'Rebel Moon' is a pretentious, silly, space opera rip-off

On the agrarian moon of Veldt, retired warrior Kora (Sofia Boutella) lives among the farmers as she tries to leave behind her violent past. However, when a warship commanded by Admiral Atticus Noble (Ed Skrein) arrives in orbit over Veldt and threatens its peace and stability by demanding its resources, Kora and her companion Gunnar (Michiel Huisman) must set out into a dangerous galaxy and recruit fellow warriors to help defend Veldt from the Imperium...

Considering that 'Star Wars' was itself basically a sci-fi riff of Kurosawa's 'The Hidden Fortress' mixed with 'Flash Gordon' serials and the monomyth teachings of Joseph Campbell, movies like 'Rebel Moon' have to be approached and regarded with that same spirit in mind. 'Star Wars' helped to inspire everything from Ridley Scott's 'Alien' to countless animes and comics over the years, but where they deviate from 'Rebel Moon' is that none of them have utilised the iconography and the general vibe in such a clunky and unimaginative way. Being derivative is one thing, but 'Rebel Moon' is a lot of different influences shoved in a blender and set to a high spin, and what comes out the other side is just total mulch.

With an ensemble cast, you can at least hope for some rays of light somewhere along the way - but not in 'Rebel Moon'. Sofia Boutella and Michiel Huisman have the chemistry of an awkward elevator ride, and while Ed Skrein may have jawline for days, it's not enough to give him a particularly distinctive performance that hasn't been done before and better. Charlie Hunnam, meanwhile, deploys a completely misjudged Northern Irish accent that ends up being kind of laughable. Djimon Hounsou has a turn as a warrior general who's urged back to fighting in a scene copped straight from '300', which tells you Snyder is even throwing his own work into the aforementioned blender. In between this, you have characters being set up for the sequel, with Anthony Hopkins voicing a robot soldier with about as much interest as someone waiting for a dentist's appointment.

At two hours and change, 'Rebel Moon' feels like a slog to get through and even with a simple enough structure to it, Zack Snyder's worst tendencies as a writer and director still manage to find their way. There's repeated slow-mo shots, there's all sorts of clunky dialogue weighing it down, the music feels overbearing, it's endlessly dour and self-important, and there is just no way anyone on screen feels like they're enjoying themselves. Yes, a grimdark version of 'Star Wars' might be interesting in theory, but 'Rebel Moon' just feels like it's trying desperately hard to justify its existence by virtue of its supposed distinctiveness. If it's trying to be a more adult version of 'Star Wars', that's already been done with real style by 'Andor'.

In short, 'Rebel Moon' has little to offer either sci-fi fans or the interested viewer. The only people who are likely to get something out of this is the curiously vocal Snyder fanbase who seem to enjoy brigading social media and gaming any kind of public vote to their advantage. In fact, there's better than even odds that this whole segment of the review is going to be screencapped and passed around what remains of Twitter with deliriously outraged quote-tweets. That's about the only interesting thing to be gleaned from 'Rebel Moon'.