After a contentious public fight with Warner Bros. over the artistic direction of its DC comic-book franchise, Zack Snyder, director of Man of Steel, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, and Zack Snyder’s Justice League, went independent, creating his own sci-fi universe at Netflix with the two-part Rebel Moon.
In Rebel Moon – Part I: A Child of Fire, Snyder continues his grand concept with the story of a conquered people fighting for their freedom on another planet. His heroine, Kora (Sofia Boutella), has fled to a sanctuary that is besieged by the same nefarious forces, so she assembles cohorts who share her troubled defeat and worried ambition. Kora rouses them: “If not redemption, how about revenge?”
Snyder’s characteristic interest in spiritual, erotic, kinetic pop mythology serves revenge — but as a vision. Rebel Moon resembles numerous, familiar sci-fi adventure tales but very few have had comparable energy or imagination, or displayed such an ineffable cinematic knack. As Kora gathers forces, her assorted allies — bounty-hunter Kai (Charlie Hunnam), disgraced General Titus (Djimon Hounsou), maternal warrior Nemesis (Bae Doona), cagey pacifist Gunnar (Michiel Huisman), revolutionary Darrian Bloodaxe (Ray Fisher), and enslaved royal Tarak (Staz Nair) — are introduced in stirring episodes. These sequences, along with Kora’s own flashbacks that recall Eva Green’s Artemisia in 300: Rise of an Empire, evoke a compendium of movie and biblical myths, setting the background for a familiar legacy — what Michael Jackson in “HIStory” described as, “Every legend tells of conquest and liberty.”
Working as his own cinematographer, Snyder makes the narrative as lusty as fantasy artist Frank Frazetta, but the sensual daring (teal skies with white clouds, a view of planets looming in an ochre horizon, his signature motif of particles floating in a prelude to violence) produces kineticism and wonder that matches The Thief of Bagdad. Consider how Tarak tames an enormous gryphon, soaring the height of mountains, then both gorgeous creatures peer at us achieving 3D closeness (without 3D). Snyder caps the thrill with Kora reaching up to touch the animal’s blue-black feathers as it sweeps by.
Kids who love sci-fi and video-game fantasy are easily impressed as part of the fun, but the genre has rarely produced filmmakers who are aesthetically distinguished. Snyder has that gift (his imagery unites ideas from Terrence Malick’s A Hidden Life with Walter Hill’s Geronimo: An American Legend — the lyrical, the hostile, plus the historical. And he achieves visual-kinetic excitement that George Lucas, Peter Jackson, and the Wachowskis should envy. With the exception of Chad Stahelski’s dazzling John Wick 4, nothing on screen this year has been so visually striking as Rebel Moon. The essence of movement and spectacle sets them apart — and the expressiveness of Kora’s flashbacks, conveying her emotional need and androgynous mystery (creating promise for Part II), surpasses the juvenile tomboy gestures of Daisy Ridley’s Rey in the Star Wars saga.
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Artistic success is the ultimate Hollywood revenge. Zack Snyder’s Rebel Moon answers a conundrum that has existed ever since Star Wars overwhelmed serious filmmaking with action-movie distraction. Despite George Lucas’s interest in cinema and its technology, his adolescent geek aside won out over his artistic calling. Lucas was temperamentally unable to build a substantial mythos with the Star Wars franchise, even though generations of children were infatuated. Its popularity was eventually trashed when Lucas sold the IP to corrupt Disney and the series was insanely mass-reproduced — extinguishing the sci-fi genre’s artistic potential. The Marvel, Harry Potter, and Lord of the Rings movies followed suit, conquering the box office but with diminishing artistic results. The way Zack Snyder does action and sensual mythology gives Rebel Moon the touch of a visual poet, makes it a victory.