Rebel Moon Part One- A Child of Fire Review: Zack Snyder’s Messed Up Epic Feels Like It Has Already Been Seen
Cast: Sofia Boutella, Djimon Hounsou, Ed Skrein, Michiel Huisman, Bae Doona, Ray Fisher, Staz Nair, Charlie Hunnam, Anthony Hopkins, Jena Malone, Stuart Martin, Corey Stoll, Cary Elwes, Alfonso Herrera, Cleopatra Coleman, Fra Fee, Rhian Rees
Director: Zack Snyder
Streaming Platform: Netflix (from 21st December)
Filmyhype.com Ratings: 2.5/5 (two and a half stars)
It’s not at all as simple as it seems to talk about Rebel Moon Part One- A Child of Fire, especially in light of his creative nature that makes the derivation a completely casual concept, in which references to other more famous works contribute to fueling a disconnected narrative and figurative material, without its own identity horizontal that is coherent and convincing until the end. It seems that Zack Snyder, in his much-anticipated science fiction epic, has chosen to exploit so many elements easily recognizable and reconnectable to the great masterpieces of the same mold that he has forgotten to insert one’s creative contribution or even just to rework its essence so that something functional and specific emerges in its entirety.
And so here we are, once again at the dawn of a maxi project by Zack Snyder, who first saw himself stripped of his throne on the best (from his point of view) in the world of DC at the cinema and then got stuck in his zombie epic created in partnership with Netflix. This time the filmmaker from Green Bay (who, let’s say right away, never lacks good intentions, courage and unbridled passion) has decided to do things even bigger, giving life to the much-desired saga sci-fi that he has often said he craves for, announcing a cross-media universe made up of two films shot in back to back (with the hope of a third), a comic series and a video game. All this is always with the Tudum platform, which is why it is reasonable to hypothesize that he also decided to incorporate the living dead mentioned above. A huge project, full of hopes and noble goals. But then you have to make films.
It often happens in the first works that debut directors put everything into, a little due to inexperience and a little for fear of being unable to make a second film. The result, at worst, is a mixture of genres and references stuck here and there without a real direction, but after all, it is still a first work. Here, Rebel Moon Part One- A Child of Fire is exactly that: pieces of references to any science fiction or fantasy work, from Star Wars to Blade Runner, from Dune, Conan the Barbarian, Harry Potter, The Seven Samurai, with sprinkles of Avatar to, the Justice League (obviously) and so on. A confused cauldron in which, fishing with your mouth, you always come out with a different apple, a little different. like when as children we used toys to pit Hulk and Goku, He-Man and the Power Rangers, or whatever our imagination allowed us. The problem is that Zack Snyder is not a child and this new work for Netflix is his eleventh film.
Rebel Moon Part One- A Child of Fire Review: The Story Plot
The story of Rebel Moon Part One- A Child of Fire is the synthesis of the completely derivative spirit of the film, combined with the simplicity of a plot that Zack Snyder had recently abandoned, not a positive thing for an artist who does not have his best talent or main interest in writing. To tell the truth, there are also structural flaws here, with all that we are dealing with something truly essential. Following a conspiracy due to internal struggles, born following the disastrous consequences of continuous wars, the King of the Mother Planet is killed, a thousand-year-old dynasty at the helm of a Kingdom that reigns supreme throughout the world. known universe. In his place, a general came to power as Regent, sowing death and destruction. He is opposed by a group of Rebels ready to do anything to enforce the values of justice and charity. Elementary, concise. Point.
This is the story of Kora (Boutella), our protagonist, who found refuge from her tormented past in a community of farmers on a small moon. A place of peace and prosperity, where people lead a quiet and simple life, where honor is earned with the sweat of their brow. Everything changes when the army of the Mother Planet appears among them too, showing off its boundless greed and its cruel brutality. This triggers a series of unpleasant events due to which we find ourselves forced to deal with old ghosts that she thought were buried, given that, to save her new home, she will have to fight against the Kingdom. Together with a local man, Gunnar (Huisman), he sets off in search of new warriors to recruit to join their desperate cause, which is why the only places to find them are the slums of the galaxy, among the forgotten planets, the tormented souls, forgotten legends and slaves without a future. If perhaps, along the way, the opportunity was to arise to take advantage of the help of some rebels, it wouldn’t be bad. Will this band of outsiders be enough to defeat the Kingdom’s terrible army and protect a small moon?
