Gert wrote: Looks cool.
I am a bit worried that the whole thing is planned as a trilogy before the first part is even out.
It's not. It's a duology as it only has the two films, both of which have release dates as seen at the end of the teaser (22 December 2023 for A Child of Fire and 19 April 2024 for The Scargiver).
Sophia Boutella hasn't had the best track record of ending up with the best roles, so if her agent has landed her the lead I do worry about the script.
This feels like the type of movie that has to start with a long-winded live action prologue or blocks of text to give everyone context, and if you're starting (as Snyder has) with talk about how he hopes this can grow into a massive sci-fi universe franchise before the first one is even out (and out on Netflix no less, a service with a track record of pretty bad original movies that have money just thrown at them), then that sends up all sorts of warning flags.
The cast does look interesting, and I appreciate that the first shot is somehow in slow motion ( ), but this has train wreck written all over it. Like Jupiter Ascending vibes.
That looks awful, too busy and doesn't seem to be doing anything original, just more loud noises with busy CGI, and a voice over trying to invoke grandness.
Also, it's on Netflix... so more yeah, not a good track record.
Well, that certainly wears its... 50-odd influences on its skin.
I was weathering it fairly well until suddenly griffins and it went from Star Dune Robot Wars with a touch (anvil) of Gladiator to Harry Eragon. And back.
I am less concerned over whether this will be good or not (I have seen plenty of good stuff on netflix despite the bunches of bad) and more concerned with whether this gets canceled after season 2 regardless of whether it's good or not.
Sophia Boutella hasn't had the best track record of ending up with the best roles, so if her agent has landed her the lead I do worry about the script.
This feels like the type of movie that has to start with a long-winded live action prologue or blocks of text to give everyone context, and if you're starting (as Snyder has) with talk about how he hopes this can grow into a massive sci-fi universe franchise before the first one is even out (and out on Netflix no less, a service with a track record of pretty bad original movies that have money just thrown at them), then that sends up all sorts of warning flags.
The cast does look interesting, and I appreciate that the first shot is somehow in slow motion ( ), but this has train wreck written all over it. Like Jupiter Ascending vibes.
Honestly, I expect this to be like most of Snyder's works. It'll be over the top but with some stuff that's kinda amazing, and then some thing(s) where you end up saying "what were you thinking?!?" out loud to the screen. I don't find his movies to truly be 100% awful...just kinda maddening.
Lance845 wrote: I am less concerned over whether this will be good or not (I have seen plenty of good stuff on netflix despite the bunches of bad) and more concerned with whether this gets canceled after season 2 regardless of whether it's good or not.
Lance845 wrote: I am less concerned over whether this will be good or not (I have seen plenty of good stuff on netflix despite the bunches of bad) and more concerned with whether this gets canceled after season 2 regardless of whether it's good or not.
It's a movie, not a series.
It's a movie that, from what I have gathered in this thread, is planned to have sequels. Imagine Starwars episode 4, then episode 5 comes out, then Netflix cancels the rest of the plans.
AduroT wrote: It sounds like he’s trying to make his own Snyderverse without DC.
It's based on a screenplay that he co-wrote and is inspired by the works of Akira Kurosawa and the Star Wars films. The film also began development as a Star Wars film that Snyder had pitched to Lucasfilm shortly after the sale of Lucasfilm to The Walt Disney Company in 2012 and was meant to be a more mature take on the Star Wars universe. As a space opera, DC and the Snyderverse with its superheroes would really not be an apt take on the project. Its more like he's trying to make his own Star Wars film without Disney and the Star Wars intellectual property.
I want this to succeed*, but I'm not all that hyped for it.
*In the same way I wanted Jupiter Rising, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, Cloud Atlas and pretty much any other unique sci-fi movie to succeed. Always good to have wild and different sci-fi from time to time.
Sophia Boutella hasn't had the best track record of ending up with the best roles, so if her agent has landed her the lead I do worry about the script.
This feels like the type of movie that has to start with a long-winded live action prologue or blocks of text to give everyone context, and if you're starting (as Snyder has) with talk about how he hopes this can grow into a massive sci-fi universe franchise before the first one is even out (and out on Netflix no less, a service with a track record of pretty bad original movies that have money just thrown at them), then that sends up all sorts of warning flags.
Wait a minute...., that sounds familiar. Didn't this one dude, George something-or-other kick off a franchise exactly like that back in the 70s?
Automatically Appended Next Post:
AduroT wrote: I’m guessing it’s only two parts to allow for all the slo-mo shots.
No, it's because of all the slo-mo that it's in two parts. If they just moved normally it'd only need to be 1 movie.
Does look somewhat generic but also but very internally inconsistent science. Also we appear to have hit one of those points in history where the common media of the future has not kept up with what we can reasonably extrapolate from the present and where the consequences of tech aren't thought through.
The_Real_Chris wrote: Does look somewhat generic but also but very internally inconsistent science. Also we appear to have hit one of those points in history where the common media of the future has not kept up with what we can reasonably extrapolate from the present and where the consequences of tech aren't thought through.
This has been an issue in Scifi for a while imo, and part of the faltering of the genre combined with waning enthusiasm that technology is a solution + increasing cynicism that technology is just another problem.
A lot of, most even, scifi still plays like it was written in the 80s. Dawn of the Internet at best.
Voss wrote: Well, that certainly wears its... 50-odd influences on its skin.
I was weathering it fairly well until suddenly griffins and it went from Star Dune Robot Wars with a touch (anvil) of Gladiator to Harry Eragon. And back.
Indeed... This looks like one of those trailers where they mash together several different movies.
It's pretty, and I'll no doubt check it out because I'm always up for more sci fi... but it looks like a mess, so far.
The_Real_Chris wrote: Does look somewhat generic but also but very internally inconsistent science. Also we appear to have hit one of those points in history where the common media of the future has not kept up with what we can reasonably extrapolate from the present and where the consequences of tech aren't thought through.
This has been an issue in Scifi for a while imo, and part of the faltering of the genre combined with waning enthusiasm that technology is a solution + increasing cynicism that technology is just another problem.
A lot of, most even, scifi still plays like it was written in the 80s. Dawn of the Internet at best.
Yes its interesting seeing how writing is handling stuff as mundane as mobile phones, never mind AI assisted jobs.
My mini review from the “Movie Mini-Review thread” :
Rebel Moon Part One : A Child of Fire Netflix 2023
I thought it was decent overall. Not top tier cinema, but an enjoyable enough sci-fi/fantasy flick. As brainless as the current superhero and Star Wars/Trek offerings with some fun action and visuals. Music was pretty epic at times, too. I’ll probably watch again when I want some noise while painting.
Don’t regret watching it, nor do I understand the hate its getting from critics. Maybe now that I’ve watched it, I’ll read some of the criticism to see what they felt they saw in this movie and how they break it down. Always open to new thoughts and opinions, myself.
Needed less gunplay and more of their version of the lightsaber though. Just fully embrace that it was supposed to be some sort of Star Wars story and let the laser swords loose.
Spoiler:
The “Jimmy” robot coming out of the wheat field at the end with the weird headress was… something.
And now I feel like when/if the Amazon 40K stuff comes out we’ll be bombarded with “ThEy StOle iT FrOm ReBeL MOooon”.
I watched the film today. While I'd love to say it was terrible I actually enjoyed it. Much better than all 3 Star Wars sequels combined, though that's not saying much.
As expected there is a lot of Star Wars influence but I think there's enough here to make a franchise that stands on its own two feet. Whether that actually happens or not remains to be seen. If it does want to become a franchise the world / galaxy will need to be a lot more fleshed out. That's true of all first films in a franchise though.
The lead is bad ass enough to get behind, and the antagonist is suitably evil to be hate worthy. I didn't find any glaring faults in this film.
I don't tend to look at films with a critical eye. Inconsistencies or non-sensible technology don't really bother me, as long as the whole is good, which in this case I think it is.
I haven't read any reviews, though it doesn't surprise me if a lot of them are negative. There's a lot of people out there with a vested interest in this film doing badly.
I think the average Dakkaite will enjoy this movie, worth a watch, as long as you have a Netflix subscription already.
I feel like I must have watched a different movie from the two of you, because that was atrociously bad. Can't understand why the critics are tearing it apart? Like, really?
The dialogue sounds like it was written by a fifteen year old edge lord ("No softness, only the hardness of War" - that is an actual line from the movie). The writing is all over the place, it took about an hour into the movie before anyone I was watching it with could parse what the film was actually about. The almost rape scene was a flex, I'm shocked that wasn't left on the cutting room floor.
I got exactly what I wanted out of it and laughed almost the whole way through, but no one should be saying this is good.
creeping-deth87 wrote: I feel like I must have watched a different movie from the two of you, because that was atrociously bad. Can't understand why the critics are tearing it apart? Like, really?
I mean, I did call it merely decent and brainless.
