Whirring his hands around the glass jar of rejected ideas to be thrown together in the shadow of a bigger, better release, Zack Snyder is back. This time he drags Rebel Moon out of the rotting jar having seen Dune work and Star Wars work over its unending fanbase. Snyder now works as a reactionary, piecing together parts of a genre popular at the time of work, but by release has seen audiences move on. Rebel Moon: Part One – A Child of Fire suffers as Scary Movie does. It is a collection of ideas leftover from this star-faring adventure or that wild and rustic venture there. Between this and the Mark Wahlberg-led Transformers feature, Anthony Hopkins is now a sign of doom. His David Attenborough narration on Rebel Moon is as chaotic as it is dull.
Here is a feature which cannot fashion tech exploitation or mood any different to Star Wars. That is the simple, tragic fact of this. Still reeling from a LucasFilm snub back before the sequel trilogy, Synder believes he can try his hand at sci-fi and even has the bold, ambitious sense to suggest this is the first in a long series of stories, a bit like Dune but without the legs and double the fake sand. Rebel Moon not only lacks vision in its alien-like beings but fails to conjure up the emotive clarity needed for a feature which opens with Hopkins narrating kingly deaths and a transition into Kora (Sofia Boutella), sniffing sand.
This is the budget and cracked edition of some rejected sci-fi thrill. Mortal Engines without Hugo Weaving or the Despicable Me sight gags. There is a sense of Rebel Moon attempting to take itself seriously, but it immediately drops its sci-fi pretence to chase a dull love story where the world of gunfights and spaceships is no more interesting than the Viking-like living of these candlelit tribes. It creates an imbalance to the setting and style Snyder guns for, which is far more restrained than his Suckerpunch days as he finds big budget after big budget squandered on unlikely heroes and the expectation of smoke and wind billowing across them being enough to hide the fact he has just ripped parts of Fable and ran for the hills. There is a lack of life in the style presented in Rebel Moon, which feels like a caricature of just about every sci-fi piece available now.
Because of this elusive style and lack of individuality, the quick cuts away from scenes which could develop but are instead mired by the Guardians of the Galaxy-like planetary introductions, Snyder paints a lifeless universe. Charlie Hunnam and all these other familiar faces do nothing to imprint their design or thoughts on a world which is stuck catching up with the riffs of other films and projects from years gone by. Snyder is out of step and fails to create a vibrant world, instead hoping the grey tones and general sludge of battle are enough to thrill audiences. It feels closer in consistency and quality to Battlestation Earth or the charmless action of Ecks vs. Sever than it does a competent science-fiction piece hoping to carve out its place in the oversaturated mess.
