Rebel Moon writer Kurt Johnstad weighs in on Zack Snyder’s newest film getting pelted with bad reviews.
i just watched it. it was so-so.
i would call it “space nazis vs an alderaan suicide squad”
I’d say the, ahem, borrowings from The Seven Samurai were quite blatant, via the rightfully forgotten Battle Beyond the Stars
Battle Beyond the Stars! Good stuff. I’m old enough to have seen that one in a theater.
Oh I figured it was a straight up homage.
I’d never heard of Battle Beyond the Stars and now I’m more interested in that than I ever was for Rebel Moon.
Battle Byond the Stars was a classic! A pure fever dream of scifi kitch… this, the dirty dozen, and the price is right were my childhood stay home from school sick daytime tv memories.
This line is priceless:
Remember Lobo? He disobeyed orders, and now Sador’s wearing his left foot
I watched about half before I had to turn it off. The technical aspects are wonky. Like, you have two people in frame but one is entirely out of focus while they talk? Why? The CGI looks terrible at points. The story is convoluted and razor thin. The info dumps are annoying although I kind of get it, it’s world building, but still. There are better ways to do it. The characters are one dimensional.
Admittedly I still have a bit left in the movie, but goddamn did it have a terrible first half. Honestly we ought to get our money back for this.
All in all it’s just a ‘we want to be star wars without paying for the IP’ thing, or ‘Dune was pretty cool, let me try’.
Edit: watched the rest. It’s the most paint by numbers shit I’ve ever seen. Aggressively dull and offensively bad in every regard. Even the acting at times is laughable.
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.
Well, it is nice that he believes in Rebel Moon.
I think it was a pretty weak film but not Batman vs Superman level of bad. Definitely deserves criticism for its poor story, bad dialogue, awful special effects, non-existent editing, and general lack of anything resembling excitement or a soul. Should it be critically panned and/or ridiculed? Absolutely.
poor story, bad dialogue, awful special effects, non-existent editing, and general lack of anything resembling excitement or a soul.
That seems unfair. I thought some of the special effects were ok.
Rebel Moon loses a lot of credit in my book for the hentai tentacles, the Buckbeak scene, and the constant feeling I had throughout the entire movie of “I am looking at actors acting solely on a digital stage.” OK, I get that digital backgrounds are commonplace these days, but if a film is unable to hide it well it completely prevents me from suspending my disbelief. For whatever reason, no matter how high budget a Netflix film is, it’s like they hire the cheapest green screen guys to do it for every single production and it always stands out to me.
I couldn’t get into it. Has all the things I would want to see but I just didn’t care about the characters or story.
I thought it was barely okay. I fell asleep during part of it. It was just too long to not tell a better story.
I think what this movie has is an emotional drive and a core and characters that are vulnerable.
Yeah… vulnerable to criticism!
This isn’t an IP. This is an original story.
I keep thinking of Kubrick, widely regarded as one of the greatest directors of all time, who (almost?) always started from novels. He was adapting IP but the outcome was always “original” in terms of his take on it. The shame is that there are plenty of classic science fiction novels that could have been used as a starting point for the money and effort that Snyder wasted.
Similarly, consider Tarantino. Django Unchained, for example, was obviously derived from the 60s movie Django and was heavily influenced by the movie Mandingo, and yet the result was very original. Snyder and his cowriters just couldn’t perform at that level.
Snyder’s best movies are ones he didn’t write. Snyder isn’t good at understanding the stories adapting either, but because he tends to sticks so close to the source material Snyder accidentally makes good adaptations.
I liked it.
It’s not a good movie, but it was entertaining. The action was fun. A bit too much slow mo.
I thought it could have been better as a show, but I wouldn’t trust Netflix with itZack Snyder and too much slow mo? But, it’s the iconic duo!
Like Michael Bay and really big explosions!
It could have been better with a script.
I kind of liked the slo-mo, but the “epic leap through the air” was done too often.
Removed by mod
I thought it was ok but I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone though.
I gave up when we got to the low-wattage Colonel Landa. C’mon man.