I guess when I typed up the part about critics I should've made it clear that I was more focused on the inconsistencies. Trash ass Ahsoka has an 86% and Mando season 3 has an 90% Rotten Tomatoes critic score, while this flick is at 23%. Granted, they are tv shows so a different medium, but the movies are the same story, though Rise of Skywalker is at 51% critic, Force Awakens and Last Jedi at 93% and 91%.
Just seems wildly uneven in how critics pick apart certain things.
creeping-deth87 wrote: I feel like I must have watched a different movie from the two of you, because that was atrociously bad. Can't understand why the critics are tearing it apart? Like, really?
I mean, I did call it merely decent and brainless.
I guess when I typed up the part about critics I should've made it clear that I was more focused on the inconsistencies. Trash ass Ahsoka has an 86% and Mando season 3 has an 90% Rotten Tomatoes critic score, while this flick is at 23%. Granted, they are tv shows so a different medium, but the movies are the same story, though Rise of Skywalker is at 51% critic, Force Awakens and Last Jedi at 93% and 91%.
Just seems wildly uneven in how critics pick apart certain things.
Ahhhh, yeah. Okay, that makes way more sense and I fully agree with you. Those other shows and films were also garbage, it really is like throwing darts at the wall with critic scores a lot of the time.
This one is always going to review weird simply because it comes prepackaged with the perfect sob story for both the pro-Snyder and anti-Disney segment of extreme algorithm fodder to make the discussion around it hard to parse regardless of quality.
It was entertaining enough. The story is reasonably coherent and works in an RPG quest kind of way. The character introductions for half the party felt gratuitous. A few style over substance choices during the finale didn't agree with me. But in my opinion it's fine for an actiony adventury movie with neat visuals.
Two things actually bothered me. One, it's an hour and a half movie drawn out by another half that length because everything happens in slow motion. I guess that's a Snyder thing. Doesn't bother me per se, but the frequency and specific parts in which slow motion was used felt like it was just needlessly drawing out the movie. A bit more brevity would have been better. But at least the movie's length wasn't down to a slow ass space chase, so there's that.
Second, and I realize this is entirely irrational, it bothered me that the empire is ruled by a king. Who does that? I mean, the British, I guess, but what do they know? With all the Roman styling and military expansion policies, in a setting with lots of kingdoms it just feels off that the boss king would choose to remain so pedestrian.
nels1031 wrote: And now I feel like when/if the Amazon 40K stuff comes out we’ll be bombarded with “ThEy StOle iT FrOm ReBeL MOooon”.
I had the same thought when I watched it. I suppose that can't be helped. Even if the idea wasn't to take inspiration from 40k directly but just to have a generic Sci-Fi Roman Empire IN SPACE!, the thematic overlap is large enough that the comparison feels unavoidable.
I am honestly sick of characters who are so sure of their plot armour, so cocky that, when approaching a dangerous situation they actually behave so as to maximise risk instead of taking steps to limit it as much as possible.
I don't know why they are created like that. If scriptwriters want to show them as brave, they fail because I just can't stop myself from thinking "why, oh why are you so dumb and incompetent!?"
I wouldn't mind watching some competence porn in the genre, with sensible, smart and resourceful characters who need to work to shift the odds in their favour instead of just barging in and winning all by design.
creeping-deth87 wrote: The dialogue sounds like it was written by a fifteen year old edge lord ("No softness, only the hardness of War" - that is an actual line from the movie). The writing is all over the place, it took about an hour into the movie before anyone I was watching it with could parse what the film was actually about. The almost rape scene was a flex, I'm shocked that wasn't left on the cutting room floor.
Also, for those who accurately pointed out it takes a while to get what’s going on? Even worse? I just don’t care.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Nope. Given up.
Boring plot. Terrible dialogue. Inconsistent tone and effects. Also, I genuinely don’t give even half a hoot about any of the characters. At all.
Pretty dreadful.
You're going into it with the wrong energy MDG. If you treat it like an unintentional comedy, it's one of the greatest films ever made.
It caused me physical pain to type that sentence
Garbage movie, garbage premise. Why would farmers in the this universe use technology that modern farmers haven't used in almost a century? Were they Amish?
The whole premise of the movie only goes down hill from there.
I was expecting something Dune Esque.....this was awful. Makes the final season of Game of Thrones look like Shakespeare. How anyone can give this movie a good review blows my mind. Maybe Im the wrong audience, this is probably a great popcorn turn your brain off movie......except it was really boring I almost fell asleep multiple times. Maybe my brain just couldn't deal with the mental hopscotch required to make sense of the bizarreness of the story. Its not even worth it to go into details of how the story makes no sense.
Imagine a corrupt government comes to your house and asks you for Taco Bell, but you don't have enough Taco bell to give them......so instead of getting more Taco Bell you.......Fly a private jet around the world picking up a handful of buddies to fight the entire corrupt government...., you can offer to pay them for their services, but you couldn't buy Taco Bell, OR A GODDAMN TRACTOR FOR YOUR FARM!
Garbage movie, garbage premise. Why would farmers in the this universe use technology that modern farmers haven't used in almost a century? Were they Amish?
The whole premise of the movie only goes down hill from there.
I was expecting something Dune Esque.....this was awful. Makes the final season of Game of Thrones look like Shakespeare. How anyone can give this movie a good review blows my mind. Maybe Im the wrong audience, this is probably a great popcorn turn your brain off movie......except it was really boring I almost fell asleep multiple times. Maybe my brain just couldn't deal with the mental hopscotch required to make sense of the bizarreness of the story. Its not even worth it to go into details of how the story makes no sense.
Imagine a corrupt government comes to your house and asks you for Taco Bell, but you don't have enough Taco bell to give them......so instead of getting more Taco Bell you.......Fly a private jet around the world picking up a handful of buddies to fight the entire corrupt government...., you can offer to pay them for their services, but you couldn't buy Taco Bell, OR A GODDAMN TRACTOR FOR YOUR FARM!
This movie is stupid.
Yup, agreed on all counts. I have absolutely no idea how Snyder keeps getting work. The man is the ultimate example of falling upwards.
One only need look to my drivel posts in the Movies thread to get that I have a stomach of cast iron when it comes to Bad Movies.
But this one took the piss. Massively. Normally I can find something to redeem even the worst movie. But not this time.
It’s somehow beyond flaccid. It’s not even a fart, let alone a wet fart of a film.
It really is like something a youngster would write as fan fiction. Which is not to knock the creative skills of youngsters. You got to start somewhere, and as Jake the Dog correctly said? Sucking at something is the first step to being kinda good at something.
Unless you’re Zak Snyder, it seems. Where outside his rather good Dawn of the Dead remake, everything he’s touched has been Bloody Awful.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: One only need look to my drivel posts in the Movies thread to get that I have a stomach of cast iron when it comes to Bad Movies.
But this one took the piss. Massively. Normally I can find something to redeem even the worst movie. But not this time.
It’s somehow beyond flaccid. It’s not even a fart, let alone a wet fart of a film.
It really is like something a youngster would write as fan fiction. Which is not to knock the creative skills of youngsters. You got to start somewhere, and as Jake the Dog correctly said? Sucking at something is the first step to being kinda good at something.
Unless you’re Zak Snyder, it seems. Where outside his rather good Dawn of the Dead remake, everything he’s touched has been Bloody Awful.
He's very hit and miss for me. I like 300, Dawn of the Dead, Watchman....Hell I may be one of the few people that actually really liked Sucker Punch. Most of his other stuff is pretty bad though This movie made as much sense as Independence day (A movie I truly deeply hate)......but at least Independence day wasn't boring, just stupid.
Maybe it has to do with all the hype about it for the last few years......my expectations were pretty high. How do you look at this script and go "Yep, for sure, this is a dynastic 4 feature property right here!"?
Just saw that “The King” in this movie was Carey Elwes. Maybe it was the brevity of his scenes, the terrible haircuts or dude had some work done, I didn’t even recognize him. Blew my mind that it was him. Granted, its been awhile since I saw him.
Maybe it has to do with all the hype about it for the last few years......my expectations were pretty high.
Given that you just said that you find Snyder very hit & miss, and you think most of his work is actually pretty bad....
Why were your expectations higher than hopefully good, maybe mediocre, probably bad?
Maybe it has to do with all the hype about it for the last few years......my expectations were pretty high.
Given that you just said that you find Snyder very hit & miss, and you think most of his work is actually pretty bad....
Why were your expectations higher than hopefully good, maybe mediocre, probably bad?
Again, I think it was all the hype. For years we have been hearing about this grand space opera that would be a 4 movie dynasty. Rarely do studios go all in on something like that if there isn't something to it. Snyder has a lot of crap, but some of his work is actually very very good. I am not the arbiter of movies either, most people love the big summer stupid action movie...I rarely do. I'll take Mars Attacks over Independence day a million times, because, well Mars Attacks is supposed to be funny, where Independence day is unintentionally funny because its stupid.
