by Blender Dumbass

Aka: J.Y. Amihud. A Jewish by blood, multifaceted artist with experience in film-making, visual effects, programming, game development, music and more. A philosopher at heart. An activist for freedom and privacy. Anti-Paternalist. A user of Libre Software. Speaking at least 3 human languages. The writer and director of the 2023 film "Moria's Race" and the lead developer of it's game sequel "Dani's Race".

If you saw 300 or the Snyder's cut of Justice League you know what to expect from Zachary Edward Snyder. A lot of cool ass slow-mo shots. A lot of detailed frames with a lot of particles and stuff. A lot of mood shots that are there probably only for beauty. And a lot of violent violence. Rebel Moon is not an exception. It is very much a Zack Snyder movie.

I can understand the discrepancy between user rating and critics rating on this movie. The movie is trying way to hard to be a soft fork of Star Wars without adding much else. It's not something like Dune or Avatar where the world is built with so much attention to detail that it is just delightful to look at it. It is also not The Fifth Element with it's extravagant imagination. Everything in the world of Rebel Moon creams Star Wars. The worlds are all either sandy or leaky with rain. And the bad guys are clearly inspired by Nazis. Though in Star Wars at least the worlds are more fleshed out and detailed. And the Nazis are not as noticeable. While in Rebel Moon Nazis just happened to have a different logo.

Dune and Star Wars both successfully pulled of an interesting combination of low tech and high tech. Especially in Dune, where thinking machines are banned, so the technology is very interestingly minimalistic for a sci-fi setting. It is more of a ancient setting than sci-fi, but it has a fair share of sci-fi elements in it, to make everything interesting. Rebel Moon is shooting for the same aesthetic. We have a farm of people who make food by hand. They utilize a horse-like creature to make trenches for seed. They live in wooden houses. They wear huge beards. They have nasty smelly clothes on them. Like if it was a viking era film. But there are also energy beam guns and space Nazis. And stuff like that.

Story-wise the movie is quite predictable. Characters do not have too much dimensions. Most of them are quite one dimensional. Like for example the Tarzan guy played by Staz Nair has no development and had basically the same smiley cool vibe to him throughout the whole thing. The most interesting character is Kora played by Sofia Boutella she has an arc so to speak. But there was a weird decision to make her arc off screen. She has flashbacks to her being a different person. And that means that she had a ark some time before the start of the movie. And throughout the main plot even she is one dimensional.

Visually speaking the movie is amazing. It has a lot of visual effects and computer generated stuff. Some of the computer generated stuff looks strangely easy to make. While other things look very impressive. I think due to how fast they were trying to make the movie and how big it is, they were cutting corners in some areas. Probably the artists were Overworked and Underpaid. The many worlds in the movie consist mostly of high concept, low effort backgrounds. For example there is a planet where the background is filled with flying stretched cubes. Another planet where it looks like Tokyo. And a few planets that look like desert. Or half desert. Though it doesn't mean that it doesn't look great. Every shot is presented with enough oomph to it so you feel something good about everything you see.

Action-wise the film is directed by Zack Snyder. You will have a lot of violent violence in slow motion. And cool ass shots every god damn time. Though I feel like he could do it better. There were a few shots that I felt were too long. And there were scenes where the progression is so bad because we are constantly interrupted by fights. And therefor the decisions of the characters feel artificial. There is a lot of talking what you think in the movie. There was one scene where the main characters reveal a group of strangers exactly the kind of plans that they have. Not even considering for a bit the possibility of spies being present in where-ever they are. It's a movie about rebellion to Nazism. And the movie doesn't even try to look into surveillance as a possible threat. The funny thing is, it does byte the main characters in the ass later. But then it just makes them look stupid. And the whole character arc that supposedly was there before the movie began is contradicted. This movie is a paradox.

There was an interesting decision that I don't know what to think about. I remember before seeing it I was scrolling aimlessly on Mastodon. And somebody posted a frame from this movie complaining about it. And saying that he will not watch any of it, because it was too much. The frame comes in the very beginning. It shows a ship of Nazis going though a kind of wormhole. The wormhole is shaped like vagina. I mean... It's a Zack Snyder movie.

Happy Hacking!!!


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