The current and only version of Rebel Moon released on Netflix at the time of this review . . . is an astoundingly average and derivative film. All the negative reviews by critics and top ratings by Zack Snyder’s diehard fans made me believe this film would either be extremely terrible, have some disturbing content, or perhaps be innovative in some surprising ways. In the end, I’m left wondering why on earth this gained such divisive reactions. Snyder isn’t pushing any sort of divisive message or bold theme in the film and the film wasn’t some uniquely terrible catastrophe of filmmaking. It was . . . average. Just average. It wasn’t bad, the characters were not stilted or awful, the effects weren’t ridiculously over the top, and the story was average.

The only real criticism I have is that the dialogue was organized terribly. It seemed more like the characters were monologuing to the audience instead of having any real conversations with each other. For example, the robot character just started monologuing about the prophecy child to a village girl and the village girl remarks that the robot is one of the good people among the invading force that entered their village. Except . . . the robot didn’t do anything to help her? It just got shot at by two of the soldiers who laughed about how it refused to attack ever since it failed to protect the royal family from assassination. Hypothetically, if it had stopped the two guards from harming the village girl or blocked a stray laser blast that would have otherwise struck her, then it would have been a credible reaction. But . . . he just monologues about a prophecy child and she just comments something that doesn’t really make sense in the context of the events presented. The rest of the stories feel very rushed with barely any dialogue explaining why each member joined, except for the last two rebel siblings. Only after a surprise capture where the main villain of the film exposition dumps their background, so we get clarification for why they joined. Before that, the dialogue goes quick with little explanation of why they’re joining.

Overall, it was average. It wasn’t terrible, but it was stilted. Too much monologuing to the audience instead of characters’ having direct conflicts with each other on their motives. The actors and actresses did perfectly fine acting with the material that they had and some of the monologues weren’t exactly bad. For example, Kora’s explanation of her life as a soldier was excellent and fit the context of the story and scenes; but everything else didn’t feel like the characters’ were explaining things to each other, but rather they acted as window-dressing to info dump on the audience. I think Snyder should get a film equivalent of a copyeditor or hire a co-writer to do edits to make the conversations and scenes for his ideas flow better, because the context presented felt disjointed instead of fully authentic with the narrative presented in the PG-13 version of the film. I’d rate it as a 5 / 10. Not awful, not great; just an average film. Both the hate and praise seem overblown. I definitely think it is worth watching if you just want to watch a Sci-Fi action film and have the time to spare. It’s no Dune, 2001: A Space Odyssey, or old trilogy Star Wars; but it’s decent enough. Finally, I’m not going to join the bandwagon of Snyder hate. I’m disturbed by the number of suicides happening so often in the public and the guy already lost his daughter to suicide. I’m going to avoid joining any witch hunts for things like making fantasy / Sci-fi films.

The film is a 5 / 10.

9/29/2024 update: I’m embarrassed to admit that I completely forgot about the main character’s monologue of love being beaten out of her before  she later said that she was instructed to find a lover. I had actually paused the movie out of boredom, listened to music and ate dinner for approximately an hour, and then went back to watching this film. I guess she made so little of an impression that I genuinely forgot crucial plot details. So… it should have probably been lower, but I’ll just leave it as average since it billed itself as a two-parter and the second part could have arguably given clarification on that confusion, but that would have required a level of competence that Zack Snyder and his team haven’t demonstrated. I still don’t want to be too negative, because I feel bad for the guy after learning how he lost his daughter to suicide.