Fury Road is one of my favorite movies...nothing about the movie makes sense....like at all. The cinematography is so pretty though, and its action sequences are so mind blowingly crazy, its one of the few movies where the enjoyment centers of my brain just beat the logical centers of my brain to a pulp and make them shut up and watch. The purpose of that statement is that I can understand how some people can like stupid movies, if there are other redeeming values, rebel moon has no redeeming values. I can still watch Beast Master, stupid low budget movie, but it wasn't pretending to be anything else. Maybe if Rebel Moon had been pitched as a stupid science fiction netflix movie, well, I probably just wouldn't have cared at all. It was pitched as a multi movie space opera along the lines of Star Wars and Dune.....it is not. Show some more skin, a heavy sound track and some gratuitous violence and it could have been from the Heavy Metal movie series. and at that point it might have been....... OK, but not for that budget. Jesus someone is taking a both on that.
Andrew1975 wrote: Garbage movie, garbage premise. Why would farmers in the this universe use technology that modern farmers haven't used in almost a century? Were they Amish?
Yes, they're Space Amish. The headman explains as much. It doesn't happen in slow motion, so it's understandably easier to miss than other parts of the movie.
Andrew1975 wrote: Imagine a corrupt government comes to your house and asks you for Taco Bell, but you don't have enough Taco bell to give them......so instead of getting more Taco Bell you.......Fly a private jet around the world picking up a handful of buddies to fight the entire corrupt government...., you can offer to pay them for their services, but you couldn't buy Taco Bell, OR A GODDAMN TRACTOR FOR YOUR FARM!
The villagers are willing and able to pay with the small excess harvest they're expecting, but are really looking for volunteers for whom sticking it to the man is payment enough.
Sure but it is still absolutely Seven Samurai in space. I thought Rebel Moon was supposed to be Snyder trying to (re)make Star Wars so shouldn't that be the influence? Or if going back to Kurosawa shouldn't The Hidden Fortress?
Releasing a second cut of a movie that seems to generally kind of suck at a later unspecified date is kind of a bold strategy. They should been released simultaneously and audiences could "pick their own adventure" if there's any merit to the other cut. Instead I imagine a majority will never watch the second cut after being put off by the first.
With regard to Battle Beyond the Stars, I don't know if it and Rebel Moon are all that comparable. Structurally, and this is a bit of a spoiler,
Spoiler:
A Child of Fire is only half the story while Battle Beyond the Stars is the complete story contained in a single movie. I wouldn't want to compare them before The Scargiver comes out and completes Rebel Moon's story.
Aside from that, I see more of an adventure story centered around the protagonist in Battle Beyond the Stars, while Rebel Moon feels like it revolves around the quest and the village more than the protagonist.
Furthermore the inspiration isn't quite the same mix of stuff. Battle Beyond the Stars has a good bit of Star Trek vibes in how it deals with different species and their interactions with each other, outside of the bad guy's merry band. Rebel Moon feels more down and dirty and closer in its portrayal to what we are used from Star Wars.
chaos0xomega wrote: Releasing a second cut of a movie that seems to generally kind of suck at a later unspecified date is kind of a bold strategy. They should been released simultaneously and audiences could "pick their own adventure" if there's any merit to the other cut. Instead I imagine a majority will never watch the second cut after being put off by the first.
It's a bit strange to have it presented that way, but if it's a deal where Netflix gets a version it can market to a wider audience and Snyder gets his edgelord cut, it's probably no different than if the movie has to cut down because Netflix simply refuses to deal with an R rating. At least that cut is out there and to the optimists among us it might not just be a better movie but also guaranteed to be released eventually.
I assume Justice League wouldn't have gotten the Snyder cut if it hadn't been for the studio's desperation to salvage the DCEU, and we'd be stuck with only the original version to "choose" from. I prefer that one, but it's better to have both so you can actually make that choice.
If Snyder hadn't had to walk away from JL I doubt that the cut would have been the same we got as The Snyder Cut. It would have been different from the Whedon version, obliviously, yet it wouldn't have been the four hour version either. Less long takes of walking and women singing to the ocean for a few minutes, I imagine.
A Snyder cut of Rebel Moon doesn't really make much sense as he wasn't forced to leave the project and he had great control over the it as well. The released version should be the director's cut.
Grumpy Gnome wrote: Geifer, thanks for such an ernest take on the comparison between the two films. I was genuinely curious about the similarities that may exist.
Thank you for bringing up Battle Beyond the Stars. In spite of how I feel about the comparison it is a really good example of a movie that is a very obvious product of its time, and quite interesting to think about. The martial focus of the story owes much to Battlestar Galactica, probably Buck Rogers (I haven't watched it in forever, but the movie version also focused on planetary defense against a capital ship if I remember correctly) and the recently so successful Star Wars, including a planet killer and farmboy hero. In spite of that the species design, environments, a measure of wonder as the protagonist explores space, and philosophy of the guys in need of rescuing all go back further to Star Trek. You can see the mashup in much the same way as people commented when the trailers for Rebel Moon came out.
I haven't watched any modern Star Trek, but classic Star Trek (that's pre-J.J.) seems to be completely absent from Rebel Moon. Is it a product of its time in the same way as Battle Beyond the Stars? I honestly don't know. Star Wars is an enduring property and there's no shortage of it in Rebel Moon, as has been mentioned so often already. I suppose the movie is big, dumb and flashy, which is something studios have been pushing with Star Wars, superhero movies and the odd sci-fi movie in the last decade or so. I guess you could ask the question if Battle Beyond the Stars is a Corman Movie and Rebel Moon is a Snyder movie, but I'd also want to refrain from answering the latter until the R-rated version is out for review. The touch of the maker is probably where you'll find the real similarity between these two movies.
Truth be told, Rebel Moon is the kind of movie that would probably look better with a smattering of blood and boobs. And by smattering I mean the exact opposite. It's kind of empty and doesn't have much of a selling point right now. It very much is a style over substance movie. Might as well go all the way instead of settling on a lukewarm compromise between vision and marketability.
Andrew1975 wrote: They already got me on the first one....I'm not wasting any more time on this series.
I'm morbidly curious, so if I still have Netflix in the rotation when it comes out, I'll check it out. I sat through Kenobi, Ahsoka, Book of Boba Fett, Mando s3 waiting for them to get good, so what's another couple hours of my time?
I've already forgotten all but 2 of the characters names (Nemesis + Noble lol) so it'll be like watching a whole new movie.
I wanted to like it, but its just an aggressively lukewarm product.
Rebel Moon is nowhere near the league of the shows you listed. At all.
For some, those were merely disappointing. But they had redeeming features.
Rebel Moon has no such features. It’s dull. It’s uninteresting. It’s actively boring. The effects are wildly uneven. I can’t comment on the plot, because it just so, so boring I couldn’t have cared less about the heroes, villains, nor who was doing what, let alone why.
It’s dull. It’s uninspired. If it wasn’t so remarkably boring, it would be entirely unremarkable.
Rebel Moon is nowhere near the league of the shows you listed. At all.
I mean, like... it really is though. Disney's efforts at Star Wars are only marginally (at best) better than anything Zack Snyder puts out, you just don't have nostalgia blinding you to Snyder's faults the way you do with Star Wars.
For some, those were merely disappointing.
Telling people how they feel about something is not a great way to start a discussion in good faith about this comparison.
Yet Rebel Moon stands as an example of genuinely bad movie making. Not something which is 6 or 7 out of 10 being touted as awful.
Book of Boba Fett is flawed, for instance. I enjoy what’s there, and don’t overly worry myself about the rest. I’d give it 6.5 out of 10. Mostly because whilst the plot is a bit crap? It’s still there, and we get many very cool scenes. And for Star Wars, some new toys going stompy blasty.
Obi-Wan? Comfortable 7/10 for me. The only bit I found outright silly is the “Leia hiding under the cloak”. Some bits, such as Kenobi getting his ming on and giving Darth a right good kicking? 10/10 for me. Overall, not quite the sum of its parts.
Ahsoka? 9/10 for me. Loved that show, and everything about it.
Mando S3? 8/10 for me. Lots of good stuff. Points deducted for diddling me out of a glorious Star Wars space battle.
Rebel Moon? Just. Nothing. Without any hyperbole, I genuinely have nothing good to say about it. I couldn’t finish it. At no point did it pique my interest or provide any moments of excitement. It plodded along, and eventually I realised “I’ve no idea what this is about, but worse, I don’t actually care that I’ve no idea what this is about”. I wasn’t even that distracted at the time. I was puppy sitting, and Dallas was being a good boy and having a cuddle on the sofa. It had a good deal of my attention, and failed to provide any reward.
It’s…sterile. I think that’s the right word for it. Devoid of life. Devoid of warmth. Devoid of anything of any interest to me.