At the center of Rebel Moon Part One- A Child of Fire, we find the story of Kora. taking possession of everything they have produced up to that moment arrives on site with the sole objective of “Mother World” (Sofia Boutella), a young, strong, and mysterious woman who, for unknown reasons, has found refuge in a peasant village located on a distant planet. The peace and deep connection with the land of these people reign supreme in a context of peace when the government of the so-called. The villain of the moment, the admiral Atticus Noble (played by Ed Skrein), shows no interest in the lives of others, remaining firmly anchored to some typical stereotypes of the villain without depth or objectives other than the power and evil of others. The very aesthetic that characterizes him is full of references to characters of a negative historical or military nature, recycling in his predictable passage moments that are easy to read for everyone.
Atticus’s actions on the spot, together with those of his subordinates, will inspire a personal revolt on the part of Kora who, in front of their obvious and vulgar injustices, will choose to intervene with brute force and then seek support in a journey in search of allies in this sense. The journey and personal anger are the only two elements to fuel a narrative that chooses an extremely repetitive structure to explain its reasons to spectators. Since help is needed, the total intention of Rebel Moon Part One- A Child of Fire will focus on multiple sequences in which we will see the protagonist recruit the other protagonists demonstrating to them what they know how to do and their desire to take back what they have previously lost. The new meeting, chat about getting to know each other, phrases to convince them, key scenes in slow motion, casual ethics and we move on to the next on the list.
Rebel Moon Part One- A Child of Fire Review and Analysis
Zack Snyder is a giver. One of those filmmakers who has always given himself body and soul to the spectator, never making fun of him, nor speculating on language or hiding behind intellectualism or various currents. A director with his own very specific poetics in mind, of which he has always emphasized above all sincerity. Furthermore, he is a director with an almost romantic idea of cinema, by which he believes he can enclose the very meaning of art in a shot or an image, also constantly running the risk of running into stylistic or dialectical exaggerations, things for which he has been widely criticized. In short, a divisive artist. Rebel Moon Part One- A Child of Fire was born from the same conceptual matrix as his entire filmography, which, going forward, has resulted in an adamantine ambition, which has brought Snyder out of time and into constantly taking himself very seriously. A creative with an enormous ego who is currently very fragile.
The meaning of Snyder’s film is to be found in these latitudes, so much so that the criticism that can be leveled at it is not that which concerns the obvious defects of the screenplay, writing of the characters, acting direction, or the poverty of the dialogues, but what concerns, instead, a direction that is a little too monotonous and an imaginative inventiveness that struggles to take off. Rebel Moon Part One- A Child of Fire is a presentation (not too rhythmically) of images that proceeds through juxtapositions, always trying to give significant scenes (there is perhaps only one, wonderful, which portrays a robot and a girl sitting on the bank of a river) and which finds its only point of interest in the mixture of other people’s imaginations. It is not easy to build a world from scratch, but Snyder’s is so derivative that it risks being approximate: it escapes, it doesn’t capture, it never remains seriously impressed.
His characters never really live, just like his views (fake mainly due to technical insufficiencies highlighted by the big screen) or his juxtapositions. There are Kurosawa, Leone, and Lucas, but only at times does the ensemble work as a renewed unit, offering only glimpses of a film that has not stood up alone. In the first half, Snyder puts his all but makes a lot of mistakes, evidence of a bigger project and yet another operation in which he will leave no stone unturned. The choice to open your epic with an introductory journey that leads to something already seen and monotonous is not the only problem with Rebel Moon Part One- A Child of Fire. One of the great limitations of Zack Snyder’s new film is that it never manages to excite, it is not incisive or memorable in any way, offering a jumble of characters shaped by many other works on the same wavelength, without ever deigning to characterize them properly beyond what is said about them.
