Rebel Moon: Part One – A Child of Fire director Zach Snyder has never been a particularly popular figure among the professional film criticism community, but his recently released Netflix sci-fi epic gives the amateurs the opportunity to trash him, too.
Rebel Moon is a project that’s been 11 years in the making, first pitched by Snyder to Lucasfilm shortly after their acquisition by Disney as a Star Wars movie. When Disney passed on the project, Snyder then brought it to Warner Bros., suggesting that it could be either a big-budget movie or an expansive sci-fi video game. Since Warner Bros. didn’t bite either, Snyder took Rebel Moon to the place where uninspiring scripts and barrel-bottom pitches are rewarded with reckless budgets that would make other studios swoon – Netflix.
Heavily drawing upon both Star Wars and the samurai films that first inspired George Lucas, Rebel Moon tells the story of a group of lowly space farmers who push back against a fascistic interplanetary empire. If that synopsis makes you think, “Hey, that sounds absurdly similar to a simplistic explanation of the original Star Wars,” then you may have already seen Rebel Moon. While Snyder’s inexplicably passionate and terminally online fan base are flooding forums with praise for a movie they may or may not have seen, many others have called Rebel Moon dull and painfully derivative sci-fi shlock that isn’t worth the streaming data. And, over on the hilariously ruthless movie review platform Letterboxd, they’re making their voices heard. Here are the funniest and most ferocious Letterboxd reviews of Rebel Moon, starting with…