Pretty damn close to each other and all pretty accurate imo. If these were test scores that I brought home from school, they're all failures on the grading scale that I grew up with and I'd be repeating some grades.
Individual scores like you had are a matter of taste and opinion, and it will vary.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Yet Rebel Moon stands as an example of genuinely bad movie making. Not something which is 6 or 7 out of 10 being touted as awful.
Book of Boba Fett is flawed, for instance. I enjoy what’s there, and don’t overly worry myself about the rest. I’d give it 6.5 out of 10. Mostly because whilst the plot is a bit crap? It’s still there, and we get many very cool scenes. And for Star Wars, some new toys going stompy blasty.
Obi-Wan? Comfortable 7/10 for me. The only bit I found outright silly is the “Leia hiding under the cloak”. Some bits, such as Kenobi getting his ming on and giving Darth a right good kicking? 10/10 for me. Overall, not quite the sum of its parts.
Ahsoka? 9/10 for me. Loved that show, and everything about it.
Mando S3? 8/10 for me. Lots of good stuff. Points deducted for diddling me out of a glorious Star Wars space battle.
Rebel Moon? Just. Nothing. Without any hyperbole, I genuinely have nothing good to say about it. I couldn’t finish it. At no point did it pique my interest or provide any moments of excitement. It plodded along, and eventually I realised “I’ve no idea what this is about, but worse, I don’t actually care that I’ve no idea what this is about”. I wasn’t even that distracted at the time. I was puppy sitting, and Dallas was being a good boy and having a cuddle on the sofa. It had a good deal of my attention, and failed to provide any reward.
It’s…sterile. I think that’s the right word for it. Devoid of life. Devoid of warmth. Devoid of anything of any interest to me.
Agreed. The Star Wars stuff is leagues better. The big difference is you have a Star Wars fan base of which, half hate everything new because its not perfect, or doesn't jive with the fiction they have made up in their own head. Do I like Boba Fett being, well, very un Boba Fetty...Yes, but its still mostly coherent and the plot makes SOME sense. Can I knit pick them all day for stupid stuff, you bet, especially because I know how star wars stuff is supposed to work and those mistakes stand out to me. Had I no history with the franchise, I'd probably think they work pretty well for the most part.
Rebel Moon makes zero sense at its core and is awful on every level. I don't understand how anyone has given it a positive rating, I'm very interested in how much viewership falls off for the second movie. I've read some of those reviews and I can't even believe I was watching the same movie. Either I have a cognitive disconnect, or maybe the younger generations want something else in a movie, but I cannot understand any praise for this movie. I have to think a lot of those reviews are fake.
I started Rebel Moon, and while it was a firm "ok", it loses out in my watching because the same holiday weekend I finally got a chance to watch The Creator on Hulu, which even with a somewhat predictable ending, is quite a bit better in terms of scifi cinema.
What I think is that that Zack Snyder will always be a divisive guy. He has very distinct strengths and weaknesses as a filmmaker, and his biggest fans and critics tend to entrench themselves in one side of that and ignore the other.
I'm not sure I understand either end of the spectrum in this case, because Rebel Moon felt just kinda 'meh' overall to me. It had some of the issues that people have discussed, and also felt a little slow/dull, which surprised me. On the other hand, LOTS of genre stuff that people praise isn't really any better. Geeks consume TONS of mediocre-to-gakky content that's just as derivative etc., so for them to pile on this one feels a little disingenuous or agenda-driven. I liked some of the visuals and thought it had a pretty good cast, and those things still count for something.
I think the comparison to the non-Andor SW shows feels fair. I watched it and didn't think "I'll never get those hours of my life back". But then it didn't hold my attention terribly well, and I didn't come away enthused or thinking I'd ever rewatch it. Basically it was a typical genre streaming show to me...decent enough to have on in the background while painting miniatures or something.
Edit: I would LOVE to be able to visit the alternate universe where it got made as a SW film. Would be a fascinating experiment to see if it gained 'geek points' for the label, or if it lost points for 'ruining SW and childhoods' or whatever.
Gitzbitah wrote: I bailed at the griffin. The pulled right from Harry Potter, bow to it and ride it the first time griffin.
Harry Potter didn't exactly invent the 'break the bucking bronco' scene for all cinema, LOL.
There was enough old west stuff going on, I felt this was cribbing from The Magnificent Seven, and not the Seven Samurai. Copy of a copy.
The pacing/editing seemed a bit off. Like it was a collection of scenes and not a coherent movie. That might have just been the side quest, gather the party nature of the movie though.
I also got the “edited for TV” vibe real hard from it. Those fights? There should have been gore splashed around. Also a couple places where it looked like a sex scene had been clipped. If you are going to style over substance, go all in. Could have used more gratuitous sex and violence.
I’ll probably watch the second one when it comes out, but will have a good drink first/during to help turn off my brain just to enjoy the spectacle.
Well watched it last night. I mean, I enjoyed it for what it is. Its a Zack Snyder movie and was about as Zack Snyder as it could be. Enjoyable enjoy to shut my brain off and watch which is what I prefer with movies like this.
I must say though, for a film that was originally pitched as a Star Wars movie them amount of 40k references is kinda off the charts, even saying the main character was in the Militarum.
Now it's become practically Snyder's go to for some reason. He wants to do a special Snyder cut of Sucker Punch too.
More than anything, the Snyder Cut was a result of the pandemic causing studios to look for anything they could pull together from the back room to sell and WB needing something high profile to sell people on HBO Max when everyone had to prove they had a viable streaming platform.
It's definitely not what we would have gotten in 2017 if Snyder hadn't stepped away. HBO had resources to burn and put a good chunk of additional budget in while their VFX teams were stuck at home.
Hatewatching the first one ATM. This movie, if you can call it one, has more slomo shots than a Dressman commercial
The storyline reads like a morning cartoon for 12 year olds, and even that is giving this thing more credit than it deserves. Whoever were desperate enough to finance this, Omnissiah only knows
Now it's become practically Snyder's go to for some reason. He wants to do a special Snyder cut of Sucker Punch too.
More than anything, the Snyder Cut was a result of the pandemic causing studios to look for anything they could pull together from the back room to sell and WB needing something high profile to sell people on HBO Max when everyone had to prove they had a viable streaming platform.
It's definitely not what we would have gotten in 2017 if Snyder hadn't stepped away. HBO had resources to burn and put a good chunk of additional budget in while their VFX teams were stuck at home.
Yeah, and IIRC the thing caused some internal battles. The head of HBO Max wanted it for the reasons you stated, while Walter Hamada didn't want it because it was a distraction from what he was trying to do to move forward with the DCEU. It certainly wasn't about 'salvaging' the DCEU...from the studio perspective, it was a step backward and the theatrical cut was still the official version of Justice League.
And while I thought the Snyder Cut was a big improvement...a Snyder theatrical cut wouldn't have been 4 hours long. So even at 2:45 or whatever, it likely would have been back to feeling like it was missing a lot of connective tissue (see BvS). Overlong is just what he does. It's probably one of the most frustrating things about him as a director...that he can't create stories that don't need director's cuts and an extra hour or two in order to shine.
Now it's become practically Snyder's go to for some reason. He wants to do a special Snyder cut of Sucker Punch too.
More than anything, the Snyder Cut was a result of the pandemic causing studios to look for anything they could pull together from the back room to sell and WB needing something high profile to sell people on HBO Max when everyone had to prove they had a viable streaming platform.
It's definitely not what we would have gotten in 2017 if Snyder hadn't stepped away. HBO had resources to burn and put a good chunk of additional budget in while their VFX teams were stuck at home.
Yeah, and IIRC the thing caused some internal battles. The head of HBO Max wanted it for the reasons you stated, while Walter Hamada didn't want it because it was a distraction from what he was trying to do to move forward with the DCEU. It certainly wasn't about 'salvaging' the DCEU...from the studio perspective, it was a step backward and the theatrical cut was still the official version of Justice League.
And while I thought the Snyder Cut was a big improvement...a Snyder theatrical cut wouldn't have been 4 hours long. So even at 2:45 or whatever, it likely would have been back to feeling like it was missing a lot of connective tissue (see BvS). Overlong is just what he does. It's probably one of the most frustrating things about him as a director...that he can't create stories that don't need director's cuts and an extra hour or two in order to shine.
I feel like a 2:45 Synder Cut is very doable as is without missing a lot. The worst part about the.... mini series, is just that a lot of scenes had really awkward transitions for what feels like solely a desire to not cut anything at all. There's obvious stuff like the choir that really adds nothing to the film at all, but even little bits like the transitions in WW's big action opener feel very weird simply because of establishing shots that don't work and should have been cut or just odd things that are usually done in a "shoot three, pick 2" to give room to play in the editing room. It doesn't feel like much more than a 3 hour movie, but all the scenes feel like they're 30-60 seconds too long throughout.
