1. Always call Anthony Hopkins when you have something to explain. This man has won two Oscars, played everyone from Hamlet to Hannibal Lecter, and has a British accent that can melt butter. So, if you are Zack Snyder – or even if you are not Zack Snyder, but are about to launch the second chapter of a needlessly complicated space saga (Rebel Moon – Part 2: The Scarred Woman, available on Netflix, ndt) and you need to give a nice summary for the viewers – enlist Sir Anthony to say things like: “On the edge of the Mother World, around the gas giant Mara, lay the small moon of Veldt…. So it was that a woman named Cora and a man named Gunnar set out from the village to gather warriors who could oppose the dreadnought. In an ambush on the floating docks of Gondoval, Cora triumphed over Admiral Noble, leaving her body in pieces on the rocky shore.” It’s still nonsense, but damn it sounds good when he says it with the utmost solemnity. Plus, Hopkins has already voiced a robot with a fondness for pagan headdresses, and we’re not getting very far here.
2. Sofia Boutella is hot. Algerian actress, dancer, gymnast and model, Boutella has built an impressive CV since, in 2014, Kingsman – Secret Service definitely got her noticed on the big screen (she was the assassin with a prosthetic leg). To date you will have seen her in a large number of films, from Blonde atomic to The Mummyuntil Climax by Gaspar Noé, a work practically on acid. She manages to face even the toughest, her physicality makes her the perfect choice to play the action heroine, and when someone is needed to lead the spectators into a mythology that continues to fold in on itself and that is unable to support the weight of her own overloaded narrative, she is still the right woman. If you give her a gun and then position the camera so that she shoots right next to the lens, then you will repeat the shot a million times. If you give her a sword instead, even better. Why….
3. Swords are cool. Especially if they are hot. Especially if they’re wielded by a character like Nemesis (another cool name), a kind of mystical samurai with a cyborg arm (cool arm) played by Bae Doo-na (cool actor, already appeared in wacky sci-fi stuff like Jupiter – The fate of the universe And Sense8; she is also very good at The Host by Bong Joon-ho, which you should watch instead of this one). Especially if the person holding them has two light sabers and is swinging them in a way that makes you feel like the drugs are finally taking effect. Especially if you stick them into the bodies of some bad guys who seem surprised to see a glowing sword sticking out of their chest. Repeat this a million times too.
4. Slow motion is cool. Getting mad at Zack Snyder for shooting his action sequences in slow motion is like yelling at water for being so damn wet. Since when with 300 he transformed the epic of the Spartans into a gallery of men killing other men at the speed of a snail, that became his trademark. I don’t remember who said that Snyder’s films would only last 22 minutes if you ran all the scenes at normal speed but, whoever it was, I hope he won a Pulitzer for that statement. Our Zack shows off theinsta-majestic slo-mo for a lot of things: soldiers blowing up, jumping from bridges onto piles of coal, punching, kicking, walking down the gangway of a spaceship, threshing grain alone, threshing grain in a group, threshing grain anywhere moment is the cosmic equivalent of the magic hour on the Veldt. Seriously, if this movie is going to get younger people excited about threshing wheat just because the movie makes it look so good in slow motion, then he’s right. Do what you gotta do, TikTok.
5. Harvest dances among space farmers are cool. Rebel Moon – Part 2: The Scarmaker spends a good portion of its first hour turning a pre-battle harvest dance into an opportunity to make big speeches, some usually noise and what should pass for the formation of the band of warriors who will defend this space-faring agrarian community from evildoers Space Nazis. There are sequences showing the training of the various members and moments of intimacy between the tormented ex-soldier turned savior of the galaxies played by Boutella and the handsome farmer played by Michiel Huisman. But, above all, it is an opportunity for everyone to poetically confess past traumas, which gives rise to mini films in slo-mo within the main film. And for the photogenic cast members, in their grubby T-shirts and standard space sweaters, to shout inspirational phrases and have a little party. Again, TikTok should make this a new trend.
6. Long, wordy sequel titles are cool, especially if they have a subtitle. See title.
7. Robots suffering from existential crises are cool. IMDb informs us that the name of the android voiced by Sir Anthony Hopkins is “Jimmy”, but we have taken to calling him “Chekhov’s robot” since Snyder and his co-writers Shay Hatten and Kurt Johnstad introduced him to us in Part 1Meaning what Daughter of Fire. A member of the Royal Guard security force left on the planet as some sort of defense measure against the evil space Nazis, Jimmy has instead become a pacifist and has taken to wearing bizarre horned headdresses and staring intently into the horizon, occasionally lots of visiting the village to reflect philosophically on life, the universe and everything else. He is not one spoilers note that, like the Russian playwright’s proverbial gun, Jimmy is destined to explode in the third act. Or maybe he’s a spoiler. Honestly, at this point, who cares?
Anthony Hopkins voices the robot Jimmy. Photo: Netflix
8. The pyrotechnic battle sequences with spider-like tanks, crashing spaceships, lots of explosions and people popping out of the earth with rocket launchers are cool. And to his credit, Rebel Moon – Part 2 devotes almost all of its second half to firefights, slow-motion combat (come on!), and blowing everything up. After Cora cut her hair – so she means business now! – and Ed Skrein’s resurrected Admiral Noble shows up on the planet to issue threats and ultimatums, Gunnar raises the alarm and then… boom!, off we go. Snyder is in his element, stretching out each gut punch and/or sacrificial skewering up to three times the required length, inserting mournful choruses and triumphal fanfares, and even occasionally bringing to life images that seem stolen from the cover of an old pulp book. Mostly, though, it’s just a lot of sound and fury, and you know what that all means. If not, ask Sir Anthony. He knows Shakespeare well.
9. Pretending it’s a two-part epic and then at the last minute throwing open the door to a third installment thanks to a confusing plot detail that suddenly becomes pivotal is…cool? You have been warned, folks.
10. Life is sadly short. And also too short to read reviews of films like this. Certainly too short to watch bad movies. Definitely too short to dive into a poorly constructed space saga that threatens to take up even more of your time and attention, merely providing reheated pop culture leftovers submerged in pounds of digital hot sauce. Stay away from screens. Go for a walk. Establish your own wheat thresher collective. Anything but suffering in front of this film.
From Rolling Stone US
Tags: Rebel Moon Part Scar review Zack Snyders film Netflix
