…………………………………………………

Rebel Moon Movie Review

Rebel Moon is a 2023 science fiction film directed by Zack Snyder and starring Sofia Boutella. It’s a mediocre flick.

………………………………………………….

“Never set foot on the wrong side of history“

………………………………………………….

When a colony on the edge of the galaxy finds itself threatened by the armies of the tyrannical Regent Balisarius, they dispatch a young woman with a mysterious past to seek out warriors from neighboring planets to help them take a stand. This is the first of two movies that will both be released on Netflix and it’s not a good start of this new franchise that Snyder clearly wants to build into a large IP.

This is one of those familiar flicks that are so reliant on copying ‘Star Wars’ that he may as well have gone on to make a movie in that franchise had Disney allowed him. There is also some ‘Dune’ here as well and so many other stale elements, but Snyder failed to coalesce them into a coherent whole.

For a Zack Snyder movie, Rebel Moon is actually not too frenetic. There is a lot of action in it, but not too much. The fight and battle scenes were quite fun and well executed, but when the film wasn’t centered on them, it was worse as it focused on boring, lifeless dialogue.

The characterization also left a lot to be desired, though the acting performances are overall serviceable. Sofia Boutella is very cool in the main role, but we never quite got to meet this woman, so she ended up being a bland heroine. Noble is a fun villain and I found him to be delightfully cartoony. Most of the villains here stole the show from the boring heroes.

………………………………………………….

Rebel Moon is also populated by memorable alien species, solid world building and pretty good VFX. The score and sound are also terrific. But the movie is so soulless and so forgettable that I was quickly bored by it. It was also overlong and lacking any defining characteristics that could make it distinguishable from other genre films.