Saw this yesterday with low expectations. Still ended up disappointed. I think the only praise I can give it is that the main cast are more or less OK.
The excessive use of slow motion was jarring after 15 minutes and only got worse as the movie went on. The moment I snapped and almost turned it off in despair was the bar fight near the start where Kora (Cora? Can't even be bothered to look up the correct spelling) disarms the knife-wielding wrinkly dude. Apparently this simple 1-second action really needs a slowmo shot for...reasons. I'm not sure why nobody's told Snyder that constant slowmo actually detracts from the energy of the action rather than enhancing it, but this movie really emphasises that. I think every single action scene would have been better without the slowmo so we can actually get a sense of the dynamism of what's happening, though I suspect that might just highlight how silly most of them are, especially the gunfights where nobody seems able to hit anyone, even when they're literally a couple of feet away. Then there's all the freeze-frames and "look-at-me!" shots. Here's a thought, Mr Director, how about just composing some really good shots and trusting the audience to appreciate how cool (or not) your visuals are, instead of these constant desperate attempts to point it out. The CGI was awful in places. The establishing shot of the main characters arriving on the planet where the Bloodaxes are hiding out genuinely reminded me of Babylon 5 with the "quality" of the special effects.
The writing sucked beyond anything I've watched in a long time. Exposition was just regurgitated via lengthy speeches, written is such unnatural and stilted language it was genuinely jarring at times. The dialogue is forgettable at best, and laughable a lot of the time. There's no nuance or character development and almost every character seems to have been ripped straight out of a TV Tropes description. The main plot makes no sense. This little farming village decides to take on a world-destroying capital ship and to do so we're told they're going to recruit an army from some disgraced general and a bunch of rebels. And also a couple of randoms who will make all the difference, apparently.
If you compare the writing in Dune, for example, to this, you see how exposition should be done. Some narration or text at the start to set the scene is fine. After that everything is revealed via what feels like natural conversation between characters, in some cases with a little bit of info left out for the audience to fill in for themselves. Nobody sits down for 5 minutes to explain the political ramifications of what's going on in their entirety, or to give us Paul's life story.
Spoiler:
The big twist at the end with the bounty hunter's betrayal is probably the worst offender here. At first glance it sort of explains this weird quest to gather these random people. Except, nothing about Kora's mission really helps the bounty hunter out. He already knows where Mr Shirtless is and apparently also has knowledge of the location for Ms Totally-not-a-Jedi too. Some random farmer on some backwater planet can just find out the locations of the entire rebel operation that's so troublesome the Evil Empire has sent their most feared admiral to find them and put them down. Meanwhile, you can walk into a bar on the same backwater planet, ask about the location of a famous disgraced general and just have that information volunteered. So the only person the bounty hunter couldn't have just found within a couple of days was Kora herself and he had no idea who she was until towards the end of the movie.
Then we find out the general doesn't have an army, so his help is pretty pointless. The rebels have a couple of fighters that are easily obliterated in about 10 seconds, and the helpfulness of a guy who refuses to wear a shirt and a woman with two cool swords is kind of questionable against an enemy whose MO is to show up with a big security detail, take what they want, then nuke the planet from orbit.
In short, the entire movie feels like terrible fan fiction, directed by somebody who's only just discovered this cool "slomo" button on their camera and acted by a bunch of people who are competent but seem as confused as everyone else by what's going on.
Slipspace, what you wrote in the spoiler tag is my largest trouble with movie.
Everything would have been much easier for the bounty hunter to do without the MC. Just go and pick the bounties up 1 by one at any time he feels like it.
Then when they find the rebels only a small % of them join up to fight. If they are going to fight the empire anyway and feel worried about those who join's safety, isn't going out in full force going to improve their chances vastly rather than be dealt with piece meal?
I was wondering the entire time when they would join with the rebels who obviously must have a decent fleet and what use the random party members would bring for the final fight. Apparently the hippo tamer was a prince or something so he probably had some connections that would help out. The sword lady probably had some influence on that industrial planet and could bring resources or manpower that way and then obviously the general would still have some command staff alive somewhere he could gather and they would organize this rebel force in a serious threat.
Nope. They went around to a couple of planets to gather 3 extra fighters so they could do a normal ground battle with like 10 total people against an army and a star destroyer. What?! They could just have tried to recruit a half dozen people in that first settlement they went to if that was the plan. Why bother cruising around multiple planets. Probably cost them more in gas than hiring 5 local mercenaries would cost.
Even worse is that the only reason the bad guys show up where they did in the beginning is because the MC lives there. At first I thought they were the only people on the planet and that was the reason but there is a larger settlement not far away. Might even be more villages and settlements on the planet. Why wouldn't the bad guys just go to the larger settlement and get their supplies there and if they want anything else just force those people living there to do their bidding and go out to the tiny villages. It is like having Darth Vader show up in a tiny rural village on the country side when he could just walk into the capital and subjugate the entire nation, including said little village, with about the same effort but 100000x the gains.
Then when they find the rebels only a small % of them join up to fight. If they are going to fight the empire anyway and feel worried about those who join's safety, isn't going out in full force going to improve their chances vastly rather than be dealt with piece meal?
Yeah, this is yet another thing that makes no sense in hindsight. The rebels are apparently such a threat they send the big bad out to hunt them down. Yet when they are presented with not only a cause to fight for but a tactical advantage thanks to the element of surprise they chicken out. Or they almost do, but instead split their forces to further ensure their own defeat. The whole thing just makes them seem like a bunch of guys cosplaying as rebels. How are they a threat to anything if they know they're outmatched by a single capital ship and they make idiotic decisions even after acknowledging that?
LunarSol wrote: I feel like a 2:45 Synder Cut is very doable as is without missing a lot. The worst part about the.... mini series, is just that a lot of scenes had really awkward transitions for what feels like solely a desire to not cut anything at all. There's obvious stuff like the choir that really adds nothing to the film at all, but even little bits like the transitions in WW's big action opener feel very weird simply because of establishing shots that don't work and should have been cut or just odd things that are usually done in a "shoot three, pick 2" to give room to play in the editing room. It doesn't feel like much more than a 3 hour movie, but all the scenes feel like they're 30-60 seconds too long throughout.
There are easy cuts no doubt...I'm just not sure there are 75 minutes/4500 seconds of easy cuts without removing connective tissue, some character development, and various moments that let the thing breathe so much more than the theatrical version. We saw that Snyder couldn't do it in less than 3 hours with BvS, which had many fewer characters. I'm sure someone else could have made a coherent JL film within that time limit, mind you. He just seems to have his dial set to 'overstuffed'. That's why the studio gave Whedon that ridiculous 2 hour mandate...they'd had enough of it also.
There are few things as funny to me as the "I Tried" sign in the Whedon cut.
The funny thing about this all is, WB has always found success by being a hands off studio. It provides incredible freedom to directors and that's the main reason talented people want to work for them with the idea that they'll produce massive hits to offset the failures. It's always been the source of their success, but also why things go so far off the rails when executives need something to be made like the DCEU or LotR/Potter prequels or even the 90's Batman films.
Yeah...think Whedon regrets taking that job now? Clearly his gakky behavior has a long tail, but it seems like JL was the thing that really got the ball rolling on his 'cancellation'. And the task was impossible anyway. It was a lose-lose....lose.
And yeah...WB was always the "directors' studio". The new organization with a separate DC studio headed by guys who understand the genre is the right move for what they want to do. I just think what they're trying to do is 10 years too late. And the new boss is very cost-conscious and maybe not very patient to boot. Good luck with that.
gorgon wrote: We saw that Snyder couldn't do it in less than 3 hours with BvS, which had many fewer characters. I'm sure someone else could have made a coherent JL film within that time limit, mind you. He just seems to have his dial set to 'overstuffed'.
That isn't quite accurate. While I'm sure it would still be bloated if circumstances hadn't intervened, I don't believe that if Snyder had gotten to finish JL it would have been the Snyer Cut we got. When WB finally acquiescenced to letting Snyder go back to the project they originally were going to do it as a four part mini series for HBO Max, thus the 4 one hour chapters.
gorgon wrote: We saw that Snyder couldn't do it in less than 3 hours with BvS, which had many fewer characters. I'm sure someone else could have made a coherent JL film within that time limit, mind you. He just seems to have his dial set to 'overstuffed'.
That isn't quite accurate. While I'm sure it would still be bloated if circumstances hadn't intervened, I don't believe that if Snyder had gotten to finish JL it would have been the Snyer Cut we got. When WB finally acquiescenced to letting Snyder go back to the project they originally were going to do it as a four part mini series for HBO Max, thus the 4 one hour chapters.
That's what I'm saying though...to get the thing into theaters, Snyder would have had to cut more stuff than he wanted...and more than the film required for it to work well. He probably wasn't even going to get 2:45 or maybe even 2:30 given that Whedon got a 2-hour ultimatum from the studio. Similar to how he wanted a 3-hour cut of BvS, but the studio had him cut it down more and still wasn't really happy with the length. Remember that longer films mean fewer showings and potentially less box office.
