Rebel Moon is taking a kicking from reviewers. A 23% Rotten Tomatoes score from critics puts it in Sucker Punch territory, and the audience score has slipped to 68%. Even our resident Snyder Bro flat out hated it. It has been a long time planning.
Snyder came up with the story after watching Battle Beyond The Stars in the late 1990s and worked with writers Kurt Johnstad and Shay Hatten to turn it into a working script for a two-movie sci-fi extravagance. So what of these reviews?
Variety asked co-writer Johnstad about them:
“I don’t read the reviews, I never have. Critics have a job to do. We live in a democracy. Everybody gets to vote. If people watch the film, they’ll have an experience, and they will either enjoy it or they won’t. It’s flavors of ice cream.
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.”
Meanwhile, EW has run a feature on the sequel that includes the first two images from the upcoming conclusion:
Snyder has dubbed this second part a “War Movie”. So it’s basically Dune vs. Dune Part Two?
Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire is available now on Netflix. Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver will be released on the streamer in April 2024.
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