Rebel Moon: Part Two - The Scargiver

Rebel Moon: Part Two - The Scargiver

Just before last Christmas, Netflix gave us a somewhat unwanted gift in the form of the first part of its sci-fi action spectacle Rebel Moon. This film was supposed to follow the best of Star Wars and The Magnificent Seven. Unfortunately, that did not happen, and Rebel Moon was panned by both critics and the audience.

Now, Netflix subscribers have the opportunity to watch the second part, which directly follows the end of the first. But is it worth suffering through it again?

Even a Dog Could Write a Better Script

While there are people who, for some inexplicable reason, quite liked the first part of Rebel Moon, the majority of viewers rated Zack Snyder's latest effort very negatively. And no wonder. At its best, the film has only average effects, the fight scenes are dull, and the acting performances are non-existent. But the script took the biggest hit.

His incompetence is insulting even to ten-year-old children. Most adult films have a much better-structured and more believable plot. Not to mention the quality of the dialogues.

Zack Snyder was for many years one of the best Hollywood directors, delivering one hit after another to the audience. Back then, however, he had quality screenwriters and a sane production team behind him. But Snyder wrote Rebel Moon himself, and it painfully shows.

The story begins exactly where the first part left off. The main heroine managed to recruit a small team of adventurers willing to defend the village against the evil Mother World. However, the Mother World has a professional army with tanks and star cruisers. The villagers, on the other hand, have only sticks in their hands and are completely untrained.

Fortunately, there are the aforementioned adventurers who have less than a week to teach the stubborn farmers to fight, which, of course, will be more than enough against professionals. Meanwhile, the harvest still needs to be gathered, which is the main focus of the first hour of the film. It's like an American variation of The Tin Drum, except in space.

However, Hanzlík and company used combines for work, while the local stakhanovites make do with just a few scythes and an anti-gravity cart. Well, what else would you use in the age of interstellar travel?

Sadly, the second half is not a deliverance, although it is undoubtedly better. The second hour of the film deals more or less exclusively with the fight itself, which is occasionally quite spectacular, but most action scenes are utterly generic and devoid of any innovation. In this regard, there is a slight, though still insufficient, improvement compared to the first part.

Slow-Motion Shots Are Evil

The film is about two hours long, similar to the first part. However, if all the slow-motion scenes were played at normal speed, the runtime would barely be an hour. Slow-motion shots are everywhere. Not only in the fight scenes, where they sometimes make sense, but time also slows down even during fieldwork.

This Didn’t Work Out

Zack Snyder has found a new low. While his earlier works are still popular and respected today, both parts of Rebel Moon belong in the trash heap of history. The problem is that Snyder doesn’t want to stop with this travesty and would like to make at least one more sequel in the future.

Given the very poor audience feedback and low viewership, fortunately, another installment is unlikely, although with Netflix, you never know.