Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire, or simply Rebel Moon, is a 2023 American space opera film directed by Zack Snyder from a screenplay he co-wrote with Kurt Johnstad and Shay Hatten, based on a story Snyder conceived.[3][4][5][6] Its ensemble cast features Sofia Boutella, Djimon Hounsou, Ed Skrein, Michiel Huisman, Doona Bae, Ray Fisher, Charlie Hunnam and Anthony Hopkins. The film is set in a fictional galaxy ruled by the imperialistic Motherworld, whose military, the Imperium, threatens a farming colony on the moon of Veldt. Kora, a former Imperium soldier, ventures on a quest to recruit warriors from across the galaxy to make a stand against the Imperium before they return to Veldt.
Following a limited theatrical release, Rebel Moon was released by Netflix on December 21, 2023. It received negative reviews from critics. An extended cut is set for release in 2024, and a sequel, Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver, is scheduled for release on April 19, 2024.[7][8][9][10]
Plot
On the backwater moon of Veldt, Atticus Noble, the sadistic admiral of the militaristic Imperium, arrives on behalf of the Motherworld, an interstellar empire fueled by centuries of conquest and war. He explains that his troops are hunting for a band of rebels led by siblings Devra and Darrian Bloodaxe, and offers to buy the village's surplus grain. The village's leader, Sindri, refuses the offer, claiming they barely have enough to survive. One villager, Gunnar, contradicts Sindri and indicates that the village might have some surplus. Noble kills Sindri and orders Gunnar to prepare a large amount of grain—which will not leave the village with enough to survive—in ten weeks. Noble departs, leaving a handful of soldiers to oversee the harvest. Another villager, Kora, finds most of the soldiers preparing to gang-rape another villager and kills them. Kora warns the villagers that Noble will massacre the village once he returns, unless they mount a defense.
Kora and Gunnar depart for the port town of Providence to recruit warriors for the village's defense, including Titus, a disgraced Imperium general. During their journey, she reveals to him that she once served the Imperium as a soldier, having been adopted by Balisarius, an Imperium commander, after he killed her family and destroyed her home planet. She became bodyguard to Motherworld princess Issa, who was expected to usher in an end to the Imperium's conquests. She was unable to protect Issa during her coronation, when the royal family was assassinated, and Balisarius subsequently declared himself regent before renewing its conquests.
Arriving at Providence, the pair meets smuggler and criminal Kai, who agrees to take them to recruit Titus. On the way, Kai takes them to two additional warriors: Tarak, a beast tamer, and Nemesis, a talented cybernetic swordswoman. The group finds Titus in a drunken stupor on a remote moon. Titus agrees to fight for them as well. Using Gunnar's previous dealings with the Bloodaxes, they then arrive at planet Sharaan to meet them and their rebellion. Darrian agrees to defend the village and brings a handful of rebels with him, while Devra considers a fight against Noble's dreadnought, the King's Gaze, hopeless and a waste of their resources. After they depart Sharaan, Noble arrives and eradicates its population as punishment for assisting the rebels.
Kai tells Kora that he has been moved by her quest to abandon his illicit life as a smuggler and that he has one last shipment to drop off to leave that life behind him. He takes the group to a trading post at which Noble's ship has arrived and restrains them, betraying them to Noble and revealing he had always intended to do so for the bounties on their heads. Noble identifies Kora as Arthelais, a wanted deserter and fugitive. Kai demands that Gunnar paralyze Kora; Gunnar instead frees her and kills Kai. The other warriors are unshackled as well. A battle ensues, with Darrian and Noble among its casualties. Afterwards, the surviving warriors return to Veldt together.
Noble's corpse is recovered by Motherworld forces, and he is revived after having spoken on an astral plane with Balisarius,[11] who demands that Noble end the insurgency against him and bring Kora to him alive so he can execute her himself.
Cast
Sofia Boutella as Kora, a former Imperium soldier who rallies warriors from across the galaxy to fight against Motherworld
Djimon Hounsou as Titus, a former general of the Imperium recruited to lead the fight against Motherworld
Ed Skrein as Atticus Noble, an admiral and Balisarius' right-hand man
Michiel Huisman as Gunnar, a farmer and secretly in love with Kora who joins her in her attempts to defend his homeworld, Veldt
Rebel Moon is inspired by the works of Akira Kurosawa, the Star Wars films and Heavy Metal magazines; its logo is an homage to the latter.[17] Johnstad and Snyder first started talking about creating the film in 1997.[14] The project began development as a Star Wars film that Snyder had pitched to Lucasfilm, shortly after the sale of Lucasfilm to The Walt Disney Company in 2012. This pitch was to be a more mature take on the Star Wars universe.[18] Snyder also pitched the idea as both a video game and a film to Warner Bros. Pictures "a couple of times".[19] The project was later redeveloped by producer Eric Newman and Snyder, first as an original television series, before settling on a film by Netflix.[5]
Casting
Sofia Boutella's casting in the lead role was announced in November 2021.[20]Charlie Hunnam, Djimon Hounsou, Ray Fisher, Jena Malone, Staz Nair, Doona Bae, Stuart Martin, and Rupert Friend joined the project in February 2022.[21][22] Fisher first became aware of the project around 2019 or 2020 back when Snyder planned it to be a TV show, being shown whiteboards and showing his interest when Snyder explained that those were for a "little space thing" he was working on.[23]Cary Elwes, Corey Stoll, Michiel Huisman and Alfonso Herrera joined the cast in April 2022.[24] On May 16, 2022, it was announced that Ed Skrein had replaced Friend as the film's main antagonist due to scheduling conflicts, with Cleopatra Coleman, Fra Fee and Rhian Rees joining the project.[25] On June 8, 2022, it was announced that Anthony Hopkins had joined the cast as the voice of Jimmy, an impossibly sentient JC1435 mechanized battle robot and one-time defender of the slain king.[26]
