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Rebel Moon

January 02, 2024

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[avatar]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".


From 3 years ago.
Information or opinions might not be up to date.


5 Minute Read



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. ↩ Reply

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. ↩ Reply

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. ↩ Reply

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. ↩ Reply

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. ↩ Reply

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. ↩ Reply

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. ↩ Reply

Happy Hacking!!! ↩ Reply


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[icon reviews]Summer of '42 ( 1971 ) is about Empathy

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[avatar]  Blender Dumbass

👁 25 ❤ 2 🔄 1 💬 8



First time I heard of the movie Summer of '42 when reading Tarantino's review of American Graffiti. In his review a large chunk is dedicated to this picture, because he is trying to illustrate the aesthetic similarities between the two pictures and the broader genre shifts of the 60s and 70s cinema landscape, that gave way to something like American Graffiti. Shortly after that, there was the review by Troler. And then finally, which made me grab my lazy ass and put it into the chair to watch this film, was a conversation I had with @Troler , where he so kindly spoiled the ending of this movie for me, while breaking down the cinematic techniques used in the film.


#summerof42 #film #review #movies #cinemastodon


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[avatar]  Blender Dumbass

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Steven Spielberg, who took a lot of influence from the 1962 film Lawrence of Arabia by David Lean, said this is a kind of movie that would not be done these days. And he is not talking about the epic production, about the elaborate sets, and very complex sequences, that today in the age of CGI would totally be faked to one degree or another. What he is talking about is more political. Thomas Edward Lawrence was not necessarily a good guy. He murdered a lot of people, some in cold blood. As he himself states in the movie: he quite enjoyed it. And yet the film is an epic tale romanticizing this man as a sort of broken mythical hero. Which begs the question: why?


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[avatar]  Blender Dumbass

👁 33 ❤ 1 💬 3



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