If you like slow-motion shots of space villagers and burly, shirtless space warriors harvesting wheat with scythes that go on and on and on, you’ll probably love Rebel Moon Part 2: The Scargiver. Somehow, the second part of Zack Snyder’s hopelessly derivative space opera manages to be even more tedious and less inventive than Rebel Moon Part 1: A Child Of Fire.
There is very little to recommend here outside of the few brief scenes with Jimmy the Robot (voiced by Anthony Hopkins, in perhaps his oddest role of all time). Jimmy not only has the benefit of one of the finest modern day actors, he’s also just a very cool robot who gets some very cool moments in The Scargiver. Beyond that? This movie is preposterous and not in a good way.
Spoilers follow.
The last movie set up the Seven Samurai / Magnificent Seven storyline that’s wrapped up in Part 2. A big spaceship filled with Space Nazis (basically) shows up at a tiny, primitive Viking village on a tiny moon in the middle of nowhere and demands their grain. A mysterious woman named Kora (Sofia Boutella) fights off some of the soldiers and then decides that what they need to do is gather a group of heroes to take on the giant imperial army. She goes off to do just that with local farmer Gunnar (Michiel Huisman) and they come back with four heroes to help save the day.
Since they beat the dastardly Admiral N0ble (Ed Skrein) they return to the village (and are repeatedly offer food they never eat) they come back with good news, telling everyone the threat has passed—only to be told that no, actually the bad guys will be here in five days. Admiral Noble must have been only mostly dead!
With just five days left, Titus (Djimon Hounsou) rallies the villagers and our heroes help them gather up all the grain and then the heroes help train the villagers to be special ops forces. That’s three days for farming and two days for target practice.
Still, the bad guys have a Dreadnought spaceship capable of leveling entire cities, plus dozens of other smaller spacecraft and hundreds, if not thousands, of, er, Stormtroopers. That’s going to be pretty hard for five trained warriors and a group of villagers who have never fought in a battle before to defeat!
Actually, it’s going to be super easy. Barely an inconvenience! (Thanks Ryan George, I’m going to keep borrowing this until Hollywood quits this nonsense).
You see, the training of these wholesome, salt-of-the-earth villagers was just so amazing thanks to the tactical genius of Titus that in just 48 hours they’re better shots than the imperial Space Nazis. And Tarak (Staz Nair) has two hatchets and a six-pack, so obviously the good guys are going to win!
Lots of fighting ensues. Lots of slow-motion. Almost an unbearable amount. I was torn between dozing off and laughing out loud at the ridiculous amount of tedious action sequences that ensued, punctuated only briefly by anything remotely original (again, Jimmy who probably could have stopped the entire bad guy battalion on his own). I almost wished they’d just go back to the slow-motion wheat harvesting.
The good guys suffer few losses (almost none) thanks to plot armor and the good guys emerge victorious. Only poor, sad Nemesis (Bae Doona) is shuffled off this mortal coil. And Gunnar, because he had the audacity to love.
Before the fighting we get an exposition dump/flashback from just about every principle character. We learn about Kora’s past and how she helped assassinate the princess when Regent Balisarius (Fra Fee) pulled a coup on the royal family and then framed her for the murders. Everybody has some melodramatic, tragic backstory which we get to learn about via flashback and narration.
This is not how you make a movie. I’m sorry, it’s just bizarrely amateurish for someone who has made as many films as Zack Snyder. You’re just told what happened via monologue. The characters have almost no interaction with one another other than Gunnar and Kora. And even there it’s mostly just exposition and trite pablum.
I will say that for the most part, the actors do their level best with the wooden dialogue they’re given. Skrein is having fun as a cartoon villain. And the Princess Peach cameo was fun.
(Seriously look at that princess!)
The third movie—if there is one—appears to be some form of “find the lost princess” so I guess we’re pivoting from Star Wars and Seven Samurai to Star Wars and Super Mario Bros. That could work! I’ve always wanted to see a Super Star in slow-motion.
Rebel Moon Part 2 is out now on Netflix. I do not recommend it.
You can watch my video review/rant of Rebel Moon Part 2 below:
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