By The theatrical cut of the first part of Zack Snyder’s sci-fi epic “Rebel Moon” is now out on Netflix and reviews haven’t been kind.
Snyder came up with the idea for the film back in the late 1990s and worked with writers Kurt Johnstad and Shay Hatten to turn it into a working script. The result is a two-part film which has both theatrical and director’s cuts (at a later date).
Unfortunately with just a 23% on Rotten Tomatoes from critics, it marks Snyder’s second-lowest scoring film to date – just shy of the 22% his “Sucker Punch” landed in 2011. Audience score of 69% is better, but not great either.
Speaking with Variety, Johnstad was asked about the film’s reception so far to which he says:
“I don’t read the reviews, I never have. Critics have a job to do. We live in a democracy. Everybody gets to vote. If people watch the film, they’ll have an experience, and they will either enjoy it or they won’t. It’s flavors of ice cream.
In my career of 20 years doing this, reviews have never equated to performance. A movie will either perform or it won’t. People will either love it and be connected to it, and I think what this movie has is an emotional drive and a core and characters that are vulnerable.
And of course, there’s sequence and action and visual – it’s a magnificent looking film. But I think that at the core of it, it’s got emotion. There’s an emotional engine and a currency that runs through the film that I think works, so I’d invite people to check it out.”
The first photos from the second of the films have gone up at EW with Snyder dubbing the film a “war movie”.
He also says the casting of Fra Free as the galaxy’s tyrannical ruler Belisarius. Free is 36, but has been aged up deliberately for “Rebel Moon” so that should Snyder ever pursue a spin-off then the younger days of Belisarius could be covered with Free playing his own age. Snyder adds:
“Now I’m not saying that’s happening or that there’s even really discussions of that, but I think that he’s such a rich and interesting character and he’s such a great actor that the potential is really amazing. If the story were to continue past the two movies that we’ve made, his role would increase exponentially, as you can imagine.”
“Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire” is availabe now whilst “Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver” is set to premiere on Netflix in April 2024.
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