The continuation of Netflix’s cut of Zack Snyder’s space opera is finally here, and boy do we have a shitshow on our hands. Rebel Moon: Part Two – The Scargiver picks up with a band of heroes preparing to defend the planet of Veldt against the relentless space Nazis.
In Rebel Moon: Part One, it was clear as day how and where Netflix’s insistence on a more toned down cut of Zack Snyder’s vision ended up ruining the film. I’m convinced there’s a much better edit of that film out there that we’ll get later this year. When it comes to Part Two, I honestly don’t know what could be added to this cut to make it good. I’m willing to eat my words, admit defeat and apologise to Netflix if Snyder’s vision is in fact just as awful as this entry. This concern stems from the fact that the dialogue in this film, that Snyder has written, is some of the laziest, most contrived garbage I’ve ever had the displeasure of listening to. I understand in Part One how you would fix the biggest issues – editing, pacing and story cohesiveness – but I don’t know how you can fix the piss-poor dialogue and writing of characters in here. I have just enough faith in Snyder to assume he’ll pull something out of his ass for his ‘true vision’, but boy is it going to take a miracle.
This film’s narrative suffers in a number of ways, but one of those isn’t the pacing. In stark contrast to the lightning-fast, choppy pace of Part One, this film runs at a pretty solid, subdued pace. It allows the story to breathe and gives it time to try and flesh out its characters, so I really do respect the shift in approach. The problem is, I still found it hard, if not impossible, to care about any of the lead characters or what might happen to them. The squad of rebels we spent the first film recruiting are in here, yet I could tell you only one of their names off the top of my head. Additionally, there’s one member of the team I’m not even convinced was in the first movie, as I have no recollection of them at all. This brings about a problem – if I don’t give a shit about the characters, how am I meant to care about the story. This is part two of a four-hour narrative and yet I still know nothing about their backstories or personalities that would make them interesting. But don’t you worry, because Snyder includes maybe the most baffling, worst-written scenes I have ever seen to try and rectify that. There is a moment in which our team sits at a table and one by one they basically say out loud “let me exposition dump my backstory for the next 60 seconds”. This happens back to back to back for every one of our main characters and I honestly burst out laughing when I realised what was happening. It’s laziness like I’ve never seen before, and I have one word for that sequence – pathetic.
As much as this sequel gives the narrative more time to (unsuccessfully) build some sort of tension, it still feels like there’s things missing. I can’t get into spoilers, but there are moments where it feels like two characters have interacted a few times and built up some sort of rapport, yet that wasn’t really conveyed on screen. Early on, a few characters receive meaningful gifts from a villager, which is a cute moment, but aside from some wheat-cutting montages, there’s been zero scenes establishing any sort of connection. As if the dialogue and character woes weren’t enough, we also have to deal with the feeling of missing scenes – it’s a goddamn mess. In exchange for whatever scenes were cut, we have not one, but two slow motion farming montages. Now look, I’m not going to lie, the serenity and beauty in the first of these sequences is actually great to watch. I wanted to hate it because of how pretentious it is, but I did enjoy it. What it didn’t need is two of these moments, that’s when the eyes started to roll and it needed to move on.
When you combine all of these narrative and character woes, it results in a film that’s dull, lifeless and void of any sort of emotion. Going into the second half, once the war actually kicks in, it doesn’t get any better. The lack of attachment to the characters means there’s no stakes in the action, tempering any sort of excitement that can be gained. Everything just feels very empty, and it all stems from poor writing and even worse dialogue.
Let’s shift the tone for a moment and give the film some praise, because while it is awful, there are things it gets right. The war sequence that fills the entire latter half of the runtime is loaded with awesome-looking action. Much like in Part One, if you shut off your brain and embrace all of the gritty sci-fi combat, there is some nonsensical fun to be had. The whole ‘small rebel force vs expansive empire fleet’ is hardly an original matchup, but it’s always an entertaining affair. It’s big… it’s loud… it’s a little bit of a clusterfuck… but it’s well presented. Additionally, Snyder’s cinematography is just stunning. The way he captures this world is objectively beautiful to look at across almost every scene. Regardless of whether it’s a sweeping shot of wheat (of which there are a lot) or it’s a wide shot of a war landscape, there’s no denying it’s outstanding. The money that was put into the visual effects is by no means wasted – the space combat looks real and the battles come across as grounded as possible. There’s not a single frame of CGI that looked distractingly fake, it’s all seamless and very well blended with whatever physical sets were used.
Unfortunately for the actors in here, everyone suffers from the poor writing and uninspired dialogue they’re tasked with delivering. The characters not being properly developed puts the actors in a tough position as they can’t do much to make their performance shine. The presence of Tarak (Staz Nair), Nemesis (Bae Donna) and Milius (Elise Duffy), three members of our main crew, is so minimal that they barely have a line of dialogue. You can’t even say those performances are good or bad because they’re not given a chance. Djimon Hounsou’s Titus gets a lot of screen time and he makes the most of it. I still give zero shits about his character, but Hounsou is a force you can’t help but enjoy seeing on screen. Sophia Boutella (Kora) and Michael Huisman (Gunnar) are fine – I don’t buy into their connection and don’t care much about their fight, but they do their job well enough.
Ed Skrein returns as the main villain and he’s once again the best part. He’s the one who fits his role the best, and he puts in 110% when it comes to being an evil space Nazi. The character is comically bad and Skrein really hams it up to the point of him being the most fun character to watch. He has noticeably less of a presence in this one, but makes more of an impact than some of our heroes, which says a lot.
In the end, Rebel Moon: Part Two – The Scargiver offers no good reasons for why you should give it a watch. It does one thing better than its predecessor – slow things down so it’s at the very least cohesive. Everything else is either executed just as poorly or worse than before, with awful dialogue to go along with lacklustre character work. Even with the beautiful cinematography and well-executed action, the movie is a bore from front to back. Zack Snyder has got a hefty task on his hands if he’s going to turn this into a good ‘director’s cut’. Unless he’s got hours of footage with better dialogue that helps form a thrilling narrative, I don’t know if it’s possible.
2.5/10
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