Saturday, April 20, 2024

Rebel Moon - Part Two: The Scargiver - The Less Entertaining Second Half of the Space Adventure from Zack Snyder

Having known that this movie would be released by Netflix on 19 April 2024, I already set my time to watch it as soon as it would be available. So yesterday after I came home from work, I immediately watch it from the comfort of my bedroom. All right, let's get to it then.

Brief Story Line

After the events of the First movie, Kora (Sofia Boutella - ArgylleStar Trek Beyond etc), Gunnar (Michiel Huisman - Kate2: 22 etc) with the remaining warriors i.e. former General Titus (Djimon Hounsou - Captain MarvelKing Arthur: Legend of the Sword etc), Tarak (Staz Naiz), Darrian Bloodaxe (Ray Fisher - Season 3 True Detective TV series etc) and Nemesis (Bae Doo-na - The Silent Sea TV series, Cloud Atlas etc) returned back to the village on planet Veldt to spread the good news of their victory.

However, they soon found out that the armies of the Motherworld led by Cassius (Alfonso Herrera - The Perfect Dictatorship etc) were still coming to Veldt to collect the grain. What they did not know though was Admiral Noble (Ed Skrein - Alita: Battle Angel, I Used to be Famous etc) had somehow survived and was behind Cassius. Now Titus had to set up the farmers to fight for their village using his vast experience in the past, together with Kora and the rest of the warriors. 

So how would the story conclude? You could find out in this movie.

End of Brief Story Line

Since I watched the original movie back in December, I was quite interested in finding out the conclusion to this new adventure space saga created by Zack Snyder (Dawn of the Dead, Man of Steel, Sucker Punch etc). If you read my previous post, you would know that I kind of enjoyed that film despite few shortcomings. So I was hoping that I would be enjoying this one more. However as I started watching it, I really felt the first half of the movie to be too slow and frankly uninteresting. Though there was an attempt of giving some more background story of the warriors, but it felt more like an obligatory story-telling to add more drama, which sadly did not resonate to me at all. 

Not until almost half of the movie that it became more interesting with the arrival of the Motherworld ship on the planet. From then onwards, the film became really entertaining with an almost nonstop greatly done war scene that showed the capabilities of each individual warrior as they led the inexperienced farmers to fight against the heavily weaponized enemies. And in this area, I thought that Snyder still got it. I was really entertained by the battle and the wonderful special effects during all the fights. There was even one great moment that reminded me of my personal favorite of Snyder's previous work 300, but with less blood.

The intense action sequence was definitely the highlight here, cause the drama did not really work well for me. The thing is, without personal attachment to the characters, anything that happened to them did not exactly give me any effects. The cast in the second movie were almost entirely the same as before, which made sense since it is the second part of the story. There was still the appearance of Jimmy (voiced by Anthony Hopkins) and other support cast like Stuart Martin (Miss Scarlet and the Duke TV series etc) and Charlotte Maggi (MaveriX TV series) as the Veldt farmers Den and Sam respectively.

I read that Snyder already had plan to make trilogy of two part movies (so total would have been six overall). But I am not sure it would happen seeing that these two films did not really hit it with audience and particularly critics who trashed it. With hefty budgets, it might take some heavy convincing to the producers to proceed further. It would be a bit unfortunate since the ending did hint of the story in future that with a bit of better writing might make it more exciting as space adventure films.

So if you have seen the first part of the movie, then it would make sense for you to watch this sequel to complete your experience. It might not be the best work of Zack Snyder, but if you like his action styles directing, then I am sure you would enjoy this film as he showed his ability to create them. I myself would probably enjoy it better had the first half been more interesting. Now I would not say that I liked the first part more, cause I was still entertained by this film especially during the second half. It was just a different kind of action movie compared to its predecessor.

Mike's movie moments rating: 3 out of 5 stars

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