Rebel Moon writer waves away Star Wars comparisons, bad reviews

Zack Snyder's new sci-fi movie Rebel Moon -- or, technically, Rebel Moon: Part One - A Child of Fire -- came out on Netflix the other week, and it's a hit. It was the number one movie on Netflix and attracted 23.9 million views in its first three days of availability, according to The Guardian. “It’s been a truly unparalleled experience introducing Rebel Moon to global audiences and I’m thrilled that the movie is [No 1] around the world,” writer-director Zack Snyder said in a statement. “We have the most dedicated and loyal fans across the world that any filmmaker could ask for, and seeing them consistently be supportive has been an enormously rewarding experience.”

On the other hand, with a 25% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, the movie is a critical failure, with critics blasting it for its slow pace, hastily sketched characters and derivative storytelling; it's no secret that Snyder developed Rebel Moon based on a pitch for a Star Wars movie that Disney rejected. According to critics, that shows.

This puts people like Kurt Johnstad -- who wrote the screenplay for Rebel Moon alongside Snyder and Shay Hatten -- in the unenviable position of having to defend the film from critics while he promotes it. "I don’t read the reviews, I never have," Johnstad told Variety. "Critics have a job to do. We live in a democracy. Everybody gets to vote. If people watch the film, they’ll have an experience, and they will either enjoy it or they won’t.

"In my career of 20 years doing this, reviews have never equated to performance. A movie will either perform or it won’t. People will either love it and be connected to it, and I think what this movie has is an emotional drive and a core and characters that are vulnerable. And of course, there’s sequence and action and visual — it’s a magnificent looking film. But I think that at the core of it, it’s got emotion. There’s an emotional engine and a currency that runs through the film that I think works, so I’d invite people to check it out."

Johnstad is right about reviews and performance, of course; if the numbers are good, it doesn't much matter to studios what critics say.

...and yet, when Netflix is playing the long game with something like it is with Rebel Moon, bad critical reception could become a problem in the long run. Using Snyder's own filmography as an example, critics were unkind to Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice when it came out in 2016. The film performed very well anyway, but ticket sales were considerably lower for the follow-up movie Justice League, which came out the next year. That kept snowballing through to today, when DC movies like Aquaman and the Last Kingdom are bombing at the box office and the entire DC Cinematic Universe is being rebooted. The first Rebel Moon movie is being watched, but for how long, and will that enthusiasm transfer over to Part Two if the narrative around the franchise is that it's bad?

As for those Star Wars comparisons, Johnstad downplayed them. "It’s impossible not to be compared to Star Wars," he said. "They’re very different worlds. We’re trying to do very different things. I have great respect for George Lucas and everything that he’s done for 50 years. He’s changed the shape of this entire town, so we can’t say that we haven’t been affected or haven’t absorbed some of those lessons and cinematically those experiences. It would be false, and we’d be lying. The idea is, if given our own opportunity — just like George was a complete rebel in this town and an iconoclast — how can we do the same thing in our time? That isn’t a written mandate, but it’s just like, 'Oh, how can I write the most provocative, inspiring, interesting, twist and turn kind of story?'"

"Zack is trying to do something very different here that really hasn’t been done in a long time. This isn’t an IP. This is an original story. It’s being created by hundreds, if not thousands of technicians. That’s a really bold thing."

I sympathize with Johnstad wanting to stand by his movie, but I see some evasiveness here. Critics are knocking the movie for being influenced by Star Wars in the way that every blockbuster post-1977 is influenced by Star Wars, which they are; it's calling out the very specific ways that Rebel Moon borrows from George Lucas' classic, insofar as it's about a group of scrappy rebels banding together to fight an evil empire of space fascists.

It's also weird to hear Johnstad say that Rebel Moon "isn't an IP." It might be an existing IP, but clearly Netflix wants to ride this rocket round the world. There's a Rebel Moon sequel, director's cut and even video game already in the works. If the title Rebel Moon: Part One - A Child of Fire, doesn't say "IP in the making" I don't know what does.

I don't think this budding franchise is dead on arrival, but it definitely has something to prove with Rebel Moon: Part TWo - The Scargiver, which is due out on Netflix on April 19, 2024

To stay up to date on everything fantasy, science fiction, and WiC, follow our all-encompassing Facebook page and sign up for our exclusive newsletter.

Get HBO, Starz, Showtime and MORE for FREE with a no-risk, 7-day free trial of Amazon Channels