Rebel Moon – Part 2: the scarred woman, the film review

The brave journalist colleagues who in these hours have had the task, like myself, of finding something to say about the second part of Rebel Moon have rightly wondered about how this film positions itself compared to its first part. Is The Scar Girl better or worse than Daughter of Fire? And by how much?

Small summary for those who, understandably, have removed the entire Rebel Moon affair from their memory. In the intentions of Netflix and director Zack Snyder, this pharaonic multi-chapter project had to kick off an original universe that would become the heir to Star Wars, or at least it could be credited as Netflix’s Star Wars. Given the difficulty in remembering even the basic information regarding this release from a few months ago, we can calmly declare this achievement a complete failure.

There Rebel Moon review – part 1.

Rebel Moon is a failure that The Scar Girl can’t save

We know this, as unlike what some people think, we don’t feel particular sadism in giving low ratings in reviews, especially when we have to draw blood from turnips to find something to say about a project that offers very little inspiration. Netflix knows it, it has forced journalists into a very long embargo on reviews, expired within minutes of the film’s arrival on its platform, keeping a decidedly lower profile than the first chapter for the launch of Rebel Moon – Part 2: the scarred woman.

Zack Snyder also knows this, who in recent months with an attitude somewhere between desperate and arrogant has started a cautious construction of an alternative narrative, between interviews and various statements, hoping to be able to make another Snyder’s Cut from a project that is already his own. According to Snyder, if he were allowed to add more material, more footage, more running time, Rebel Moon could be the film that never was, not even for a minute.

Why is what doesn’t work inside the film and what should save it is outside the final cut? It goes without saying that if in four and a half hours Rebel Moon struggles to find its meaning of existence, maybe the problem isn’t adding material, but look at what is already there and understand why it doesn’t work.

For much of the press Rebel Moon – Part 2: the scarifier is slightly better than its predecessor. However, when you are already in the abyss, it doesn’t require this great effort of the kidneys to try to climb back up at least a little, instead of starting to dig.

the Scar reaps what the Daughter of Fire has sown

Personally I find this question is as empty as everything Rebel Moon has given us. The difference between the first and second part is minimal, because in fact we are on the same ground: the Scarer reaps what The Daughter of Fire sowed. A bucolic analogy that lends itself well to a film that uses a surprising amount of running time to tell us in slow motion or at least at an altered pace a harvest on which the destinies of the inhabitants of the rural outpost Veldt depend.

A job of many days that must be compressed into three to then start two intense moments of training for the warriors and farmers to then face the Mother World. The film outlines some explanations as to why this roadmap must be followed, but this bucolic obsession is perhaps the most fascinating mystery he offers us.

In two hours, Rebel Moon – Part 2: the scarer deals with only three narrative macro-sequences: the harvest mentioned above, a very long siege that culminates in the final battle and a short collective flashback in which the protagonists put their past on the table, they share it and give each other big pats on the back before heading towards almost certain death.

Rebel Moon – Part 2: the scarer, in her smallness, is all there. On a wooden table around which they meet the group of outcast warrior protagonists, impossibly beautiful, smooth, shaved, toned. After days of toil in the fields, one of the charismatic leaders of the group, General Titus (Djimon Hounsou), urges everyone to put their history, their past, their secrets on the table, so they can go into battle together. Like Alcoholics Anonymous, but with less conviction and naturalness.

What remains to be said, what else can we ask ourselves about in a film which, after having lingered for half an hour on an inexplicable Virgilian fetish of life in the fields and relationship with nature and toil (don’t imagine a radical resurgence, political, anarchist because it would also be exciting, but that’s not really the case) does he pause the whole story, sit the characters down and they take turns giving a brief summary of their misfortunes?

It is an emblematic scene in its own way, in which it is transfigured the back and forth between screenwriters looking for ideas. But then she cut off her arms to use deadly weapons for her revenge, but then he vowed to never give up again. Only then we forgot to transform this brainstorming session into a screenplay, a scene, a film.

It almost makes you want to hug Staz Nair who in the role of Prince Tarak (a character Tarzan coded, one would say in the world of fans) for the first time manages to string together more than 10 words. Given the solemnity of the occasion, perhaps for the first time, he is allowed to wear something on his very sculpted and always well-oiled body. It is not a banal joke about his attractiveness, about his being presented as the very muscular handsome man. It’s a fact: after nearly four hours of sci-fi epic, this is more or less what we know about his character.

He manages to tame large winged beasts and willingly goes around bare-chested. After his canonical two minutes of recounting his past, we can add just a couple of other pieces of information, so banal and empty that perhaps it would have been better to investigate why without the need to oil his chest, day and night.