In film school, some professors use the familiar example of Star Wars to teach Campbellian mythmaking, the theories that identify and codify the narrative units re-contextualized since Grecian times. Snyder demonstrates a clear fluency in these concepts with his classically minded scripting, except he forgot the part where the archetypes are meant to be refreshed through novel contexts. On the humble farming planet of Wherever in the galaxy of Who Cares, the broad outline of a Hero (Sofia Boutella, terse and humorless and physically perfect, just how Snyder likes ’em) must defend her village from a faraway notion of an Evil Empire. They rose to power in some great cataclysm of yore during which our Hero’s family was killed, and the Final Boss took her in to teach her the combat skills she’d one day use to take her revenge. Snyder mistakes exposition for world-building, the lugubriously delivered reams of backstory removing the audience from the fantasy rather than immersing them in it.
To topple the Mini-Boss (Ed Skrein, his British accent and high cheekbones marking him as a baddie) come to appropriate her people’s grain, she and her Sidekick (a neutered Michiel Huisman) bop around the cosmos rounding up sympathizers to their cause, including a self-interested yet caddishly likable mercenary we’ll call Not Han Solo (Charlie Hunnam, more visibly awake than most of his scene partners). They are most easily referred to by their function both because they exist as little more than sketches, and because the muddy sound mix isn’t doing viewers any favors, but especially because their names are often long and difficult to retain.
Charles Bramesco
As I wrote down a couple of impressions on Saltburn, I might as well mention Rebel Moon too, since I bothered watching it last December on Netflix. While I wouldn’t rate it as low as one star as the article above does, I largely agree with the assessment that this movie is a dull and self-serious mess
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Even with my relatively limited cinematic knowledge, it was immediately obvious how the movie borrows heavily from Star Wars and Seven Samurai at both plot and world-building levels. The ‘bullied farmers persuade veteran fighter to defend them’ storyline does falter rather quickly when translated into a space opera setting: you would think that a galactic empire that has mastered FTL travel, instantaneous communication in a surreal VR-like environment, and sentient robots, would surely be able to feed its space navy without pirating crops from space Amish communities.
Moreover, I’m not quite sure what a handful of outcasts could do to defend the village if the space Nazis decided to bomb it from orbit; depending on the precision of their weapons, they could easily wipe out the settlement leaving the crops and granaries intact. Or they might simply portal out to a different system and find other food supplies; it’s not like that village was the last remaining farmland in the universe.
Glaring plot holes aside, the movie feels disconnected and rushed – and sure enough, Zack Snyder announced there’s a considerably longer director’s cut ready to be released. Characters disappear without notice, written off with no mention later; others, like the pacifist robot evoking the purer times when the royal family was alive, return abruptly as if the director initially introduced them for exposition and later rushed to bring them back for the final act for no tangible role.
This reflects – again – how Netflix’ content strategy is to churn out content, regardless of quality; movies and series running in the background as people scroll TikTok and are readily forgotten by the next day. With Rebel Moon, Netflix’ calculus appears to be that it scored a recurring ‘blockbuster’: subscribers will watch this abridged version of part one, then the director’s cut in a couple of months after it has faded from memory, then part two, likely with two distinct cuts as well. I’m now curious if Snyder filmed a black-and-white version…
It was amusing though to see two actors in leading roles, and on opposite sides of the conflict, who years ago portrayed the same character in Game of Thrones.
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