Rebel Moon: Part One - A Child Of Fire (2023) Dir: Zack Snyder
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Zack Snyder is a rather mediocre director when it boils down to it, and this Netflix original sci-fi epic is perhaps a perfect example of just this. The film's announcement was met with great excitement, its release by massive disappointment. I would have avoided it, if not for just how wild the reactions were.
The first thing to take issue with was how much god-awful exposition there was. It honestly as though every other scene was a needless monologue of poorly written, dull information. Snyder seemed to rely on this for any sort of world-building. It was mind-numbing.
Speaking of mind-numbing, the dialogue, even that which wasn't exposition, was terrible. I'm in half a mind to suspect Snyder of using an A.I. to write the screenplay. If it were not for my determination to see the film out for the sake of this review, I would have turned it off after about twenty minutes.
The narrative was unbearably dull, trope-ridden and almost impressively uncreative. It really did come across as though Snyder had picked all his favourite science fiction stories and tropes and decided to mash them together into his own narrative. None of this was helped by a complete lack of structure to the story - more than half the film felt like it was first act
My quarms didn't stop there. The film's visuals were incredibly substandard. I thought the CGI was terribly inconsistent, and the sets looked way too much like sets, as opposed to real places. Snyder's obsession with slow motion shots made everything drag horrendously, especially the action sequences, which were laughable enough already.
Terrible acting and terrible writing meant that it was virtually impossible to care about any of the characters, never-mind that well over half the film is spent introducing new, bland and forgettable characters.
Sofia Boutella could have been a good protagonist, if not for her constant overacting and, surprise-surprise, poorly written character. I really wanted to like her character, but she was doomed from the start.
Michiel Huisman played one of the single most empty, charisma-less and boring characters I've had to witness in quite some time. I was begging for him to show even an ounce of personality, but alas, there was none to show.
Ed Skrein provided the film with a pretty pathetic antagonist, who was built up to be worthwhile character, but underdelivered a whole lot. The most frustrating thing was that he had potential, and his performance wasn't even that bad, but Snyder clearly didn't want to give any of his characters much of a chance.
Djimon Hounsou, Bae Doona and Staz Nair were supposed to be exciting members of the supporting cast, but failed to make even a slight impact on me, thanks to their soulless personas, lack of significant screentime and, not to sound like a broken record, underdevelopment.
Charlie Hunnam's character seemed to think he had been on-screen, and had been more developed than he was, because Hunnam acted like he was the main character, despite being a rather mediocre supporting role.
Funnily enough, the best performances came from those who featured the least - I guess there was less time for them to be either exposed or ruined - those being Ray Fisher, Cleopatra Coleman, Anthony Hopkins and Fra Fee.
Overall, I wasn't exactly expecting much to begin with, but my word, this was bad. The way in which Snyder unashamedly ripped off other science fiction stories and woefully reformed them into his own creation was genuinely laughable. This is undoubtedly one of the worst films I've watched in a long time.
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