Rebel Moon - Part One: A Child of Fire
NETFLIXTen years after Man of Steel, Zack Snyder delivers his most visually striking flight scene in Rebel Moon - Part One: A Child of Fire. As Kora (Sofia Boutella), Gunnar (Michiel Huisman), and Kai (Charlie Hunnam) travel the galaxy in search of warriors to battle the Imperium armies of Balisarius (Fra Fee), they stumble upon Prince Tarak (Staz Nair), who can repay a debt if he tames (and rides) a Bennu, a Griffin-like creature who can fly in the air.
Tarak gently tames the creature with a thoughtful gaze before he flies off with it, exactly the way Clark Kent (Henry Cavill) connected with the Earth’s core before he flew up, up, and away for the first time as Superman in Man of Steel. Snyder, who also acts as cinematographer for Rebel Moon – a natural progression in his visual storytelling since Army of the Dead – paints extreme close-ups of Tarak’s hand, bathed in sunlight, on the Bennu, softly caressing it to gain its trust, to which he then boards and flies directly into the sky.
The following moment is as pure as Clark’s first flight, as Snyder directly shows Tarak’s connection with the planet and its creatures. As the two lose their momentum, with the Bennu throwing Tarak on a ledge, the Prince picks himself back up. He jumps on the creature, with Snyder’s signature slow motion capturing the moment and focusing it even more by slowing it down further as he is about to land on it. The end result, coupled with a choir-like anthem composed by Tom Holkenborg (AKA Junkie XL), which directly recalls Hans Zimmer’s Flight from Man of Steel, is an emotionally-stirring moment that ranks high in the pantheon of Snyder’s filmography and a reminder of why he’s one of the greatest visual artists working today.
In Rebel Moon, Snyder creates his own worlds while paying tribute to the films that inspired him the most as an artist, which not-so-subtly include George Lucas’ Star Wars, David Lynch’s Dune, and Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai. He’s also a great admirer of the work of Frank Frazetta, whose mythological fantasy paintings inspire pure awe every time someone looks at them. Snyder gives the ultimate homage to these films in the first installment of a two-parter that, while imperfect in its storytelling and character development, never fails to dazzle in his image and sound-making.
Part of this undercooked story has to do with the Netflix mandate of releasing a PG-13 version of Snyder’s full vision and an R-Rated extended cut which will make its way to the streaming service after Part Two: The Scargiver releases in April. Unfortunately for Snyder, this means that his movies' “theatrical” versions won’t be well-received, as he cuts crucial storytelling points to save for the extended cut.
This happened with Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice, where most of Lex Luthor’s (Jesse Eisenberg) plot against Superman was only barely stitched together in the PG-13 cut, only for the R-rated Ultimate Edition to shed light on some of the most important parts of the story, ultimately making it a much better movie than when it was initially released in theatres. Of course, one can’t forget the Snyder Cut debacle, where pundits attempted to convince fans that it didn’t exist and that Joss Whedon “saved” Justice League from being a total disaster…until Snyder shocked the world in 2020 with the unprecedented announcement of Zack Snyder’s Justice League, to which he finally showed the world just how good his original vision was the following year.
Netflix clearly wants to reverse-engineer a Snyder Cut movement by releasing an inferior version of Rebel Moon to generate hype on the “better” cut. As a result, Snyder and editor Dody Dorn remove most of the character development on Nemesis (Doona Bae), General Titus (Djimon Hounsou), and the Bloodaxes (Ray Fisher and Cleopatra Coleman), who are shells of side-protagonists with very little elements for audiences to attach themselves to. It’s even more apparent during a combat scene between Nemesis and Harmada (Jena Malone), a spider-like creature who appears out of nowhere and has very little to do, even if the action scene itself is the coolest thing imaginable.
The same goes for the Bloodaxes, who are hunted by the film’s main antagonist, Atticus Noble (Ed Skrein), and show up when Kora and Gunnar call upon them. While their entrance is grand, and Fisher’s performance as Darrian Bloodaxe is terrific, the emotional attachment is non-existent, particularly during a visually moving sequence where Darrian fights off against one of Atticus’ ships. These are the warriors that Kora and Gunnar want to assemble in an attempt to save the independent moon of Veldt from the tyrannical iron fist of Balisarius.
