Yes hello this is my 4 star review of rebel moon on letterboxd.
But first: a professional, somewhat critical review of rebel moon that engages with the film well, especially regarding anti-colonial themes, and isn't just knee-jerk regurgitated Snyder haterism:
Critic Siddhant Adlakha reviews Zack Snyder's latest film, the Star Wars-inspired "Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire."
And now more of my thoughts: [edit: Oh No, He Went And Talked For 3 Hours About It, Thanks For Coming To My TedTalk:)
No one has a better knack at putting together a cast list SO ATTRACTIVE TO THE BISEXUALS. read it and weep, boys. (Jena Malone is there too but really just for 1 set piece)
...Jena Malone's one (1) scene set piece features her as an alien spider woman with legitimate grievances against the Empire who now wants to kill kids because all her kids were killed. Like, so valid, girl. Also, did I say Jena Malone as an alien spider-woman? And this is just one scene.
Look, if that pitch doesn't hook you, this film may not be for you, and that's okay, but by GOD my people are the people who hear "Jena Malone alien spider woman" and perk up. I love you, freaks.
The cinematography is ace and always will be under Snyder's direction. music by Tom Holkenborg SLAPS. Costuming and design overall is super super strong. (People on this hellsite are always complaining about inadequate, boring as hell sci-fi design and you get RM and you don't appreciate it for what it is. WAKE UP.)
Costume showcase! Second from the right in this photo showing off those sweet sweet sci-fi costume designs is my beloved non-binary they/them revolutionary Milius. CANONICALLY non-binary, let me add. Imagine SW doing that lmaoooooooooooo D*ve Filoni would fuckin keel over and die
Kora! Our tragic female protagonist of color who's over 40, with a dark edgy sexy background. [KIDNAPPED AS A CHILD!! DEAD FAMILY!!! DEAD LOVER!!!!!!! SHE FAILED TO PROTECT HER WARD FROM ASSASSINATION!!!!! SHE IS THE MOST WANTED WOMAN IN THE UNIVERSE!!]
Bitches on tumblr LOVE taking failmen with sad backstories from media and blorbifying them, but the second it's a woman? please. If this was a man people would be writing the filthiest x reader smut you've seen since Mandalorian S1 came out. If this was a man you'd already have seen 20,000 fan drawings of her with her muscles and tits OUT. God where's my Kora fanart.
I personally have no problems with the plot of this movie (part 1 of 2) being "we must collect warriors to fight the evil empire." That's kinda fantasy story 101 and I still love new, varied interpretations of that plot.
If there's not much interconnecting plot because Kora's just gathering fighters, it's kinda like... that's the point, babes, they'll actually get to it in part 2. We're just at the "forming the team" stage. I revel in that part of a fantasy film and I always want it to be longer, so this film is like catnip to me.
Uh, yeah, this is getting long. More under the cut.
Entertainment professional nitpick time! I've seen someone say RM would be better as a TV show to introduce a new character each episode. And I truly don't think that fixes any of the problems this person has with the film, while introducing way more problems. (Who the fuck would go in on an original concept TV show where each episode introduces a new hero. You could not sell that pitch to a studio, ever, and viewers would instantly check out if they didn't like the introduced character of the week, and the same complaints would be made: it’s just a new character intro blah blah blah. This wouldn’t fix anything! It would very much make it worse!)
Me, like every day, through gritted teeth: that's... not... how... tv... works...
Like be realistic for a hot second with me. Television is not "long movie"—it is a different medium with different rules. Yes, the past decade has blurred many lines between TV and film, but they're still different mediums, and when people blur them ("it's a 10-hour movie!") the results often suck ass, because you either lack episodic structure or you lack feature structure. Snyder is a feature filmmaker who has never worked in TV. Whenever features people jump into TV, it's a whole other learning curve! They're usually terrible at it! You want Snyder to have to learn a new medium? You want him to learn 5/6-act TV structure from scratch? You want him to (horrified gasp) lead a writers room? Those are not his strengths, baby. Let him play in his space opera sandbox.
