Rebel Moon Part 1: Child of Fire, space opera (review)

The first part of what is supposed to be Zack Snyder’s magnum opus is singularly misguided.

There’s a big movie in my head Zack Snyder : an immense science fiction fresco which would be both the sum of everything that preceded it, and a new beginning. And it would be his Star Wars to him. Rebel Moon, part one, is exactly that. The sum of Zack’s entire brain, or at least the part that gave birth to 300 And Sucker Punch. An elite ex-warrior wants to protect a peaceful agricultural planet from the aims of a fascistic intergalactic empire, called “Motherhood” (its armed force called “Imperium”) and seeking to seize the space wheat grown by peasants virile and healthy. The story will progress to the rhythm of the recruitment of fighters responsible for defending the “rebel moon” of the title, while escaping the clutches of the awful Noble (sic), a cruel officer with a character reminiscent of both the SS and the political commissar.

This is the trait that recalls the libertarian morality of its director: the necessarily totalitarian state versus the traditional rural community (whose leader, a very bearded and very muscular rustic artisan, is called “Father”). The first two BioShock made this same morality a fundamentally dangerous, mutating and explosive play space – the underwater city of Rapture, a deadly utopia gone mad. Having chosen his camp, Rebel Moon is in another galaxy than that of BioShockand it’s not famous.

So, on the program of The Child of Fire, space Nazis/Bolsheviks, very muscular people (especially men, without forgetting the eternal homophobic gimmicks of its author: witness this scene where a monstrously degenerate man wants to buy the sexual favors of a young peasant, to the great disgust of the heroine), slow motion, fields of wheat, a crushing score by Tom Holkenborg… But it’s too lame, too poorly written, too poorly played, too much… not even “too much”, in fact. Not crazy enough. A shame, because even the visual aspect, supposed to be the director’s strong point, seems seriously cramped: it really looks like everything was shot between a California parking lot and a green screen. The prologue of Man of Steel, in Krypton on the verge of collapse, was a hundred times more inspired. Snyder apparently wanted to make a Star Wars à la Kurosawa – forgetting that the director of Seven samurai was already one of George Lucas’ strongest role models. In the end, if Rebel Moon looks like something, it’s more like a sub-Jupiter: The fate of the universe (without all the generosity of the Wachowskis) fuel for what Warhammer 40,000 and more exhausting (masculine militaristic SF with first degree).

That said – and it’s interesting – at the end, we still want to see what happens next, The Slasher, scheduled for April 2024. Seriously? But yes, the band of galactic warriors brought together by Sofia Boutella on arrival exudes the slight charm of teams from battered and friendly TV series (Rebel Moon was at one point a series project once Kathleen Kennedy didn’t want it for Star Wars) as Spartacus: Blood of the Gladiatorsthe true model of Rebel Moon -and who pumped happily 300. Everything overlaps, therefore. We end with a special mention to Doona Bae as a super-killer whose silhouette evokes that of Meiko Kaji in The Scorpio Woman, but with cyber arms and lightsabers. We can never, ever blame Snyder for not knowing how to address the geekiest part – we didn’t say: the most movie-loving part – of our brain.

Rebel Moon: Part 1 – Child of Fireby Zack Snyder, with Sofia Boutella, Charlie Hunnam, Ed Skrein… December 22 on Netflix.