre – or slack jawed in the case of Huisman – but that seems to be less a problem with the acting and more of a case of the cast having literally all their character development stripped from the film.

As problematic as it is, probably the most engaging part of Part One: A Child of Fire is an opening Act that includes “Voetsek!” spewing South African soldiers looking to liven up their downtime with sexual assault. After that, the film becomes an exhausting exercise in pastiche and oddly dull action scenes. In fact, slow motion in one key moment makes a hero look like he’s strolling down to his front gate to collect the Sunday paper, as opposed to putting his life on the line.

For the record, a director’s version – yet another Snyder Cut! – of Rebel Moon Part One: A Child of Fire is on the horizon, promising the R-rated visceral content that the current film’s tone implies should have been included from the outset. It’s hard not to feel cheated, because now there’s the expectation that audiences will endure A Child of Fire again just to watch an actual “good” version of the film.

Snyder does his best work when adapting someone else’s material. Let’s never forget that he pulled off the impossible in adapting Watchmen very well for the screen. His Justice League also captured the spirit of a DC comic event, played out at a godlike level. Left to his own devices, though, Snyder seems incapable of a single original thought and overloads the screen with his worst filmmaking tendencies. There’s zero restraint. Snyder fanboys must be straining to defend this one, while less invested audiences are in the situation of being promised the world, and presented with a lifeless moon. Right now, a return visit is feeling very uninviting.

Rebel Moon Part One: A Child of Fire premiered on Netflix on 22 December. Part 2: The Scargiver arrives on 19 April.