And I'm not done! You want the casting team to have to deal with the headache of getting feature film actors to star in a TV show? (Pay cuts! Longer commitments! TV production timelines!) You want to do that to me, personally, and fuck up the TV landscape some more by going, "Oh, we can basically just make a Longer Feature Film in TV"? Fuck off with that. TV has different production realities and different basic story structures. A [long] film [with two parts] is still a film, in structure and production practicalities.
Truly, Tumblr media studies brains (derogatory) at it again.
To each their own, but again, I think RM's structure is fun because it gives me more of the goodies (badass, varied character intros) for the price of one (2-hour film.) Like... that's the good stuff, that's often the most exhilarating part of a film for me. And contrary to popular belief, it's not intro to intro without rising tension or stakes. It builds tension as it goes because new facets of resistance against the Motherworld are explored in each character's intro scene. New ways they fight back, new worlds on which they fight back. And a ticking time bomb of the King's Gaze (king's gays lol) catching up.
Here, have a trailer bc Tumblr's mad at me for too much text in one block.
...I like the RM characters. I want to spend time with them and see what other zany shenanigans Snyder will have them do. (Alien bar fights! Taming a space gryphon! Lightsaber battle!) I like the side-quest-y, exploratory, space opera sandbox playground nature. It's fun, and like, again, if you don't perk up at the concept of collecting cool characters like action figures, this film may just not be for you.
To me it's a polycule. Like, the most messed up polycule in the whole galaxy, but it's a polycule.
Speaking of: THE CHARACTERS ROCK. Yeah, we're missing some significant character development because Netflix truncated Snyder's 4-hr, R-rated film into a 2-hr PG-13 version (likely to be able to release the 4-hr cut later, drum up new press, and get more eyeballs on the movie in total in a few months.) That's... not really Snyder's fault [even though he claims he's in on the plan... some part of me thinks it was Netflix's idea and not his. Stinks of studio meddling.] And it's not indicative of the quality of the actual film, which I currently see as more of an abridged version of the R-rated film that's gonna come out and fill up some of these story holes.
If people are judging the film for not being the 4-hour version, and then decide not to see the 4-hour version, that's their call, but it's kinda shitty to act like the 2-hr version is all there is. Like it probably wasn't Snyder's call to do a 2-hr cut! He's said that the 4-hr one is a whole different movie. I betcha the common criticisms (not enough character development, just jumps from character intro to character intro without interconnection, lack of structure) will be helped, if not outright solved, by the longer cut.
I think people are also happy to take a Part 1 of a movie if it's, say, Dune, and the source material has another part, so Part 1 is allowed to be fucking boring, whereas people don't give that kind of allowance to original sci-fi movies, WHICH IS A REASON WE DON'T GET ORIGINAL SCI-FI. If you're painting with as huge and cosmic a palette as space opera Rebel Moon, the 4-8 hours total across the 2 four-hour parts is kinda bare minimum for an epic. So... patience is a virtue? Let part 1 have elements of IT'S KIND OF A PROLOGUE?
What's that saying? If you want the rewards of space opera worldbuilding with an ensemble cast, you must submit to the mortifying ordeal of 2 hours of setup. Geez. Enjoy the wacky exposition or get out of the space opera genre.
Yeah, that leads me to the point of people who don't enjoy space opera are getting mad at RM for fulfilling the promises of the genre. You might truly be happier elsewhere. The whole thing is over-the-top, huge-scale MELODRAMA and I thrive on melodrama. If it's too cheesy for you, don't come to space operas!!!!!!!
On that note, people have said RM is too tropey and too Star Wars-y. But like I said. If you don't love the tropes get out of the genre!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! If you aren't here for bloodier/hornier Star Wars get out of RM!!!!
Another big idea I would be remiss to skip over. RM is an explicitly, deliberately anti-colonial, anti-imperial text—far, far more so than any other mainstream sci-fi currently being released. Well-intentioned liberals love to tout Star Trek/Star Wars as progressive media but they really hedge and defang all their political commentary, especially in their 21st century franchise form—think the SW sequels/shows straight up woobifying K*lo Ren in realtime and the Trek shows that (while fun!) are really often just nostalgia bait.
