Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver Review

The saga of Kora and her band of warriors continues in the second part of Zack Snyder’s Rebel Moon series.

Kora (Sofia Boutella) arrives back on Veldt with a group of diverse warriors, including a former general, Titus (Djimon Hounsou), Tarak (Staz Nair), an exiled nobleman, and Nemesis (Doona Bae), a cyborg swordsmith. Kora and the warriors find out they only have five days to harvest the wheat and prepare a defence against the full might of the Imperium, led by a man brought back from the dead, Admiral Noble (Ed Skrein).

The reception for Rebel Moon: Part One – Child of Fire can charitably be called diverse. It mustered a pathetic 21% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes, a 57% audience score, and a 5.8 on IMDB. The reception for Scargiver has been even worse, with the film gaining the lowest Rotten Tomatoes scores in Zack Snyder’s career. Even Joblo, an outlet that gave Child of Fire a positive review, was lukewarm towards the second part. A number of YouTubers have attempted to gain mileage from Scargiver’s poor reception.

A lot of the same criticisms were made about Child of Fire can be made about Scargiver. The story was derivative and simple, the characters were shallow, and the film left numerous story ideas hanging, such as the warriors’ backstories, so they could be used in the expanded media. Scargiver was aiming to be a big battle film and conclude with an epic story, like Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part Two, and Avengers: Endgame but those franchises spent a long time establishing their characters and world so the conclusion could be rewarding. Rebel Moon’s characterisation was so bad I thought who the hell was Elise Duffy’s character and why was she a part of the warriors? At least Boutella and Djimon Hounsou are recognisable actors, and Nair and Bae play notable archetypes but that didn’t hide the fact the characters were so thin.

One of the influences on the Rebel Moon films was Seven Samurai. In the Japanese classic, a village hires seven masterless samurai warriors to help them fight against a band of bandits. Seven Samurai was a slow burn that spent time establishing its characters and the situation worked in a three-act structure. It did well in its Federal Japan setting and again as a Western in 19^th Century Mexico, but it didn’t work as a space opera that was setting up a massive universe. This was a film about an intergalactic empire with advanced weapons that was taking on farmers who mostly only had tools, an empire had technology that could resurrect the dead but was forced to take grain from a small village. At least in films and books like Avatar and Dune, the imperial forces were after a rare resource.

The plausibility of the story was stretched by the fact that the village only had a short time to prepare for the battle. They needed to learn how to use firearms and fight with their farm tools. The gap between the two forces was so big that it’s hard to believe a battle would have lasted more than a few minutes.

A factor hampering Scargiver even more is it coming out after the release of Dune Part Two which was a critical and commercial success. Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of Dune showed how rich space opera can be with its characters, world-building, and social commentary. They were vibrant films and Rebel Moon lacked that.

One of Snyder’s strengths has been action direction and the Scargiver did pick up when the battle started. His trademark speed ramping was present and better used in the previous film. It’s hard to screw up a laser swordfight and it gives the audience a hint of what Snyder’s lightsabre fights would have been like. However, good action sequences can only go so far if the plot and characterisation are weak. It made Scargiver like Sucker Punch, a weightless spectacle.

The Rebel Moon films are meant to set up a wider universe, but they fall into the trap that many franchise films do when setting up future installments: it’s more interested in the world-building and the setups than telling a self-contained story. Films like Star Wars, The Matrix, and Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl set up big media franchises, but the initial entries did work as standalone stories. Rebel Moon was trying to be a franchise before establishing its foundation. Yet Snyder has already promised four more films and an extended cut of the original two.

Snyder has seemingly become more of a control freak. Since working with Netflix, he has become a co-writer and his own cinematographer, yet he’s not good in those roles. Snyder’s best films have been adaptations, like 300 and Watchmen, and his remake of Dawn of the Dead was written by James Gunn. His original ideas have either been derivative, like with Rebel Moon, or utterly insane. Snyder has been known for being a visually dynamic director, but he has worked with Larry Fong for most of his career. With Army of the Dead and Rebel Moon Snyder used a lot of soft focus but made Scargiver look out of focus. It was distracting. Snyder needs to collaborate more with writers and a cinematographer.

Scargiver is not going to win over any detractors of the first film. There were some decent action scenes, but that’s not enough to hide the uninspired story and world-building. Even Snyder’s biggest fans would struggle to defend it.