Filming
Filming commenced on April 19, 2022,[27] with Snyder sharing the first images from the set on Twitter that day.[28] Snyder also served as cinematographer.[29] It ran until December 2,[30] with 152 days of filming taking place in California, to tap into $83 million in qualified spending and tax incentives.[31]Stuart Martin, Cary Elwes, Rhian Rees and Ray Porter acted out and recorded the film's script for Snyder to listen to while preparing the day's shoot;[32] they appear in the film as Den, The King, The Queen, and Hickman, respectively.[33]
Post-production
The titles for the two parts are reported to be Part One: A Child of Fire and Part Two: The Scargiver, according to teaser trailers released at Gamescom in August 2023.[34][35]
Rebel Moon had a limited theatrical release on 70 mm film in four major cities: Los Angeles (Egyptian Theatre), New York (Paris Theater), Toronto (TIFF Bell Lightbox), and London (Prince Charles Cinema) on December 15, 2023,[37] before its streaming debut on December 21, 2023, by Netflix.[38] Deadline stated in a web article"Zack Snyder's Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire took over the Netflix throne in its debut week". Snyder announced plans to issue an R-rated extended cut, set to release before The Scargiver, in addition to its original PG-13-rated cut.[39][8][9]
Reception
Performance
After premiering December 22 on Netflix, the film garnered 23.9M views in a matter of days, making it the #1 most viewed English-language film on the service from December 18 to 24.[40]
Critical response
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 23% of 155 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 4.2/10. The website's consensus reads: "Rebel Moon: Part One – A Child of Fire proves Zack Snyder hasn't lost his visual flair, but eye candy isn't enough to offset a storyline made up of various sci-fi/fantasy tropes."[41]Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 32 out of 100, based on 38 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable" reviews.[42] First reviews of the film were mostly negative, praising its worldbuilding and action sequences but criticizing its storytelling, character development and derivative nature.[43]
Variety writer Owen Gleiberman commented, "while eminently watchable, [Rebel Moon] is a movie built so entirely out of spare parts that it may, in the end, be for Snyder cultists only."[44] Clarisse Loughrey of The Independent gave the film 1/5 stars, calling it "a film populated by some of the Zack Snyder's Justice League filmmaker's worst impulses: a mess of imagery, some of it attempting to shock, congregated largely around the idea of what might look good in a trailer."[45]The Guardian's Charles Bramesco also gave the film 1/5 stars, writing, "the finished product has only the vaguest contours of ambition, diminished by a half-assedness dinkifying the latest CGI-jammed saga to decide the fate of the universe."[46]Roger Ebert.com's Simon Abrams gave the film 1 star out of 4 and characterised it as too similar to Star Wars and Seven Samurai, containing an over-reliance of visual spectacle with clichéd characters and themes.[47]
Robbie Collin of The Daily Telegraph gave the film 2/5 stars, noting its similarities to Star Wars and saying that "this first half of Snyder's diptych... is more of a loosely doodled mood board than a functioning film – a series of pulpy tableaux that mostly sound fun in isolation, but become numbingly dull when run side by side."[48]The Messenger's Jordan Hoffman gave it a score of 4/10, writing, "As a space opera, it has none of the weight of Dune, none of the characterizations of Guardians of the Galaxy, none of the madness of Jupiter Ascending or The Fifth Element and none of the pep of Star Wars."[49]
Fred Topel of United Press International was more positive, calling the film "an entertaining filtering of science fiction and general storytelling tropes through the lens of creator/director Zack Snyder."[50] The South China Morning Post's Daniel Eagan gave it 3.5/5 stars, writing, "What Snyder brings to the project is a sensational world-building vision and a muscular filmmaking style that can pummel viewers into submission."[51]
Future
Sequels
Rebel Moon is planned to be a franchise that begins with a two-part film; each part to be shot back-to-back.[33] By August of the same year, the follow-up was officially confirmed with the title Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver, and scheduled for release on April 19, 2024.[52][35] Development of additional installments in the story are ongoing, with the script for the third film already being worked on as of December 2023.[53][54][55] Snyder's exact series-length plans are unclear, having stated that the film is intended to be the first in a trilogy,[56] but also that it would be followed by a "trilogy of sequels", implying four total.[57]
Other media
Snyder has stated that his intent is for Rebel Moon to become "a massive IP and a universe that can be built out."[5] A role-playing video game based on Rebel Moon was in development as of March 2023, alongside an animated short and a graphic novel.[58][59] A novelization of the film written by V. Castro was published by Titan Books on December 26, 2023.[60] Snyder announced in July 2023 plans for a TV series focusing on Balisarius.[61] At Gamescom in August 2023, Snyder announced that Super Evil Megacorp was developing a four-player co-op action game that would be exclusively available on the Netflix Games platform.[62] In September 2023, Evil Genius Games sued Netflix for terminating a deal that allowed them to produce a tabletop role-playing game set in the Rebel Moon universe.[63]
A four-issue prequel comic entitled Rebel Moon: House of the Bloodaxe by writer Magdalene Visaggio and artist Clark Bint will be published by Titan Comics in January 2024.[64] Set five years before the events of the film, the comic is set to depict backstory for the characters of Devra and Darrian Bloodaxe. In November 2023, a narrative-podcast, an animated comic book, and an animated series were announced to be in development with each project taking place chronologically before the feature films.[65] The animated short is set to tell the story of the Kali, the "shadowy figures" who power the Motherworld's "most dangerous technology".[12]