In the disorganized jumble of the first film (here if you want here is our review of Rebel Moon Part 1) just The Lord of the Ringsfilms ready to go Zack Snyder he quotes blatantly and gratuitously so as to complete his raffle and give himself a nice pat on the back. Because the fundamental point to start from is precisely this: Rebel Moon – Part 2 carries over all the problems of the previous chapter and never manages to resolve them or advance the discussion on this world halfway between fantasy and science fiction with zero depth that the director has created.
The scarer, this is the subtitle of the second part, it almost seems like the first film rehashed and stuck on the Netflix screen, for two exhausting hours that really seem to never end. And for which almost the same things said in the previous review apply, only that in the second (but not last, given that Rebel Moon will have 6 films) round they get even more worse, because here Zack Snyder had to reap what he sowed. Except he likes filming corn in slow-motion too much.
But what do you know about that cornfield from Rebel Moon Part 2
The main problem of Rebel Moon – Part 2 it’s the management of the narrative rhythm. For the first hour practically nothing happens, with even thirty initial minutes in which Zack Snyder for some unspecified reason reiterates scenes of harvesting and harvesting of wheat as if it were a National Geographic documentary (in slow motion, obviously).
And this is where everything immediately begins to falter: the first part failed to give depth to the characters and in Rebel Moon – Part 2 the same thing happens again. For the first hour, Snyder continuously inserts flashbacks to give meaning to the figures of the co-protagonists, hampering the narrative without anything really happening for sixty minutes, except for the preparation of the farmers who wink until it makes you cry at The Seven Samurai or The Magnificent Seven (one is as good as the other). Peasants who, moreover, are already very skilled in any warrior field: a real stroke of luck given that they only had five days to prepare against the invasion of trained, brutal and militarily much better equipped forces. But anyway, in Rebel Moon – Part 2 there are precisely moments in which the narrative stops and one by one the various characters go on stage, remember who they are, and pass the microphone to the next one, without leaving the slightest emotional sign in the spectator’s gaze.
Names, things, cities and Zack Snyder
As had already happened in the previous chapter, also in this case Zack Snyder tries to cram everything he can into the film, every fantasy or science fiction nuance that comes to mind. In doing so he puts commercial-like phrases into the mouths of his characters, so clear and without any narrative subtext that sometimes you can anticipate the actors’ lines on stage.
Rebel Moon – Part 2 seems to be trying to remake Part 1 but with a few more explosions, because in this round after two and a half hours the characters are already all reunited, but only after sixty minutes does something really happen. Except that that something, the battle between the Snyderissimi Seven, the farmers and the bad guys (because there’s no other way to define them, they’re bad and that’s it) is shot in a convulsive, confusing way and without any rhythm.
Characters who kick the bad guys despite having a rifle in their hands, others who throw themselves bare-chested against people armed with the aforementioned rifles while brandishing axes, deaths that would like to be epic but which end up only recalling the scene of Tropic Thunder where Tugg Speedman can’t cry. Rebel Moon – Part 2 alternates Snyder’s usual exhausting slow motion with chaotic sceneswhich do not have the slightest depth of field and, by extension, narrative density.
Rebel Moon Part 1 remake
Just removed the section where characters are recruited, Rebel Moon – Part 2 almost feels like a remake of Part 1: there are far too many reiterated narrative elements, the problem is that they were already handled poorly in the first, so in this case they stand out even more. This second chapter adds nothing to the first: same two-dimensional villain, same (null) relationship between the characters, same embarrassing handling of the robot played by Anthony Hopkins (which remains the most interesting thing of all, at least on a visual level, and makes you wonder why it is exploited so badly). There is also the same violence clearly neutered to fit the rating, and you can once again glimpse where the director will insert all the extra scenes from his beloved Snyder Cut.
The endings or references to the general “lore” are also identical, with characters who appear like this, just to try to stratify the story but, exactly like in the first film, they are only interchangeable figurines without any emotional transport. There are a bunch of close-ups of people screaming in Rebel Moon – Part 2together with the exhausting plastic slow motion that weakens any action scene and an abnormal amount of lens-flare every time there is a slightly more intense light, as if they represented a distinctive sign of any cinematic poetics. Zack Snyder repeats the failure of the first chapter with Rebel Moon – Part 2it’s a shame that this time he no longer even has the benefit of the doubt.
