Zach Snyder’s Rebel Moon: A Child of Fire is a bombastic and slick sci-fi ‘epic’ that tries desperately to channel some Star Wars energy into a tired genre. It’s not exactly original. A loner farm girl named Kora from the moon of Veldt recruits a ragtag band of mercenaries to help her fight back against an evil empire that wants to have all of her village’s grain (in return for protection).
Rebel Moon isn't the worst movie ever made, but there are lots of problems with it. Poor character development is one of them, but then there's also ludicrous fight scenes that are completely lacking any logic.
You can’t help but draw parallels with other properties (Star Wars being the main one) doing a much better job. Obviously, Snyder is keen to kickstart a new franchise to rival George Lucas’ saga, but I don’t think Disney has much to worry about.
Rebel Moon’s biggest stumbling block for me, though, is the main reason why Kora chooses to rebel in the first place: the bad guys want their ‘grain’. Now, I might have missed something but why does a technologically advanced society that has the capability to travel between star systems need grain?
Interstellar travel is extremely difficult - and by the looks of how it’s portrayed they can fold space, which is even harder - so surely they’ve advanced technologically enough to have solved their food supply problems? It seems like far too much effort to get into a spaceship, travel several light years, land on a moon and terrorise the locals for basic ingredients for bread. I mean, haven't they cracked replicator technology like in Star Trek?
I'm also curious as to why the baddies have decided to pick on a small farm in the middle of nowhere. Why not larger towns or cities that exist on the titular moon? Veldt is presumably similar in scale to planet Earth (because of gravity and whatnot) and so it must have a huge landmass of continents. Imagine if the Russians or Chinese decided to steal some crops from the US and landed in, say, Jarbridge in Nevada. Not the most efficient – or clever – use of resources.
I'm not a fan of relentlesly picking holes in movies – hell, some of the greatest movies of all time have glaring plot holes in them – but there needs to be a reasonable level of subsance and logic to the story and characters for the audience to suspend disbelief just enough to enjoy the ride. Rebel Moon's grain issue (as well as all the other stuff) was too distracting for me to get fully on board with the film.
This seems to be a common problem with modern movies, in particular big budget and brash affairs that are generally steered by the bottom line rather than any sense of artistic integrity. And no, I'm not a bumbling old saddo saying things aren't 'what they used to be' because there have been some terrific films that have come out in recent years that both made sense and were truly enjoyable.
It's the films that get the big headlines with either big name celebrities or big name directors that have a tendency to opt for syle over subtances, slow-mo over sense.
Needless to say, I don't really have any intention of watching Part 2 - although there is a morbid curiosity in me that wants to see how badly this car crash of an entity turns out.
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