Rebel Moon, more like feeble goon

Rebel Moon is the type of movie you make when you really want to play with the coolest new IP at the store, but your mother reminds you that you have IP at home. Without reading anything else about the movie, you could easily tell that this was meant to be a Star Wars movie. In fact the only thing separating Rebel Moon from Star Wars is that people enjoy watching Star Wars films.

There’s a really good review over at Vulture by Bilge Ebiri.1 So I’m not going to spend a ton of time giving my critiques of the movie because other people have already done that! I will say that this movie sags under the weight of its own grandiosity. It’s obsessed with big ideas and big metaphors for tyranny and impression but lacks the basic skills necessary to stick the landing. What results is two hours of stunningly beautiful shots, interesting worlds, and paper-thin dialogue where characters just tell you how they’re feeling.

When you write a movie full of cliches and tropes, it helps to lean into them, appreciating the structure and scaffolding they build for your audience. Often when people write they become obsessed with doing things in a new and novel way, certain that audiences are bored with the run-of-the-mill hero’s journey. In reality, most audiences understand the importance of tropes and rely on them to navigate a film. It’s enraging to watch Rebel Moon because those story beats are all present, they’re just used in all the wrong ways.

The most egregious part of Rebel Moon is when they meet the rebel alliance. The group of rag-tag fighters from across the galaxy arrive to find the brother and sister duo that leads the resistance a little puzzled as to why this group would contact them. That’s a fair point because the only connection these rebel leaders have to Kora and her gang is that Kora’s farming planet supplied them with grain once. The group goes on to tell them about assembling an army and fighting the empire yatta yatta yatta. Then, out of nowhere the brother steps up and agrees to join them, giving his army a rousing speech about what the resistance stands for. In a touching moment we watch as members of the crowd slowly step forward, stern looks on their faces as if they’ve been moved by their leader’s words. It’s the type of speech that’s common in the latter half of movies when the main characters are down on their luck but need reminding of what they stand for and how they’ll continue to fight for a just and noble cause. There’s only one problem: this is the first time we’re meeting any of these people! What do we care if some nonbinary twink rebel leader steps forward? Who is that person? What is the significance of any of this?

Ultimately, that’s the main question I kept coming back to throughout the movie: what is the significance of any of this? I doubt there is any honestly. But hey another Synder cut is getting released so maybe try number two will be better than the first one ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

Some other particularly awful parts of this movie:

• We meet so many characters but never get their backstories until one character literally goes person by person explaining who they are and why they’re wanted.2

• When the bad guys capture the brother using a weird spider chair thingy and restrain him, they for some reason keep his gun in his arm.3

• A shot-for-shot remake of the Anikan dying but being revived scene except this time it’s in an ocean, not in a volcano.

• They introduce a robot with feelings only to never show him again.4

• Kora thanking the random grain dude (I forgot his name I’ll be honest) for getting them all together when the leader of the village, that this dude got killed, was the first one to mention that to Kora!

• The fact that their overall strategy involved recruiting a bunch of rebels so they could destroy a single dreadnought and then continue living in their village as if the empire wouldn’t know exactly where they were and immediately go to kill them all.5

• A scene where Kora recounts meeting the king of the empire who tells her that his daughter (who has weird healing powers) is more empathetic than him and could save them all. My dude, you are the one telling people to go destroy civilizations, what are you talking about?

• Constant slow-motion scenes. Learn another trick!