RM is pretty fucking radical. Its theme basically is Kill Nazis—or in expanded form, something along the lines of "The empire will eat up everything of value in the universe unless it is met with unified armed resistance built on solidarity."
And just look at RM's casting. We're not colorblind here; we're very color-conscious. (That's a rant for another day, but I've really started to despise colorblind casting for its extremely well-intentioned-liberal "we're all the same" mentality. It just winds up erasing.) Anyway: RM features the explicitly American-English-Afrikaans empire vs. the Algerian Amazigh protagonist, Black freedom fighters, Japanese revolutionary... and like. Snyder's always gonna be into Vikings so obviously we have Space Vikings too, whatever. Look at me, I can criticize Snyder too! The Poor Sad Space Vikings are not the strongest part of the film!
...Anyway of course the empire vs. revolution is absolutely kind of Star Wars-y since RM is highkey Snyder's Star Wars, but it goes so much further than SW dreamed (or, perhaps, nightmared). SW's rebels/resistance continually get defanged because they're kind of foundationally space magic/singular hero's quest deals, and modern SW with the exception of Rogue One/Andor is just politically, socially stupid. In contrast, RM is about forming a coalition, without something like the Force to help you out. I could write an essay on the ways RM starts in the same place Star Wars starts but takes its politics so much more seriously, so much further.
While I'd argue "good politics" and "artistic quality" rarely correlate, RM is explicitly and doggedly a text about the colonial empire that exploits, enslaves, abuses, and seeks to utterly control marginalized people groups in its quest for domination—and god, I would LOVE to see a resurgence in very fanged, very angry political sci-fi.
One more aside. Snyder has been rightfully criticized for his earlier works basking in fascist-adjacent, hypermasculine aesthetics; 300 is notably super duper racist in how it depicts savage/monstrous Persians vs. Beautifully Good White Spartans Defending Their Culture. (more on "300 Bad" stored up in my brain if anyone wants THAT rant.) To Snyder's credit, none of his films since 300 have really done that—parts of Batman v Superman and his cut of Justice League purposefully poke fun at it. The hypermasculinity is kinda still there, but it's subsumed in the service of melodrama and mythic-flavored cinema, and it's kinda a staple of the action genre anyway, and if you're gonna criticize Snyder without criticizing EVERY ACTION MOVIE EVER, that's just more regurgitated Snyder haterism.
No one is doing mythic action like Snyder these days. No one has the balls and the command of melodrama & operatic visuals. And it comes clearly from Snyder's background in art & art history because all his shots are jam-packed with symbolism and meaning and allusion. So criticize the film for its weaknesses if you like but geez, if I see another post railing about the lack of CRAFT in RM, I will start biting. ALMOST NO BLOCKBUSTER HAS THIS LEVEL OF CRAFT. It's okay that you don't understand visual storytelling, babygirl, but please don't accuse Snyder of lacking craft.
Sorry, you've triggered Cinema Defense Mechanisms in me, I'm gonna have to sit down for a while after this.
I have more takes. Takes hot enough to fuel the King's Gaze (king's gays lol.) But I'll end with a funny observation: I transed my gender (cheers, shouts, hoorays) just about the time I was getting ready to watch Rebel Moon, and in one shocking, epiphanic moment I turned to my partner and went "Of COURSE I'm a man. I like Zack Snyder." So........... do with that what you will.
Listen. Listen. I am here for horny Episcopalian Socialist vibes. I know this doesn’t help you with a plot or anything. But how much plot does such a thing need, really? (I’m kidding. [I’m a little bit not kidding.]) I’m sure you have plenty going on and everything, but if you want to post moody photos about horny socialist Episcopalians or little word doodles that you’ve written about it or literally anything I am here for that shit.
“How much plot does such a thing need?” is a question I ask myself every time I sit down to try to plot the damn thing.
