Review by C.J. Bunce
Fans of the world and characters of Zack Snyder’s multi-film, James Cameron-inspired sci-fi franchise Rebel Moon got their first taste of what was really going on in V. Castro’s novelization Rebel Moon Part One: A Child of Fire–The Official Movie Novelization (reviewed here), an opportunity to dig into the mind of the director. The first adaptation of Zack Snyder’s original story bordered on NC-17 rating status or worse, including a gory scene of a boy bashing his father’s brains in, a full-on sex sequence and other elements that are nothing like the PG-13 movie.
The continuation, Rebel Moon Part Two: The Scargiver–The Official Novelization is available now here at Amazon. It confirms these adaptations are really adaptations of the Rebel Moon Director’s Cuts, which have only just found their way to trailer form–a red band trailer–for two new cuts of the movies heading to Netflix this week. Were they simply nixed by Netflix, or is this an eye into the movies Snyder wanted to make? Or is it more likely just a money grab?
Like Castro’s first novelization entry, this expansion and adaptation is laced with bizarre elements of what can only be called smut–the kind you’d once find in bad romance novels that at times makes the book feel like erotic fan fiction, that irrelevant sex and violence of an HBO-Max made for TV production. The violence in Part 2, as found in the novelization and the trailer for the Director’s Cuts, is the very definition of gratuitous–a showcase of slow motion, in-your-face, graphic horrors.
The problem is in part with the marketing–they actually released a toy line for this franchise, and Hollywood has been consistent over the years, going back to Ridley Scott’s Alien, to refrain from marketing R-Rated movies to kids. The Rebel Moon story in the novelizations, presumably written from Snyder’s full scripts, is not just sci-fi horror, but full-on slashery, body horror. It’s not for mainstream audiences, the very stuff they invented Parental Controls for.
I don’t recommend it, but if it’s your thing you can check out the newly released trailer here for the Director’s Cuts of Rebel Moon Part One and Two. Have you ever watched a promising “red band” trailer–red band being the designation for “NSFW” trailers?
Is there anything wrong with this stuff? After all it’s not all that far removed from the stuff of H.R. Giger’s concept artwork, the grotesque imagery Ridley Scott used to inspire his franchise. The creepy bit is the why. Why the long blood spurts, the woman getting her neck sliced taking the full screen frame? Where is the artistic value with that kind of exploitation? We get it, these are bad guys. But who wants to watch that? Why promote that? And why release four movies if Snyder intended to call these next two movies his “true vision”? Snyder hasn’t evolved past his adaptation of Frank Miller’s 300. Was anyone at Netflix holding him back? Obviously not. In fact sex and violence, as we all are aware, sells. But maybe two releases of two films sell more.
As with Part One, the gratuitous scenes–expected to be more than an hour of “cut” or “reworked” scenes coming to Netflix, can be found in the novelizations, and they don’t add anything to the story, which already features a paper-thin plot. And where the first volume was over-stuffed with unnecessary exposition, the second part, at less than 200 pages, feels more like a novella. You can’t knock Castro for the adaptation–there’s just not much there to adapt, it’s full of flat dialogue, mostly farmers talking about life stuff instead of outer space stuff. And there’s nothing sexy about the sex. Note to Snyder: More sex doesn’t necessarily make a movie sexier.
The layout of the movies and books is boring, stuffing in backstory when the audience needs to know it and not before, and not in any artistic manner. The coverage of the character Nemesis is particularly bad–this could have been a fascinating character, but her story loses all its potential emotion as presented. It’s too difficult to care about cookie-cutter worldbuilding when the characters are not admirable or sympathetic. The story’s heroine, Kora, played in the movie by Sofia Boutella, kills a little girl with a gun point-blank, with very little pressure to do so. She can’t be seen as a heroine after that. She’s a bad guy. That’s how storytelling works. And if she’s an anti-hero, then you need an anti-hero story.
Part Two confirms what Part One felt like: This is Snyder taking an easy route, creating another adaptation of Akira Kurosawa’s familiar Seven Samurai, the original, go-to story of farmers hiring heroes to help them defend their home. But that story relies on heroism, incredible characters, and humor. Rebel Moon in both its parts is Seven Samurai squeezed into a horror sieve with sci-fi dress, minus those elements that made Kurosawa’s story so exciting and great.
For a science fiction story that by all accounts is trying to be the next Star Wars or Dune, the novelization of Rebel Moon strips away at the toned-down, mainstream elements. I had thought Part One hinged greatly on Roman history, borrowing Latin phrases and character names from a basic Ancient Roman history text. And so the idea of parroting Janus introducing the new season and year, and the time for fertility, laying seeds, etc. fit with that. But the graphic excesses make this look like Snyder wasn’t looking at ancient history for his influences, but maybe the Gore Vidal/Bob Guccione frequently cited porn disaster Caligula, which critic Roger Ebert panned as the worst film he’d ever seen, and “sickening, utterly worthless, shameful trash.” Maybe Rebel Moon isn’t all that, but it’s curious what Snyder was attempting to do here. Stranger yet, he seems to be renaming Part One from A Child of Fire to Chalice of Blood, and Part Two from The Scargiver to Curse of Forgiveness. Two names for the same movie? Let’s not pretend that makes any sense. (Of those four titles, only The Scargiver makes sense to the story being told).
The first novelization is available now here at Amazon, with Part Two available here. The Director’s Cuts of Snyder’s movies come to Netflix this Friday, August 2, 2o24.
