One of the quickest ways to get shouted down on the Internet at the moment is to say anything remotely positive about Zack Snyder’s new Netflix movie Rebel Moon — which, as I’m sure you’ve all seen by now, has been ripped to shreds by savage reviews and spawned countless Reddit threads and social media posts about everything from the director’s overuse of slow-mo to whether or not you can trust Rotten Tomatoes scores.
Personally, I remain genuinely mystified as to why Snyder’s movies attract the kind of foaming-at-the-mouth anger that no other Hollywood stinker ever seems to generate. Where was all this widespread viciousness when, I don’t know, Paul Blart: Mall Cop was released? Everybody, and I do mean everybody, seems to be trying to one-up the next person right now when it comes to raging about Rebel Moon’s many supposed faults — and, well, good news! We get to do this all over again in about four months, with the release on the streaming giant of Rebel Moon — Part Two: The Scargiver, the first trailer for which has just hit the internet.
Per the official Netflix synopsis, this second half of the Rebel Moon saga continues the story “of Kora and the surviving warriors as they prepare to sacrifice everything, fighting alongside the brave people of Veldt, to defend a once peaceful village, a newfound homeland for those who have lost their own in the fight against the Motherworld. On the eve of their battle the warriors must face the truths of their own pasts, each revealing why they fight. As the full force of the Realm bears down on the burgeoning rebellion, unbreakable bonds are forged, heroes emerge, and legends are made.”
We’ll have to wait and see if the rest of the film changes anyone’s opinions, but I highly doubt it will. Netflix executives, along with anyone who worked on Snyder’s two-part space adventure, probably swallowed hard when the first critics’ scores for the movie hit Rotten Tomatoes. Days ahead of its debut on the streamer, the closely watched Tomatometer score for Rebel Moon stood at an appallingly bad 23%, with reviewers lambasting everything from the blatant ripoffs of movies like Star Wars and The Magnificent Seven to an overuse of slow-mo.
One reviewer went so far as to dismiss it as a “mockbuster.”
The Rotten Tomatoes audience score, meanwhile, currently stands at a much more reasonable 66%, based on more than 5,000 user ratings. The movie, in my opinion, is neither as bad as its most vicious critics suggest, nor as good as the Snyder fanboys want to believe. It’s cool to look at. The visuals are great — everything else, not so much. But, then again, that’s more or less my same feeling about the Star Wars movies. Mindless entertainment, all. To each his own.
Check out the first look at Rebel Moon — Part Two: The Scargiver below.
