So this is essentially Star Wars without being part of Star Wars

★ 1/2 out of ★★★★

Rebel Moon - Part One: A Child of Fire (2023)

Runtime: 133 minutes

MPAA: Rated PG-13 for sequences of strong violence, sexual assault, bloody images, language, sexual material and partial nudity.

I've got an interesting challenge for you: get a tally counter and press it every time director and co-writer Zack Snyder's unimpressive emulation of Star Wars uses slow-motion. It's a trademark of his films, most of them which come off as unnecessary and overly frequent. But it'll be fun continuously hitting that tally counter.

Originally pitched as a Star Wars movie over a decade ago, but never getting off the ground, you can observe the blatant similarities to that beloved film franchise: the opening, which features our protagonist looking at the planets and stars in despair, the plot which involves fighting an evil ruling force, as well as visits to bars where we encounter various creatures and bounty hunters. Rebel Moon is visually magnificent, accompanied by a melancholy, soothing score. It looks and sounds the part, but is it?

Split into two parts, with the second part coming in April, the film begins with the protagonist, Kora (Sofia Boutella), adapting to life in a peaceful settlement on a planet called Veldt. When The Motherworld, something like The Galactic Empire, invade the planet and demand their farm produce, Kora and a farmer Gunnar (Michiel Huisman) embark on an intergalactic travel to recruit rebels from different worlds to create an uprising rebellion against the tyrannical oppressors. A bunch of people are assembled, including the likes of Djimon Hounsou, Charlie Hunnam, Ray Fisher, Doona Bae and Staz Nair, all of which are wasted in one-note roles.

In heavily drawing inspiration and details from Star Wars, Rebel Moon forgets to ask itself: What makes Star Wars great? Why is recycling almost every aspect from Star Wars necessary to the film? Consider the worldbuilding element in Rebel Moon: each planet is forgettable, lacks a distinctive feature, and instead only showcases extremely precise and exact locations of one area, before jumping to other planets. The settings and mood Rebel Moon creates are also off-putting, settling with poor choices like medieval, dystopian or prehistoric.

As Kora and Gunnar proceed with their journey, the narrative becomes episodic and repetitive. The process of recruiting members repeats itself multiple times and is structured in the sense of meeting them, smoothly resolving an adversity that prevents their participation and getting them onboard their ship. What's frustrating here, besides the thinly drawn characters that often appear and disappear from the camera, is that there is so much potential in approaching this familiar template with a unique spin and expanding its ideas that a TV series would have worked better.

Still, it seems like some effort was put into the dialogue, most of it sounding genuine although too philosophical. Kora has a little more backstory which makes the ride less bland, Skrein delivers a convincing performance as Noble, an admiral who dresses like a Space Nazi, and Hunnam delivers such a strange accent that you'll be unintentionally laughing each time he speaks. There's a surprise twist towards the climax, and although it seems like a waste to have the ultimate battle at a trading post, it's superficially entertaining.

Real science-fiction movies involve unique ideas, and develops them as it grips our interest, excites us and expands our fascination for it. I dislike making comparisons to other films, but take Interstellar, a great science-fiction film of this century; it builds on a fundamental and complex concept, along with utilising its visuals to detail worlds that have unique features, threats and the bending of space-time. Along the journey, the strong emotional hook between Cooper and his daughter eventually becomes impactful and heart-breaking, as it builds to a remarkable finale.

Rebel Moon, however, in rehashing superior movies similar to its genre, forgets to be fascinating. It forgets to be science-fiction.