Rebel Moon-Part One: A Child of Fire – Review

There is almost nothing defensible about this one. A soulless attempt to recreate a pop culture phenomenon that grew out of a mixture of real tragedy and online toxicity, the #ReleasetheSnyderCut movement is one of the most fascinating things in recent film history. Years of aggressive behavior, vandalism, and rage from men who don’t feel like their superhero movies are “adult” without excess CGI blood and someone shouting “fuck” every few minutes – all generated an extra $70m to actually create the film they thought already existed. That four-hour monstrosity certainly contains a perfectly watchable two-and-a-half-hour movie within it that is not what the director released. Netflix threw him a bunch of money to reverse-engineer this phenomenon with his failed Star Wars pitch. You can tell that’s the plan because before the movie even came out Snyder was shit-talking this cut (while promoting the hell out of it) and Netflix had already agreed to release a director’s cut.

None of this matters because the released film is absolute trash.

My soul weeps for the talent involved with this one. Snyder himself is not a bad director when it comes to sweeping visuals and landscaping. The introduction to the ridiculously named Rebel Moon-Part One: A Child of Fire is fun in a PS4 cutscene kind of way. It’s set over a bunch of narration from “No Acting Required” legend Anthony Hopkins, dumping a lot of world-building into a very brief period that honestly just sounded like gibberish after a while. We’re then introduced to a whole lot of characters that make up the bulk of the film’s runtime (the film’s similarities to Cats do not end with this). There’s wonderful physical performer Sophia Boutella, cast as Kora. We’ve got Djimon Honsou in his third supporting performance of 2023 (for the only good movie he has please see Gran Turismo). Ray Fisher appears as *checks notes* Darrien Bloodaxe. Ed Skrein appears as a scene-chewing Nazi and stands as maybe the only good performance in the film. Hell, Jena Malone, Cary Elwes, Corey Stoll, and even Charlie Hunnam have been roped into this monstrosity.

Snyder makes sure you know from moment one that this was meant to be a Star Wars film. His evil Nazis show up at the behest of their Emperor…er, uh, I’m sorry, the King of the Motherworld (Cary Elwes). They’re here to exact tribute in the form of pretty much all of the planet Veldt’s food just nine weeks from this little visit. From there a very basic version of Seven Samurai occurs, with Kora gathering such heroes as *checks notes* Kai and Titus. I’d describe these characters to you but the film didn’t really bother with any depth for them and I’m quite tuckered out by the holiday season.

I’m begging you, all of you, to step in a cease allowing Snyder to serve as his own cinematographer. He’s recently begun this and while his intro is beautiful in a way…the rest looks like trash. I know one of you knows him well enough to say this to him. I know one of you can begin the process of saving this sweet himbo from himself. Careers go up and down and this one is on the precipice of destruction. Step in. Maybe also introduce him to a writer that could help him take his ideas from brain to screen.

Thank goodness for Tom Holkenborg or there would be nothing to take away from this film. Not that he delivers anything incredible but he’s always been the steady hand to Snyder’s “captain of the football team that sat with the nerds at lunch and thought their comics would be cooler if he made them all rated-R” attitude. Holkenborg does what no one else involved in this project really tried to – make something Star Wars-y. It’s a lackluster attempt but one that still feels like the only piece of filmmaking with any originality to it. I say this and Snyder straight-up has lightsabers in this movie.

I’m going to be a bit surprised if even the Cult of Snyderverse has any fondness for this one. It’s ugly to look at for the most part, the performers often feel like something between hostages and friends doing a favor, and the blatant attempt to recreate a unique phenomenon all just pile on and make this film’s greatest sin harder to ignore. It’s boring. Say what you will, at least the man has never made a boring movie. He’s made some stuff that’s pretty hard to watch due to how awful it is (looking at you, Suckerpunch), but never has he made something that I had a hard time watching. At points I thought about taping my eyes to the screen just so they wouldn’t keep trying to slip off.

Do what you will with this one. I don’t recommend it and I don’t know one person that would get anything out of it other than a sense of two hours wasted. Rebel Moon-Part One: A Child of Fire is maybe the biggest misfire of 2023 other than Marvel going all-in on Jonathan Majors.

Rebel Moon-Part One: A Child of Fire is streaming on Netflix. Watch if you want. Here’s a trailer and even that’s kind of boring.