Zack Snyder’s Star Wars fanfic gets an unpolished sequel
And we are back with Part 2. After much fanfare with the release of Rebel Moon Part 1: A Child of Fire back in December 2023, Netflix dropped its sequel, Rebel Moon Part 2: The Scargiver in April 2024. A 10-year-old project by Zack Snyder, the duology maintains its starry cast of Sofia Boutella as Kora, Michiel Huisman as Gunnar and Ed Skrein as Atticus Noble. Along with them, the cast includes Djimon Hounsou, Doona Bae, Staz Nair, Anthony Hopkins and Cary Elwes.
Set in a war-torn galaxy, ruled by the Motherworld, a Veldt village ends up earning the ire of Admiral Noble. A deserter, Kora, hiding amongst them, takes it upon herself to defend them by gathering a bunch of rebels with the help of the farmer, Gunnar. Oh, and she happens to be the adopted daughter of Motherworld’s leader, Balisarius. While Part 1 does the gathering, Part 2 gives us the Rocky-worthy training montage and the actual battle.
The premise is pretty cool on paper, we have an intergalactic dictator framing his adoptive daughter; a farming village preparing against an invasion; infiltrating scary warships and so on. But the pacing of Rebel Moon Part 2: The Scargiver doesn’t do it any favours. If Part 1 was like a spaceship jumping lightyears in full throttle, Part 2 is as slow Darth Vader’s monologues. And once again, we have so many montages, they are so long, so unnecessary; they don’t flesh out characters or further the plot.
Okay, say the story was perfect, it still wouldn’t work out because it has been executed poorly, as if it is directed by an amateur instead of someone like Zack Snyder. And for that much-needed character arc, we just have the characters sit around and narrate their backstories. They don’t even try to keep it subtle as Hounsou’s Titus straight-up asks Kora to give her backstory. That’s just lazy writing, guys…
If we were to put it, Rebel Moon Part 2: The Scargiver feels like going into a dream of a little kid who loves sci-fi with no finesse or polish – grand ideas with no clue on how to bring them to life. Things finally pick up in the second half when we get the showdown between Veldt and Noble, but even that gets boring as it is dragged out till the end.
And if you could have guessed it by now, no, the story isn’t great either. We have the same problems occurring from Part 1. All that planning to escape the bad guys doesn’t work since the whole concept is flawed – they plan to kill Noble, take down his ship and then what? The Motherworld is a whole floating planet controlled by Balisarius who is hellbent on catching Kora. There is no big-picture revolution or large-scale takedown expected from such a genre.
The dialogues too follow this amateurish strain with cheesy monologues and over-the-top delivery, again not expected from the cast we get. There’s a constant marching soundtrack and a ton of slow motion to emphasize the tension, all to give the sense of urgency and the high stakes.
But we don’t feel it, none of it feels believable as we can predict from the first minute that the good guys will win and the bad guys will lose with a vague open ending should there be a Part 3. We have already seen all of this in Part 1. Nothing hooks you, there is no reason to watch this movie from beginning to end. The only plus point of Part 1 was the idea of novelty, but Rebel Moon Part 2: The Scargiver doesn’t even have that much.
And the fact that it has again and again been put out that Rebel Moon is inspired by Star Wars, unfortunately, both Part 1 and Part 2 feel like cheap imitations. There is not enough story for it to be divided into two movies in the first place. Had they kept it crisp, with a good balance of plot and action, the duology would have fared better. Or better yet, just chop it all up into a miniseries, anything but what we have now.
Read More: Rebel Moon 2 Ending Explained
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Verdict - 4/10
4/10