The general writing of this first chapter could have been very interesting in light of the expressive possibilities of a director who, at least in this case, seems to be in a hurry in outlining the background story, totally forgetting to make us fond of the protagonists, nailed until the end to some concepts that remain as such. In all of this, we find the salient and most recognizable features of the direction “Snyder style” with moments in which the use of slow motion (slow motion shots) instead of highlighting the more epic component of some specific sequences, expands them to it exaggerates the duration in a completely useless way, all shaped by a formal context in which everything seems suspended in an intangible, quotative dimension and with colors that are both alienating and random. As also happened with his previous films, in this case, the director attempts to play with the perception of reality and a specific use of CGI for stenographic purposes.
It’s a shame that even from this point of view Rebel Moon Part One- A Child of Fire is rather fluctuating, denoting a particular care for some elements (such as robots and other small things) and a lack of attention towards others (certain backgrounds are quite sketchy). In conclusion, Rebel Moon Part One- A Child of Fire is limited for its entire duration to introduce something that, we hope, will be explored later. Its prologue soul remains the only true constant of a rather flat experience without any interesting ideas, beyond a derivative essence that would certainly have deserved greater attention and insights on multiple fronts. Zack Snyder concentrates his efforts on a film in which he presumably inserted everything that came into his head, making it so saturated with recognizable elements to the point of never being able to identify a general coherence with the most unpublished narrative material. The attempt to build from scratch a world full of details and stories to be passionate about, for now, seems to move along a rather clumsy and naive path, in which the love for many things can easily become a messy mix without depth and biting.
All the problems of Rebel Moon – Part 1 are then inevitably accentuated by the plastic and exacerbating direction by Zack Snyder, who lingers on slow motion even when it is not necessary (grains of wheat falling to the ground or every time a gun fires a shot and you have to see the flame spreading) and makes the film even slower and more unnerving as the minutes pass and it doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. There are two moments in which a character jumps in a plastic pose from a ledge, obviously in slow motion, framed in profile while the light irradiates his silhouette. Rebel Moon – Part 1 is all like this, a continuous attempt to show a vast and very different world which in reality appears like a jumble of ideas for other films, a trailer lasting over two hours which only serves to prepare the ground for Part 2 (the only mitigating factor, if we want, to this very long prologue) but which never manages to make you enter its universe. You can also notice the “cut” moments from the extended version already widely announced by Zack Snyder.
Often while watching Rebel Moon – Part 1 you get the feeling that that particular scene or that editing cut had something more to show (especially the blood and violence side) as if to wink at yet another Snyder Cut already talked about and pragmatically ready since the announcement of the 39; release of the two products (and here everything we know about the Snyder Cut of Rebel Moon). Rebel Moon Part One- A Child of Fire therefore remains a flat product like its science fiction backgrounds and its photography (again by Zack Snyder), derivative in every aspect and which elicits giggles for the wrong reasons. Oh, there’s also a beautifully designed robot voiced by Anthony Hopkins. If only we saw him for more than five minutes, but maybe that was too much to ask.
Rebel Moon Part One- A Child of Fire Review: The Last Words
Rebel Moon Part One- A Child of Fire is the first act of the new cross-media universe created by Zack Snyder together with Netflix. A sci-fi saga that boasts an ensemble cast led by Sofia Boutella generated by a profound mix of the poetics of the American filmmaker, his past ambitions, his cinematographic references, his passions, and his loves. Apart from this part, which in any case fails to shine as a whole, the film fails in terms of writing and, what is much more serious, in a direction that is too monotonous and staged. An interesting gallery of images and characters in the middle waiting for part 2 for the first half in which Snyder puts all but makes a lot of mistakes, evidence of a bigger project, and yet another operation in which he will leave no stone unturned. Rebel Moon Part One- A Child of Fire is a film that transforms its desire for quotation into a derivation unfortunately as an end in itself. Zack Snyder creates a prologue to introduce a series of rather flat and non-engaging characters, outlining a narrative that he would like to excite and entertain without ever finding a real personal voice.
Rebel Moon Part One- A Child of Fire Review: Zack Snyder's Messed Up Epic Feels Like It Has Already Been Seen - Filmyhype
Director: Zack Snyder
Date Created: 2023-12-15 13:38
2.5
Pros
- The construction of some choreographies.
- Some pretty interesting sonic moments.
Cons
- The characterization of some characters is totally missing.
- Everything moves too fast and feels repetitive overall.
- The duration is noticeable.
- The derivative nature is far too cumbersome.
