Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Rebel Moon: Part One – A Child of Fire’ on Netflix, Zack Snyder’s Space Opera-Slash-Western-Slash-Snoozefest

You may be tempted to further curse the existence of the Star Wars prequels for seemingly informing the upsettingly turgid sci-fi epic Rebel Moon: Part One – A Child of Fire (now on Netflix), the first volley in a planned megafranchise from love-him/hate-him filmmaker Zack Snyder. Let it be known that I’m no knee-jerk Snyder hater – I’ll still defend Watchmen and some aspects of 300, and for my nickel, 2021’s amusing Army of the Dead kinda redeemed him after making a few pretty terrible Superman movies. But Rebel Moon finds him leaning on his worst Snyderesque tendencies, not the least of which is releasing this, the first of a two-parter, which reportedly will be followed by an extended R-rated cut, and then Part Two – The Scargiver (confirmed for April 2024 release), and then an extended R-rated cut of that one, and then probably a gigantic 193-hour megacut of both films that’s sure to feature more stultifying exposition and overstylized violence than anyone of sound mind would ever want. As it is, the 133 minutes of A Child of Fire already feels like way more than enough. 

REBEL MOON: PART ONE – A CHILD OF FIRE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: We open with – wait, is that Anthony Hopkins narrating? Yes it is. A bona-fide knighted Englishman with Oscars on his shelf has now been in both a Michael Bay Transformers movie and a Zack Snyder movie, the latter of which features him giving voice to a blatant C-3PO ripoff while we scratch our heads and groan. And we haven’t even gotten to the what of Hopkins’ narration, which immediately buries us in backstory, and is not at all a particularly good way of opening a movie. Let’s just say the galaxy is ruled by an evil empire of Space Nazis – they even have the hats and epaulets and shitty haircuts and everything – cruising around in warships that look like flying U-boats, conquering the living saliva out of the worlds they come across. And as these things go, a revolution brews and stews on some secret planet somewhere. Needless to say, if you’re a Space Nazi, that revolution must be squashed like a squash you’d stomp with your jackboot.

MEANWHILE, on a small nothing of a moon, some humble farmers farm the soil and say things like, “We’re just humble farmers. We have no interest in your politics,” you know, cornball shit like that. One of those farmers is Kora (Sofia Boutella), who of course isn’t just a farmer. You also getting some major More Than What She Seems vibes from this lady and her silently brooding brow? Of course you are. Kora exists among peasants bronzed by the sun and rendered lean by hard work and clad like 18th-century quakers. They are truly a chamber pot society who couldn’t stand up against fascist cretins with spaceships and laser guns, which is exactly what happens when evil fartknocker Atticus Noble (Ed Skrein) and his rapey Proud Boy soldiers show up to sexually assault the women and take the harvest. Atticus leaves some of his cruel turdburglars in charge, and that’s when Kora goes Wonder Woman on them, but only if Wonder Woman didn’t mind killin’ some folks.

Turns out that Kora used to belong to the Space Nazis, and that’s how come she’s such a skilled whupper of asses. And now it’s on her to make sure all the humble farmers don’t get slaughtered, so she and generic guy Gunnar (Michiel Huisman) set off to assemble a crew. What kind of crew, you may ask? Is it ragtag? An assemblage of diverse types from various worlds? Maybe a guy who resembles a Native American warrior (Staz Nair)? A samurai-type woman (Doona Bae) with laser machetes because lightsabers have been very much done before? A smirking smuggler (Charlie Hunnam) with a jalopy airship? A could of heavily facepainted leaders of the standing rebellion (Ray Fisher and Cleopatra Coleman)? Djimon Hounsou in another utterly thankless supporting role? Sure. Why not cram a walking carpet in there while you’re at it. Throw them in a trash compactor maybe, before they face off against the galactic totalitarians. Now, if only this movie played out with the thrills and suspense of other movies that are just like this one.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: It rhymes with “flar nores.” Also, some serious misguided ambition here a la Jupiter Ascending and the hey-they-only-released-half-a-sci-fi-epic frustrations of Denis Villeneuve’s Dune.

Performance Worth Watching: Hunnam isn’t exactly “good” here, but he puts at least a little gusto into the deadass dialogue. 

Memorable Dialogue: A prime example of the dialogue, which is mostly meaningless mouthfuls of words, via Kora: “It seemed a myth or metaphor created in response to the generations of war and conquest,” she says, speaking like any normal person would.

Sex and Skin: None, although there’s a scene in which bad guys threaten a young woman with sexual assault that really pushes the PG-13.

Our Take: Oh hi – you caught me looking up synonyms for “turgid.” Rebel Moon COLON Part One DASH A Child of Fire finds Snyder killing us slowly with relentlessly awful exposition, a marked lack of originality, boilerplate sci-fi characters, plot twists and betrayals with little dramatic impact and greenscreens greenscreens greenscreens. Oh, also Snyder’s trademark slo-mo, all the better for him to stage his heroes in iconic poses and either drive us nuts or force his fans to convince themselves that that shit is super cool, bro, and not at all cheesier than a Wisconsin truckstop. 

Writing alongside Kurt Johnstad and Shay Hatten, Snyder spends an inordinate amount of time schlepping his protagonists across the galaxy, Kora gathering up pals to help her out, the various locations identified by stultifying subtitles along the lines of GLADIATOR ARENA OF CASTOR – MOON OF POLLUX. Needless to say, by the time they get to UNREGISTERED TRADE DEPOT – GONDIVAL you’ll be checked right the eff out. The movie has a few notable moments where it threatens to get interesting; a “cantina” scene boasting a basketball-sized tabletop tick-creature that controls folks by sinking its slinky tentacles into their brains, or an encounter with a hissing arachnoid-woman who descends from the rafters with impressively evil ceremoniousness. Too bad that stuff amounts to nothing in the long run, tangents off the worn-out path from tranquil opening to noisy finale.

Of course there’s a third-act battle, because without one, movies like this just don’t get funded. But if we actually possess the fortitude required to get to that point in the story, our emotional and intellectual investment in what happens will be a million-zillion half-pennies shy of giving a single good god damn about any of it. It doesn’t help that the story is about essentially nothing; the text here is so dense, it shoves the subtext straight into the fiery lava of the Earth’s core. Theoretically, in a world dominated by established IP we should be enthused by the idea of original sci-fi, but junk like this transcends theory into dispiriting reality. Don’t forget, all this is To Be Continued, just like Dune, but way shittier. And very much unlike Dune, the thought of sitting through another one of these is a depressing prospect. 

Our Call: Snyderp. SKIP IT. 

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.