Here are some vibes, though: turn of the century New York City, we open with our heroine having a night out with her friends. They go dancing at the kind of place with dark corners and she meets a lovely man who she ends up snogging in one of those dark corners, a good time is had by all. The next day she’s at the church where she works, doing sacristan things, when the new priest shows up, and would you believe it’s the lovely man from last night, and what do you do with the knowledge that the guy who offered to put his head under your skirts if you ever crossed paths somewhere more private is now going to be working with you. At church.
I might not have plot but I do have conflict, and that conflict is called the principle of “don’t fuck the flock”--Episcopal priests can fuck but this does not always mean they should, and where your congregation is involved you definitely should not, so our hero switches into friend mode and basically they become inseparable and lots of people assume they’re sleeping together but they aren’t. Something something parish dynamics and gossip, I think it’s a wealthier parish where some of the members don’t appreciate the leftist projects the heroine and hero are both trying to undertake, but they mostly take it out on the heroine, who resigns because she can’t take it anymore and shows up on the hero’s doorstep that night like “I’m not your parishioner anymore and also I’ve had a terrible day so we might as well bang.”
...that’s actually like...half a plot, isn’t it? I don’t have the back half yet though.
This whole story is extremely self indulgent and an excuse for me to write about my favorite things (religious people who fuck! bi 4 bi relationships! gratuitous references to the Book of Common Prayer!) while also addressing some stuff that comes with the historical romance territory the way I want it addressed--a heroine who never wants to be pregnant and is ambivalent about marriage, for example (not opposed to it on the religious side of things, extremely opposed to what it means under the law).
the vibes and plot get stronger every time I have a good long daydream about it, so maybe it’s time to sit in the shower for a while thinking about it and, idk, make a playlist or something. thank you so much for asking about it!!
I have another question! (Because you are so delightfully prompt at answering them.) Do you know where I could get an image of your book jackets? I don't just need the cover, I want to cover, plus the spine, plus the back, preferably all as one image. It's for a project...
Do you mean a single image with the back, spine, and front all together? I’m sorry, I don’t know where I could find that. You might be able to adapt the whole painting, which was divided into three for the trilogy. Hmm.
How does your therapist respond when you ask him how he is? Does he do some sort of therapy we're-here-to-talk-about-you-not-me thing? Or a pat social answer? Or does he actually *tell* you how he is???
He gives the polite, “Fine thank you” and his face says, “I understand that’s a reflex, now please give me a real answer to the same question that you have just answered with the knee jerk socially acceptable response.” He’s great.
MG, this is the second time I’ve seen you mention that MOTOE Joe/Nicky fic you might write, and I just want to say: doooooo iiiiiittttttt.
Thank you.
thank you for the encouragement! right now my mind looks like:
pros of writing this: everything about trains, the plot is basically already there, I do love a good TOG AU
cons of writing this: I have never finished a multichapter fic in my life and I can’t bring myself to disappoint everyone who’s been very interested in this
I also do not wish to watch West World. But my partner saw me watching Shadow and Bone, and she told me that Ben Barnes has an “aggressively bisexual sex scene” in it. So anyways, I may need to watch *one* episode of West World.
Oh goodness I feel like that “no fear/one fear” comic panel. Like, “I will not be watching Westworld > Ben Barnes has an aggressively bisexual sex scene > I will be watching one (1) episode of Westworld”
Hi! Loved your stamps, they're lovely. Would you be willing to post before/after pictures of your office organization crusade? (Or, at the very least, after pictures?) I love seeing things organized. What else are you turning up in the cleaning process?
Probably not before pictures! The office is truly, epically messy at the moment. As evidenced by the fact that days later I’m still in the process of cleaning. (This is a major re-organization, throwing things away, maybe getting a new larger file cabinet kind of project.)
I’m in the “clearing things off the bead table” stage, which is going to take a while because for the longest I was just setting things on the table and saying “I’ll sort it later” and eventually it just turned into more of a pile of stuff than a table and…well, I’m rediscovering all kinds of things. Like these!
Uh, let’s see if that works. Anyway, I made these a while ago, they were super fun, and I was wondering where they’d gotten to.
