Rebel Moon - The Scargiver (2024)

Zack Snyder and Netflix have returned to the Rebel Moon universe with the second part of their first movie. This isn't really a sequel, given the first film is only the first two acts of the story. Scargiver is the finale of what could have - and should have - been a single film. kay, it should not have existed, given how terrible and derivative it is; but if it had to exist, then one film would have been more than sufficient. Kurosawa (Seven Samurai), John Sturges (Magnificent Seven), and Jimmy Murakami (Battle Beyond the Stars) all managed to tell the exact same tale with a single movie. There is no reason Synder needed to drag this out, except for his love of mind-numbing slow motion, lack of understanding of the basics of visual story-telling (pacing, show-don't-tell), and Netflix's desire for more content.

Picking up right after the end of the first film, Punch Blaster (Sofia Butella) and her band of one note recruits return to Dirt World. There, they are welcomed as heroes for killing the Villain, Captain Hair Cuttery (Ed Skrein with a terrible bowl cut). What about the rest of the Space Nazis, you might ask. Aren't they still in a big-assed ship and still in need of food? Apparently, if the commanding officer of a Space Nazi ship is killed, they have to retreat to the Mother World (their capitol planet) for...reasons. Space Nazis have never heard of battlefield promotions.

Of course, the audience knows that Hair Cuttery isn't dead - he was resurrected/turned into a cyborg/both and is on his way, looking for some payback. And scones.

Meanwhile, Punch and her peeps are put to work in the fields, in a segment that goes on for what feels like 5 hours. Have you ever longed for wheat shucking in slow motion? Well, congratulations - Snyder feeds that particular fetish. Then we are subjected to the characters sitting around a table and literally telling each other their motivation. It seems like a parody of the idea of exposition dumps, but Snyder is clearly serious about this as character development.

Finally, the heroes learn that Hair Cuttery's ship is still coming for the grain. They rally the villagers - who all turn out to be natural warriors, even though they have, apparently, never held guns before (although, after stating there are no guns in the village, very dirt farmer looking guns show up in the battle). The Space Nazis show up and there is a long, long, loooong battle (the last hour of the film) that goes from silly to tedious. I won't spend time on it here. Suffice to say, if you like slow motion laser bolts, explosions and interchangeable heroes running around screaming and O-facing when they kill a Space Nazi, you'll enjoy this.

The conclusion sees Punch get on board the COAL-powered starship (complete with dudes with shovels in an engine room out of Titanic - no Irish jigg, sadly), destroy the ship, kill Hair Cuttery (assuming the Space Nazis can't reattach heads), and save the day. A few of the interchangeables, as well as Punch's love interest (who is a charisma free zone with hair), are killed, but don't worry. No one seems to mind that much. We learn that Space Jesus - the princess Punch thought she had killed - still lives, setting up Rebel Moon 3: Help Me With My Wedgie.

Snyder has no idea what he is doing. The story is both simplistic and convoluted. It misses the core of the original tale - which is about people of action gaining an understanding of or accepting the hollowness of their existence and from that knowledge, transcending it to become heroes. Snyder fails to create characters that we can connect with on any level. He also creates characters who have nothing to learn. No one grows or develops in this film (I include both of the movies as a single story). Snyder has also lost what was, arguably, his strongest skill - creating memorable, comic book style images. The action scenes are dull and difficult to follow and the decision to fill so much runtime with slow motion farming is baffling.

The Rebel Moon films tried something I generally support - creating a new story, even if it is based on a previous one. However, in the hands of Snyder, what could have been an entertaining space opera is, instead, a tedious exercise in content creation. It feels like you are watching a kid hyped up on twenth Red Bulls, smashing his action figures together and screaming "pew pew pew" at the top of his lungs.

Rating: 1/5