So where the Snyder Cut was perceived by some (and I'm one of those people) to be better in certain ways, I'm not sure that a lot of those improvements would have made the studio's desired theatrical cut anyway. His version of the story probably had a sweet spot of 3:00 -3:15. Just like it's clear that the 3-hour cut of BvS (other flaws aside) contains some important connective tissue that the theatrical version lacked and needed.
But studios and theaters have their needs, and he just doesn't seem to go into those projects thinking "what's a story I can tell well in 2:00 - 2:30?" A lot of projects come together in editing, and that's fine. They all cut a lot of material. But IMO he seems to struggle with this in ways that other directors of his type don't. Snyder himself has actually joked about it, IIRC.
Worth noting that even not accounting for runtime, Snyder wouldn't have gotten the improved visual effects afforded by the extra time and money that went into the Snyder Cut (looking at you Steppenwolf).
LunarSol wrote: Worth noting that even not accounting for runtime, Snyder wouldn't have gotten the improved visual effects afforded by the extra time and money that went into the Snyder Cut (looking at you Steppenwolf).
Sort of. I think Steppenwolf was one of the effects finished after Snyder left/was canned. The design in the Snyder Cut was what he planned, I think (see the extra BvS scene with Luthor in the ship), but then Whedon "skinned" it with whatever that was in the theatrical version.
What kinda blows my mind though was the amount of stuff that Whedon reshot or changed to little clear benefit. I get adding some comedic scenes to it, etc...those were his marching orders. But there are battle scenes and such that seem to have been subtly reshot and it's not clear why. The "director's studio" could have saved itself some real money by just staying the course with Snyder. Snyder's theatrical version probably would have landed the exact same way as Whedon's, but at least they would have spent only $200-225 million or something on a bomb instead of the rumored $300 million. Three hundred mil for what we got is genuinely ridiculous...it's hard to see how WB thought that would change things. Goes to show you the absolute panic/freakout mode that WB was in at that time.
As soon as they mentioned the Princess I figured that's who Kora will turn out to be, I suppose there's still time for that but disappointed they didn't even bother with the obvious twist...
The spiel he goes on about the movie lifting things from Warhammer reminds me of my first playthrough of Ravendreth in World of Warcraft, and my response to the entire thing was;
"This is just Ravenloft. Ravenloft. Ravenloft. Wow. Holy gak, this whole zone is just point for point Ravenloft how have they not been sued for this one?"
I am not sure if it is meant to look cool, or troll people. I mean that first sequence was just atrocious. I know hollywood hates the whole 'pick a firing position where you feel safe, put rounds down on the enemy' but mindlessly running towards the person shooting you 3 metres away (with no attempts made to engage at close quarters) pointing your gun like a talisman instead of firing it is a new low.
The_Real_Chris wrote: I am not sure if it is meant to look cool, or troll people. I mean that first sequence was just atrocious. I know hollywood hates the whole 'pick a firing position where you feel safe, put rounds down on the enemy' but mindlessly running towards the person shooting you 3 metres away (with no attempts made to engage at close quarters) pointing your gun like a talisman instead of firing it is a new low.
Against my better judgement, I started Part 2 before I head to work. Its a 50/50 shot that I’ll go in to work either bemused or angry.
Spoiler:
First 15 minutes we got some gakky dialogue, we get to see Ed Skrein’s character get resurrected again for some reason( its like they forgot that we saw him get resurrected at the end of the first one) and slow motion harvesting of a crop. I can’t stop watching this bufoonery of filmmaking, aside from typing this up while I let my dog out.
“lets build defenses around a village of mud/brick buildings with thatched roofs instead of falling back to the more natural defenses of the mountains that are quite literally directly behind the village.”
Why did Koras ship crash and need to be dragged out of the mountains when it was shown 30 seconds later to be in perfect working order?
It definitely had some cool visuals and some fun dumbbusy action, but it was still hot garbage. Hotter and Garbagier then the first one for sure, which I gave faint praise to. I had no emotional investment in Snyder or his works, one way or another, but after watching clips of his Rogan interview, I might fething hate him.
I might’ve hurt my neck shaking my head at how dumb it was 90%+ of the time.
In no particular order:
Spoiler:
-The betrayal at the Julius Caesar assassination was so silly. Why not just kill her there instead of trying to take her alive? Why let her escape?
-Random villager, who is the last man standing in this particular scene is shot and is trying to trigger an explosive chain as his last act. For what seemed like 10 seconds, the clearly still alive dude is struggling to trigger the explosives, while the dudes who shot him are just feet away, watching it happen.
-The origin story for lightsaber lady with cyber arms: had to chop off her own arms to absorb the warrior knowledge of her tribe, which are contained in the guantlets. She gets like 10 words in the whole movie. The music when she fought was cool, and I like the flameyswords. Felt no emotional attachment when she died (the only “main” hero character to die).
-Farming music was Rings of Power level cringe.
-Our group of heroes, all in their own way say : “We’re here to fight and die. No surrender, as we’ll get no mercy from the Empire”. They all give examples in their origin stories of how the Empire is evil and merciless. Once the bad guys show up, our heroine promptly tries to surrender and seek mercy for the village. Lolwut.
-Village Girl has time to craft symbolic banners for all of our heroes who she just met, when it was established that the village would have to bring in the harvest in record time, while also building elaborate trench defenses and training for combat.
-This is a serious situation coming up! Time for a serious haircut scene! Our heroine went from choppy bob to high and tight with a sick fade to show she’s super serious. See above, where she promptly tried to surrender, lol.
-“The Princess is still alive” reveal at the end was so ridiculous. Who cares?
I could go on, but feth this movie. Why’d I do this to myself?
I didn't hate it, but I can safely say its the fourth best version of Seven Samurai I've seen, after Seven Samurai, The Magnificent Seven and Battle Beyond the Stars.
I was entertained and you can be too if you just accept that the movie has neat visuals and is otherwise completely ridiculous.
It's a bit slow to start with
Spoiler:
the speeches and slow motion harvest in the beginning,
and I'd want to watch the two parts back to back again to see how they mesh without months of fading memory between them. There was the odd bit where I wasn't sure that what happened in part two reflected part one, but that might just be me.
Also. after a rare moment of picking up a hint, I will say I was actually happy to see ten minutes later that
Spoiler:
the dreadnought has a big boiler room where people manually shovel coal.
A coal powered rocket ship is the only way a gentleman travels the stars.
When you think about it, many of us here should appreciate the slow motion parts of both Rebel Moon movies a lot more. They're much like classic GW game crafting. It very much feels like for every scene in the movies, Snyder rolled on a random table that tells if, how and when a part of the scene plays out in slow motion.
Geifer wrote: When you think about it, many of us here should appreciate the slow motion parts of both Rebel Moon movies a lot more. They're much like classic GW game crafting. It very much feels like for every scene in the movies, Snyder rolled on a random table that tells if, how and when a part of the scene plays out in slow motion.
Ah I thought you meant the slo mo was like a GW game because the players were consulting the rules on firing a hunting rifle while sliding across a floor and swinging a laser sword.
Let's see, -1 for firing while moving, and -2 for off hand, but +1 for your cool state and +1 for hated enemies...
The movie was hot garbage, but it was exactly what I expected so I enjoyed the hell out of it. The gratuitous slow mo of people harvesting wheat left me in awe, but that was nothing compared to the four - yes, four - consecutive flash backs when they're all telling each other their back stories.
I hope Zack keeps making these. They take 'so bad it's good' to soaring new heights.
I got bored after the first 10 minutes. It’s like Snyder is trying to release a film series and the prequel series simultaneously. And it’s so dull. He’s made laser sword battles in space dull. Why would you do that?
They are .. Ok... Hugely overlong and trying to be serious but often just being pompus. IMO. The action is not too bad - seen a lot worse. Some nice imagery but the writing is....yeah...
I quite liked the main bad guy - as opposed to the laughable wannabee Emperor.
I mean its a hundred times better than recent Star Wars Films but thats not saying anything.
But compared to Seven Samurai or Magnificent 7 its awful - one thing notable about both of them is that the villagers are not themselves paragons of virtue as they are in Rebel Moon but have thier own dark secrets.
IF you want a Sci-fi version of those two films - Battle Beyond the Stars does it much much better....
Trying to drum up interest in the extendeds with the promise of tits and gore, it seems:
Per IGN :
The director's cut of Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire has seemingly got a new title and an official R-rating ahead of its release on Netflix.
The first part of Zack Snyder's sci-fi saga appeared on the Film Ratings website, with an alternative title of Rebel Moon - Chapter One: Chalice of Blood for the director's cut. It is also rated R for "brutal, bloody violence and gore, sexual content, graphic nudity and language," as opposed to the PG-13 rating of the original release.
