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Kevin Michael Vance
Writer - Portland, Oregon
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Title: REBEL MOON: PART ONE - A CHILD OF FIRE
Director: Zack Snyder
Year: 2023
Reviewed: January 01, 2024
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Rice Cake-Lowest Rating |
[Rating Definitions]
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So here we have it, Zack Snyder's opus, his space opera, his "sacked" Star Wars film that Lucas Films refused to produce.
Let me paint the picture for you.
We open on the vast cold emptiness of space, narration is being read by the estimable Sir Anthony Hopkins. We can't help being reminded of the expository crawl from the original film: Star Wars - A New Hope. And then we see... the space vagina. Yep, you read me right- space vagina. Zack Snyder ill-advisedly decides to design his interstellar "space gate" to resemble a vagina. And through this penetrates the glittering space ship that looks like a penis. Yes, dear reader, Zack Snyder opens his movie with a space vagina and a penis space ship.
And it all gets worse from there.
There is a lot wrong with Rebel Moon, and many of the problems come from a lack of understanding the basic principles of what comprises good, or even, acceptable writing.
Let's start with Creative Writing 101, and quite possibly the most fundamental and rudimentary rule, and or, skill for passable writing- show, don't tell. Humphrey Bogart once said, "If you're going to give me something expository to say, you better have two camels fucking in the background." One of the best, and possibly the most brilliant, examples of a superlative expository scene ever filmed is when Morpheus is kung fu fighting Neo, while simultaneously explaining to him the rules of the matrix, in the first film of the same name. See- two camels fucking... essentially. But now we have writer/directors like Mike Flanagan who gave us such boring and pretentious schlock such as The Haunting of Hill House and Midnight Mass, and who thinks its okay to let a character, any character really, wile away five, ten, even fifteen minutes monologuing incessantly. (By the way, it's not okay to do this. It's annoyingly pretentious and exceedingly dull and boring.) And yet, it seems as if Snyder feels he can do the same thing. Going back to what I opened with, and that his glaring mistake, and possible arrogance, in the belief that he can tell, rather than show, and still come off as a competent writer/director. He cannot. No one can. That is why it is the most fundamental rule in creative writing. One of the first scenes we get with Kora is her monologuing about being beaten and molded as a child into a soldier of war. What we should have gotten (if Zack Snyder could learn to write again) was ONLY her last statement in said monologue, which was, "love is weakness". Perfect, succinct, and rather poignant. Then, he could have SHOWN us a lovely flash back scene... showing, not TELLING; thereby SHOWING us how she was beaten and molded as a child into a soldier of war. But no we get a pointless monologue, one of many, delivered, unfortunately, rather blandly, and with very little passion by the actor.
Then we have darkness, both physical and emotional. Every main character is brooding and morose. Many scenes are filmed out of focus and lit to be physically dark. You and I literally cannot see what is going on. The Critical Drinker likened it to watching a movie with cataracts in your eyes, and he is absolutely right. I think I made it about a half-hour to an hour before shutting the movie down. Especially, after it dawned on me that this was not only a Star Wars rip-off, but also a rip-off of The Seven Samurai. After that, I was done. In three months time we supposedly get the R-rated directors cut, but who really fuckin' cares, when the movie is this bad, and this bloated on its' own self-worth and importance.
I ended up putting in Rogue One to settle myself down.
Rebel Moon: Part One - A Child of Fire is a structural, conceptual, aesthetic mess, not worth your time or mine. That's why it gets my lowest review, the dreaded RICE CAKE review.
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