Compared with Seven Samurai, Kurosawa’s 207-minute epic gave each main character their introductory scene and some development before the second action-driven half, making the stakes feel grounded and real. Snyder has the visual panache, but the studio mandate forces him to remove the key element that undermines most of his studio-mandated cuts: character growth. As a result, the supporting arcs in Rebel Moon feel incomplete, even if performances from Bae, Hounsou, and Fisher are remarkable.
But where Snyder fails at drawing compelling supporting arcs, he more than makes up for his shortcomings with a fully-fledged arc for Kora, as Rebel Moon's beating heart and soul. Scenes on Veldt where Kora touches the dirt close to her face do more to help the audience understand where she comes from than whatever lacking side character scenes Snyder had to cut for this film. However, a few visually enveloping flashbacks of Kora’s past as Arthelais, an Imperium Soldier who fought for the King (Cary Elwes) and Queen (Rhian Rees), help the connection to the protagonist to feel even more palpable.
Snyder fills those flashbacks with snow, giving his painterly frames an even more evocative feel as he uses slow-mo to represent Kora’s tormented mind, as a brainwashed soldier who thought she was fighting for the future of the Motherworld, only for her to realize the King’s corruption (through the maniacal face of Balisarius). Such anguish is even more powerful when the images tell the story instead of its dialogues, forcing all of us to look at the film instead of directly watching it at face value. Most of Snyder’s stories are told through his visual tableaux, which are littered with [very] blurry bokeh in its opening acts, but clear themselves up once Kora begins to accept her past as not a mistake but a part of her she needs to wake up if she wants to defeat Balisarius once and for all.
As Kora, Boutella gives the best performance of her career, mostly conveyed through her eyes and connection to the most primal aspects of Veldt. She does not want to reveal a part of her to the villagers. However, when Kora’s friend Sam (Charlotte Maggi), the purest of souls on Veldt, who previously showed the robot Jimmy (wonderfully voiced by Anthony Hopkins) its innate humanity, is in danger, she doesn’t hesitate and brings out what she attempted to subdue. This emotional shift is beautifully represented through Boutella’s eyes, which widen once she assumes her past life as Arthelais, leading to a chain of events that feels steeped in Star Wars lore, but is decidedly Snyder at every step of the way.
No one can create an image quite like Snyder. As much as there are plenty of people who talk about how Snyder’s own compositions are “too blurry,” without even knowing proper shot compositions and the word “bokeh” (a grim future for film criticism is afoot if the current generation is uninterested in studying film as an art form and learning key notions of photography), no one can even match the level of visual and aural artistry Snyder brings with each frame and sequence he crafts in Rebel Moon.
Consider how he utilizes bokeh. When Snyder flashes back to Arthelais’ life, it’s all strikingly realized and beautifully framed, with Frazetta-like compositions giving each shot a mythic quality. Snyder is uninterested in the meat-and-potatoes of the characters but in how each protagonist creates their own myths of themselves by fighting against the Motherworld and reclaiming their narratives. It’s highly evident in Kora’s arc, but more through the figure of the Bloodaxes, who invisibly exist throughout most of the runtime as mythic figures Noble wants to hunt down, only for them to become leaders of the Rebellion once they are attacked by Noble, who taunts at them through the figure of the King’s Gaze. The bokeh slowly (but surely) dissipates as the characters progress within the story, representing more hope as they make their way to the second part, which, through its post-credits trailer, looks to be a full-on action extravaganza that only a true artist Snyder could ever bring to the screen.
As polarizing as he may be, Snyder’s image and sound-making remain unmatched, even with glaring flaws that prevent Rebel Moon - Part One: A Child of Fire from truly soaring. It’s a shame Netflix didn’t go with his full vision first instead of attempting to hype audiences for “The Snyder Cut” with a trimmed-down first part. But even with an inferior version, Snyder knows how to move audiences through an array of emotionally soul-stirring images. While a director’s cut is coming, Netflix should allow audiences to see Rebel Moon without dialogues, forcing them to look at the movie and see the art Snyder creates through his deliberately paced visual style.
The mark of a true artist can only be felt with this intellectual exercise, but no one seems ready to attempt the challenge. When the time comes, Snyder’s filmography will be there to teach audiences how to look at the elements that matter the most when it comes to image-making. There is hope that it will come sooner than later when audiences decide to jump off the hype train of artificially manufactured films for self-congratulatory awards and challenge their views of art and filmmaking because the time is here. All there is left is one small choice for the future of cinema as a visual medium. It may be challenging, but it’s more than life-changing. The only question that remains is figuring out who takes the leap.