Snyder has teased the R-rated director's cuts of Rebel Moon for quite some time, but this is the first official confirmation that the MPAA has deemed it worthy of the "R." The director previously said the extended, more adult version is "fun and subversive because an R-rated sci-fi movie at this scale shouldn't exist."
"They're each about an hour longer than the originals, the PG-13 [versions]," he told I Minutemen of the director's cuts. "So it'll be nice to see the six hours together. You can take a break, of course. It's a more, maybe, immersive experience. I'm interested for people to see it that way. It's very adult, it's very R-rated."
Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire was not well-received by critics or audiences when it hit screens in 2023. The film boasts a 21% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes, with the consensus among reviewers being that the movie's visual eye candy "isn't enough to offset a storyline made up of various sci-fi/fantasy tropes."
Snyder has admitted that his movies are "always very polarising," so he is already anticipating the reaction to his director's cuts of Rebel Moon because, in his own words, they are "a different kettle of fish" and include "all the gore and the hard R-ness and the nudity and the violence and crazy s**t" that initially got left out.
Rebel Moon - Part One: A Child of Fire and Rebel Moon - Part Two: The Scargiver are currently streaming on Netflix, with the director's cuts releasing this summer.
It's incredible to me how genuinely great television is cancelled all the time and somehow this guy who has never directed a good movie in his entire career keeps getting big studio money to film his teenage edge lord fan fics. I will happily churn out trash for millions of dollars, give me a chance!
Given that the problem with these movies was lack of story, rather than lack of boobs and blood, I can't see myself sitting through the 'immersive' version.
My favourite part was how they realised 20 minutes into the second movie that we knew absolutely nothing about any of the characters, so they all sat around a table and narrated their backstories.
Also the half-assed world design, where some stuff was cool retro-WWII-scifi, and some stuff was just the costume designer wandering into a thrift shop with twenty bucks.
Mr Morden wrote: Its more immersive - we just added gore and sexual violence - truely a return to the 1980s
Its a bold move!
No amount of editing and extra scenes is going to give these movies even a pale imitation of 80s charm.
Still. Pain is only a word. If you have seen what I've seen, two more hours of Rebel Moon hold no terror to you. I'm ready and willing. Bring on the blood and boobs.
creeping-deth87 wrote: It's incredible to me how genuinely great television is cancelled all the time and somehow this guy who has never directed a good movie in his entire career keeps getting big studio money to film his teenage edge lord fan fics. I will happily churn out trash for millions of dollars, give me a chance!
It's because Netflix and Streaming's measure for success are not based on ad revenue but engagement and viewership.
Velma is universally recognized to be terrible, but it was by all of HBO's metrics, a great success. Change the standard of measurement and even dog gak is gold. You've already paid for Netflix. They're not basing their decisions on how many ads you watched, but how many viewers they gained, how much engagement there was with the content, and deciding if they turned a profit from that.
I wouldn't be surprised if these movies were a big success for them by those measures. That they're terrible is irrelevant, since they're not compelled by their business model to actually produce good content like a television network is.
TLDR: You know how internet news became clickbait outrage bs with crappy headlines that are basically purposefully misleading? That's what streaming is becoming, more or less. They care more that you clicked on the content in the first place than whether or not it was good or if you even liked it.
Ahtman wrote: It is probably safe to go ahead and share this.
Yeah, scene discussed at 3:30 really rubbed me the wrong way. Pretty warcrimey, and the young soldier who turned coat in the first movie proved that not all of the dudes are evil.
Like, had it been, "Take these cowards who fled from the battle and kill them." Sure, kill all of them in the elevator. But the medics seemed like they were really concerned with the livelihood of their cohorts, and probably have no hand in or knowledge of what's happening outside of the ship. Same with the dudes shoveling coal (lol), who were just going about their job and some weirdo jumps down into their area and starts blasting.
This movie gets better(in the worst kind of way) every time I think about it.
I have a feeling that Snyder isn't the kind of guy to look deeply into the ethics of armed conflict when he makes a movie about a one man army of absolute ass-kickery (in slow motion), and instead relies on the convention that the good guys have some allowance for causing flimsily justifiable collateral damage.
Not that Kora necessarily qualifies as good. She's been raised as an unquestioningly obedient imperialist soldier and indoctrinated to fulfill the objective at any cost. If the plan is to blow up the dreadnought and kill everyone on board anyway, hurrying some deaths along in pursuit of that goal shouldn't provoke even a moment's doubt or even just reflection. It's what she does for a living.
I'm sure you meant to say "I can't possibly see how Snyder making them longer could improve them": My mind immediately goes to the Lord of the Rings for long movies that were made better by being even longer. Or Windtalkers where only the shooty stabby kaboom action made it into the theatrical cut but the actual good movie is found in the director's cut because it engages with and develops the main characters.
Rebel Moon could do with world building and character development. Not saying that's what we'll get, but if we do, making the unduly long movies even longer might actually improve them.
Kind of bad timing to release them now, though. I don't expect to have that kind of time in the next few days. Curse these people for not scheduling their releases exclusively to my needs!
I have no express with Winftalkers, but Lord of the Rings was already amazing, and had a whole pre-build world to draw from.
Given how disjointed and naff the Rebel Moon setting is, I’m not sure it can really be salvaged at this point. And the characters are all terrible people, who only exist to continually make bad choices, so I do ‘t really want to know anything more about them thanks
Well I promptly fell asleep once it got to the parts from the original release.
Spoiler:
First 15 or so minutes is all new, and even has a new name “Chalice of Blood”.
-More Ed Skrein being a charismatic, depraved villian.
-Much more gore/violence.
-Some highly questionable fight/gunfight choreography.
-An inexplicable suicide bomber gremlin type creature that gets some sort of weird attempt at an emotional sendoff. lol -Gratuitous boob shots during a desecration of some sort of priestess order.
-The red priest guys that follow Ed Skrein are making a mural out of the teeth of his enemies.
-All of the above are made to set the background of the young soldier who turned to the side of the good guys in the village.
-More of Kora’s(main character)backstory and adoption and upbringing by Balisarius
-The engines of the Dreadnoughts (spaceship thing)are fueled by human remains to some sort of shackled god like being.
-We then get to the original movie that’s mostly the same, save an R-rated sex scene thats only alluded to in the original.
-The bar where the shootout happens has some extra scenes, mainly to show how depraved it is.
-The robot character voiced by Anthony Hopkins drops some more world building exposition.
-Ed Skrein’s character gets more “sex” scenes with some sort of tentacle creature.
-Griffin guy gets some more dialogue I think?
-Not-lightsaber lady gets a few more scenes of dialogue.
-Arena where Djimon Hounsou’s character gets recruited gets some added gore and CGI monster
-Former UFC Heavyweight champion Francis Ngannou makes an appearance as a gladiator who is mistaken for Djimon Hounsou’s character. Very niche cameo that I don’t remember from the original. They lingered on him like the average normie is supposed to know who he is, meanwhile his star has somewhat plummeted since this was filmed. No longer in UFC, lost a few of his last fights.
This is when I fell asleep. Its still trash, but trashier. Zack Snyder unfettered by moderation and decency I think. With that said, there are some great visual shots.
Finished what was left before I headed out to work, I double runspeed on the stuff that was already in the original :
Spoiler:
There is a bit more dialogue amongst the group of heroes, but its mainly everyone gaking on the griffin rider guy for supposedly being a coward.
Ending has a bit more with mercenary/bounty hunters tracking the hero group to the village. I guess they will factor in the 2nd part, but its not like they discovered anything new.
Scattered throughout the movie are new shots of characters and creatures that didn't make the initial cut. I guess just showing off how good the CGI and makeup department is. Its like a 3 hour proof of concept.
tauist wrote: Finished hatewatching the second one. I believe it was even worse than the first one
Yep, all the Directors Cut of the 2nd added was another gratuitous sex scene, boobs, gore, some Uruk-hai that got lost in the wrong movie and a scene with more of the god-furnace thing.
tauist wrote: Finished hatewatching the second one. I believe it was even worse than the first one
Yep, all the Directors Cut of the 2nd added was another gratuitous sex scene, boobs, gore, some Uruk-hai that got lost in the wrong movie and a scene with more of the god-furnace thing.
Pretty terrible stuff.
Oh, I didnt even watch the booby edition. Perhaps I should have...
I watched the first movie now. It's an hour or so longer but aside from maybe two longer sequences doesn't feel like it added extra stuff. Rather it's expansion on existing story elements and a few small detail changes.
The standout addition is the opening sequence. The original opening narration that tells us that the bad guys are Space Nazis is dropped in favor of a lengthy sequence that shows the bad guys do Space Nazi things. I much prefer this version as it gives you time to take things in instead of just dumping the information on you to get on with the action.
