Rebel Moon: The Scargiver

Yeah, it's just as dumb as the poster looks
dir: Zack Snyder
2024
If you were a Zach Snyder fan, the only thing better than a year where one of his films comes out is a year in which two of his films come out. So, 2024, a banner year for Snyderfans.
For the rest of us, it’s a second chance to sneer and deride and throw as much shade as can be thrown at a hack of his monumental proportions.
This here film Rebel Moon: The Scargiver is the sequel to that other film that he expelled into the universe, being Rebel Moon: A Child of Fire. No-one asked for these films, let alone sequels and such. I watched that earlier film, more with disbelief than hate, unable to believe that people with millions of dollars at their disposal would make something so generic and so familiar that it would have all the originality and creativity of an episode of Paw Patrol.
This here ‘sequel’ works so perfectly well that there is absolutely no reason for anyone to watch the earlier film. Watching the earlier film provides the viewer with nothing extra, nothing additional, nothing more illuminating. All the main characters / archetypes get a scene that explains their motivations for fighting the Empire, I’m sorry I meant the Imperium.
They fight the Imperium, and then that’s that, with another implied sequel at the end. We didn’t need that. We didn’t ask for that.
What did we ask for… I dunno. I expected there to be a big battle in the film, and I guess that’s there, the big classic showdown since this is space Seven Samurai / The Magnificent Seven / Battle Beyond the Stars. If it doesn’t make sense, well, where’s your sense of adventure? Your sense of whimsy? Has life crushed your spirit so much that you can’t suspend a little bit of disbelief to enjoy a Zach Snyder adventure-fest?
Yeah, me neither. It’s a bit of a chore watching action scenes that ape his own previous movies, staging things like 300 but with one side mostly shooting laser guns, and the other running around with swords and axes. It’s pretty goofy. They belabour the humble farmer stuff so much that you wonder how these Aryan lumpenproles were ever able to survive thus far.