SPOILERS BEWARE

Inspiration is everywhere. It shapes literally everything we consume in terms of media. From sweeping epics to the “fish out of water” story, there are a dime a dozen movies out there that take inspiration from another property and put their own spin to make something new and creative. Now imagine if you took inspiration from every major science fiction/science fantasy franchise and did absolutely nothing new with any of them, stringing them along in music video like sequences, you’re undoubtably watching Zack Snyder’s Rebel Moon.

Rebel Moon truly doesn’t have a single original idea. Every scene, every interaction, hell, even some of the concept and character designs are ripped from nearly every sci-fi franchise known to popular culture. This comes as no surprise as Rebel Moon was a failed STAR WARS spin off pitched by Zack Snyder before its acquisition by Disney. There is a lot heavy influence if not straight theft of STAR WARS all throughout the movie and it doesn’t stop there. Rebel Moon is an amalgamation of STAR WARS, 5th Element, Serenity/FireFly, Blade Runner, John Carter/Princess of Mars, Dune, Farscape, Battle Angel, War Hammer 40K as well as multiple anime properties. That’s is just a taste of how derivative Rebel Moon is. As you progress through the sequences that make up the movie you can almost pin point which property Snyder is pulling from to slap together a sequence or scene and my god do they all suck in comparison to what they’re based on.

The main character’s story is a Mad-Lib of every unwilling and unlikely hero story. The team she assembles throughout the movie are some of the most forgettable characters to ever be introduced in a film. I can’t even tell you there names because of how utterly boring they are. No one has enough screen time to gain any sort of character development. One character I believe has only 3 lines of dialogue in her action sequence but spends the rest of the movie not interacting with any of our heroes at all. Our heroes take some losses in this film but none of the characters we lose make us give even the slightest shit for their cause. One of them even gives what can only be described as one of the worst rally speeches in the history of motion pictures because this movie hasn’t even told us why or how or who we should give a single fuck about.

The complete lack of character development doesn’t stop at our heroes. The movies villains are cookie cutter versions of every major sci-fi/anime villain. They’re a big empire, who were once led by a very very good family, but is now led by a very very bad man, done that’s all you need to know. I wish Zack Snyder knew a different way to say “bad guys are bad” without involving a scene of or near sexual assault to get the point across we shouldn’t like these guys. He’s the same trope in 300, Watchmen (which is a plot point from the source material), and multiple times throughout his other original film, SuckerPunch. The main bad, is just as boring and unlikeable as our hero. He is also just a stepping stone to someone he serves who is much worse (sound familiar?). It’s a chore to sit through a movie at the length that Rebel Moon is and hope our heroes win swiftly not only because I want the movie to end already, but because the only thing that separates the heroes from the villains is an empire and attempted sexual assault, and that’s just bad writing.

Zack Snyder is known for his visuals, which in the past have been the one redeeming factor in his film making. He employs fantastic cinematographers that are able to take his direction to craft some of the most epic shots imaginable. 300 and Watchmen have some of the best comic book to film visuals in comic book movies, period. I don’t know if any of them worked on Rebel Moon because even the visuals got carried away. Slow motion is action movies is pretty common place now. If you want to see that dialed up to 100, watch any Matrix movie, it’s there but used in a, at the time, innovative way. Rebel Moon dials up the use of slow motion to the millionth degree. There’s a scene where your John Carter (of Mars) stand in is running to jump of a cliff to land on the back of a griffin. The jump is what would be traditionally slowed down and the timing would seem off enough that audiences would be in awe if the visual and wonder if the hero makes it in time. Snyder decides to start the slow-mo at the running part of the jump and the scenes drags. A big chunk of this movie’s run time is used on slow motion. Half the slow motion is of various characters running, almost jogging due to how slow it all moves. It is ridiculous to see someone who traditionally get this right, get it so wrong.

Rebel Moon is a movie you can skip because if you’ve seen any of the major sci-fi franchise films, you’ve basically seen it already, and seen it done better. While it’s no surprise there’s an extended cut of Rebel Moon (another Snyder trope) coming this year, there is a second Rebel Moon movie coming to Netflix in April and I sure hope that there’s some improvement but I’ll admit my hopes are not high.

Rebel Moon Part 1 – 2/10