This is a theme throughout the director's cut, really. Even though it's markedly longer, the time is used to expand scenes, add character interaction and world building, and generally improve the flow of the story that is pretty much unchanged from the butchered kiddie version but comes across far more coherently because of the changes and additions.
As an example of small changes that I like just because they give context, the priest dudes that pretty much just existed as WTF set dressing in the butchered cut don't have that much extra screen time, but we actually get to see them go around doing priesty stuff. They're now telling us something about the world. There are a few little things like that in the director's cut which flesh out the characters and setting.
Storytelling is similarly improved. For instance Kora's ship that was previously only introduced in the second movie is now set up in the first one, with the side benefit of showing that the villagers have their own parts to play and don't just get to do anything when the sevenish samurai are around. It makes the world richer and sets things up for later, which isn't something the butchered version did very well.
Basically the directors cut has coherent storytelling while the other version just strings scenes together with no regard for how they fit together as a whole. Granted, there's a little bit of exaggeration for effect in that observation, but while I had trouble with the original cut, I actually quite enjoyed the extended version. There's no question that it's the better cut, but I think it genuinely elevates the movie to another level.
So here we are. I now like Rebel Moon. Sue me.
Oh, and also, since the extra hour only adds random slow motion sequences very sparingly, which isn't very Snyderific of Snyder by the way, there is a relative decrease in random slow motion sequences in the movie, which is also an improvement.
Could be worse. Imagine if we got a movie about a squad of Marines hiking in a foggy landscape. Audiences would die of excitement. That can't be good for GW's reputation.
Kid_Kyoto wrote: But one question is unanswered, is there enough slo-mo wheat harvesting in the directors cut?
Geifer wrote: Could be worse. Imagine if we got a movie about a squad of Marines hiking in a foggy landscape. Audiences would die of excitement. That can't be good for GW's reputation.
Kid_Kyoto wrote: But one question is unanswered, is there enough slo-mo wheat harvesting in the directors cut?
I very much hope so! That's the best part!
Lets split the difference, and have a squad of marines harvesting wheat in slow motion in a foggy landscape? What else are chainswords for, really?
Geifer wrote: Basically the directors cut has coherent storytelling while the other version just strings scenes together with no regard for how they fit together as a whole. Granted, there's a little bit of exaggeration for effect in that observation, but while I had trouble with the original cut, I actually quite enjoyed the extended version. There's no question that it's the better cut, but I think it genuinely elevates the movie to another level.
So basically...BvS and Justice League all over again.
IMO Snyder's biggest flaw as a creator isn't the "dial it up to 11 and rip the knob off" thing, but his inability to tell stories in the amount of time he's been given. Feels like everything he does gets a director's cut that's noticeably better but also overlong. A director at his level should know how much story he can tell in a given medium, but he shows zero sense for that.
Works like Man of Steel, Dawn of the Dead, and 300 didn't suffer from this (and not coincidentally are some of his best stuff), but in those cases he had other strong writers involved (the Nolans, James Gunn) or very tight source material. Left to his own devices it's like he intentionally writes 50 extra pages to every screenplay.
It's definitely the worst sci-fi I've watched this year. I haven't been able to make it thru awake once and I've tried several times hoping I was just to tired when I tried or that the internet was wrong.
The internet is not wrong on this one. It's damn terrible. There is zero chance I add my numbers to the "directors cut" and encourage that bloated mass of trash. Nothing is going to change the horribly unengaging characters outside of the main villain.
I'd honestly say Ed Skrein was the only actual CHARACTER in both movies. If even one of the heroes managed to convey anything like Skrein, and you cut out all the damn slo-mo, you might actually have had a real movie.
Kid_Kyoto wrote: But one question is unanswered, is there enough slo-mo wheat harvesting in the directors cut?
I would hate for any of that to be lost.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news. I therefore feel all the more joyous for every rare instance in which I get to report happy news. Not only did the slow motion harvest survive unmolested, it even saw a modest expansion.
This is proof that Zack Snyder is too good for this world, blessing us with things we want and deserve but should not hope for.
Geifer wrote: Could be worse. Imagine if we got a movie about a squad of Marines hiking in a foggy landscape. Audiences would die of excitement. That can't be good for GW's reputation.
Kid_Kyoto wrote: But one question is unanswered, is there enough slo-mo wheat harvesting in the directors cut?
I very much hope so! That's the best part!
Lets split the difference, and have a squad of marines harvesting wheat in slow motion in a foggy landscape? What else are chainswords for, really?
If I were a movie producer, I'd be hopelessly in love with this idea. Even if I had to note that obviously chainswords are for shaving.
Of course only clueless adolescents shave with chainswords. Real men shave with eviscerators. As it should be.
I think I'd have liked it better if I never saw the original cuts of both movies.
Not the worst sci-fi that I've watched this year. Without naming names, its definitely better than a recent sci-fi series that recently ended.
There is certainly something to be said for going into the director's cuts without the baggage of the, and I said it multiple times now, but let's call it the butchered kiddie version of the movies.
As Gorgon noted, Snyder seems to love his extensive mythology and has trouble cutting down his movies effectively. On the one hand I can understand the notion of reducing a story to its important points and finding the right balance between exposition and brevity. On the other hand, I'll note that Seven Samurai is like four hours long when Western epics of the time would struggle to exceed two hours and a half. There is something to be said for letting a story unfold for as long as it takes,. Especially when it involves an extensive cast of focal characters. It's dead easy to cut down a movie about two main characters or a character and his sidekick. Doing justice to seven samurai and, to give credit where it's due, an antagonist worth noting simply takes time. If you cut out too much, you run the risk of losing what defines the respective character. And in doing so, you make the story poorer.
There's a balance to be struck, but it's not an easy balance.
Hulksmash wrote: Nothing is going to change the horribly unengaging characters outside of the main villain.
Yeah, Ed Skrein was the best part of both movies.
As a villain, I liked his 2nd in command as well. Cassius I think his name was. Unceremoniously killed for no reason lol.
I had trouble with the admiral in the kiddie version, But when you see the director's cut, he's just a dude who is devoted to his creed and happy to get a little too friendly with a tentacle monster in his downtime, No judgment from me. If that's his kink. more power to him.
But yeah, Cassius is pretty effective as the immediate subordinate. I'd disagree with him dying for no reason. When he is the devoted subordinate, he makes all the right choices. When his own survival is at stake and overrules his sense of duty, he becomes a liability. I find that to be a reasonably strong point. A character who knows his place and knows the order of the world is savvy at navigating the world he is stuck in. But when it comes down to serving that order selflessly or saving his own skin, selfish instinct takes over., Noble making the hard choice (or the dead easy one, depending on your disposition) that sees Cassius die to serve immediate need tells you everything about the "Motherworld" and its servants that you need to know.
Given this was a Netflix release and not a cinema release, I struggle to see why Netflix would bother to force a "standard" movie length version on Snyder in the first place (a bit like some of the arbitrary pacing of the Marvel TV series).
You know who you've hired and how he works by now, just let him do his thing and see if it works out.
If they are worried about syndicating it later (have any exclusives ever done that yet?), they could always break it into 4 parts at a later date (and maybe get natural breaks built in for that possibility).
The straightforward explanation is because this way they can profit twice off the same amount of work.
Like, these director's cuts were clearly not really cuts at all.
They just released a shorter version of the movies with every intention of releasing another longer one before barely a year had passed (has it even been a year?).
It was absolutely conceived that way from the beginning. And since they announced the director's cut before the original version was even released, they were pretty much locked into releasing it and hoping it would do better.
The only mystery is why they actually thought it was a good idea in the first place.
I'll admit, I do keep forgetting that the JL Snydercut actually performed quite well and received mostly favourable (or at least favourable-ish) reviews... I found it to be only a marginal improvement over Whedon's version.
It does seem like a reasonable number of people actually liked it, though... but those peoples' devotion to the idea of Snyder's Justice League vision obviously hasn't pulled them all across into his 'Star Wars, but with more blood and boobs!' universe.
I thought ZSJL was markedly better. And critics agreed -- it was one of his best-rated films. 71% on RT vs. 40% for the Whedon version.
But it was a weird 4-hour film/miniseries thing that wouldn't have been much different than the Whedon version had he cut it to even 3 hours for a theatrical release. So it was kinda flawed conceptually/with storytelling from the beginning. He's just not a guy who likes to follow the creative brief.
It's definitely an improvement over Whedon's cut overall, if only because its not forced to try and copy the Avenger's tone with footage that wasn't shot with that tone in mind. (the "I tried" in the opening might be one of my favorite creative barbs ever)
That said, there's so many overlong scenes in it, or stuff that's no longer edited in a way that works. Scenes that sit for so long (and not always in slow mo) that they don't make kinetic sense. There's honestly probably a pretty great 3 hour movie here, but we're stuck with one extreme or the other and neither make for a great film on their own.