The film introduces the audience to a hackneyed sci-fi universe in which the slaying of the ruling forces of “Motherworld” has cast the galaxy into rebellion and disarray. On an unassuming farming planet in the outer reaches of space, Kora (Sofia Boutella) lives an unassuming life among the farmers while harboring a secret from her past. This is brought to light when the Motherworld forces descend upon the planet and demand they turn over all of their crops to the imposing military force. The farmers decide to fight back and set out in search of warriors to train the farmers and help defend the farm.
Not one second of this movie’s backstory is used for genuine world building. Instead, the film opens on a shot of space with the Motherworld’s giant dreadnought ship floating across the screen. A voiceover then condenses the broad strokes of the rebellion and overall state of the galaxy into a cliff notes of banal dialogue and snooze and you’ll miss it information. This opening monologue gets the film started on the worst possible footing as it doesn’t offer anything aside from bland backstory we don’t see despite having seen it in the countless movies this rips off.
Star Wars‘ opening crawls work because they drop you into the story of a saga that feels rich with detail and backstory. The establishing text and scenes of Alien (and Blade Runner/Blade Runner 2049 as well) bring you up to speed on what you need to know before immediately introducing you to the characters and the situations they’re facing. Rebel Moon‘s opening exposition dump feels like the work of people who couldn’t be bothered to put any effort into grabbing the audience’s attention at the start and were only focused on telling us outright how unclever they are.
Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire is a messy script cobbled together from various influences with no imagination. However, deriving influence from past work is by no means a death sentence for a movie by itself. Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai, from which Rebel Moon borrows heavily, has an endlessly adaptable premise as seen from The Magnificent Seven and A Bug’s Life and, more recently, the aforementioned episode of The Mandalorian.
Yet, in taking up the Seven Samurai plot for Rebel Moon, Snyder completely avoids any and all of the things that make Seven Samurai so special and adaptable. There’s no depth to the characters Kora and the farmers seek out to help defend the farm. Each character has one (if they’re lucky) attribute that makes them a candidate for defending the farm. But those attributes are nonsense surface level details that (at least in this installment) do not matter in the slightest. One potential warrior is enslaved by a farmer who says his debt won’t be paid off for decades before suggesting a sizable buyout from the beleaguered farmers. When our heroes say they don’t have the money, the man suddenly offers a wager for the warrior’s freedom. There’s no negotiating, there’s nothing provoking the man to offer this wager. It’s just a head-scratching instant change of heart for a one-dimensional character that’s only made to advance the plot in the most boring way possible.
Things don’t get better as Kora and friends continue to recruit warriors to fight back against the Motherworld. Another character is introduced by fighting a spider-like alien creature played by Jena Malone. This is one of the more unique moments of action in the movie but it ultimately fails to generate any renewed interest in the movie. Instead, it’s just another surface level character introduction that only serves to establish that Rebel Moon‘s universe has something sort of like lightsabers, but not really. Between weak character introductions and dialogue that repeatedly reminds the audience that Micheil Huison’s character isn’t a warrior but only a humble farmer (this is brought up at least three times), Rebel Moon feels like the work of a shoddy storyteller trying to condescend to an audience he thinks won’t understand the world when the reality is there’s nothing about Rebel Moon for us to actually care about.
The complete lack of imagination in Rebel Moon‘s derivative plot isn’t exclusive to the Seven Samurai riff of it all. The movie is clearly and unashamedly Zack Snyder’s version of Star Wars. In addition to the nonsensical slave trade wager lifted from The Phantom Menace, there’s a sequence clearly riffing on A New Hope‘s cantina scene. There’s also Charlie Hunnam’s roguish pilot character who needs to be convinced to assist the farmers in tracking down warriors as he is the film’s clear Han Solo stand-in.
Being the first of two movies, A Child of Fire only covers half of the plot of Seven Samurai, presumably leaving the rest for Part Two. But the film does lead to a shoehorned-in action set piece that concludes with another Star Wars reference that feels more like outright plagiarism than homage. The action overall is uninspired and severely hampered by a half-hearted effort to cut it for a PG-13 rating. More on the Snyder Cut of it all later, but the action is standard Snyder fare. If you like his action, you’ll likely enjoy Rebel Moon‘s set pieces. But seeing his signature slow motion style once again after seeing better action set pieces this year in the likes of John Wick: Chapter 4, Mission: Impossible, and even Silent Night, it just leaves a lot to be desired. As the bar continues to rise in action stunts and choreography, Snyder’s slow motion feels more and more like a crutch for a filmmaker who just isn’t interested in more kinetic action filmmaking.
Zack Snyder has stated there is an R rated version of Rebel Moon in the works. Unlike Zack Snyder’s Justice League, the R rated Rebel Moon was planned from the beginning and suggested by Netflix. Snyder has said the R rated version is “almost like an entirely different movie.” Given how completely lifeless and uninspired the PG-13 cut of A Child of Fire is, it will be a hard sell to experience an R rated cut regardless of Snyder’s excitement over it. Moreover, it sets up the PG-13 version to just be the rough draft with the R rated cut being less of a “definitive version” and more of a marketing stunt. Either way, it’s insulting considering how completely awful this version of the film turned out.
About the Writer: Matt Hurt is the creator of ObsessiveViewer.com. He also created, hosts, and produces 
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