3 outta 5

Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver continues writer/director Zack Snyder’s quasi-Star Wars sci-fi epic. It’s not a conclusion because the closing minutes lay out mandatory sequel bait for yet another installment. As often happens in Snyder’s movies, there are bundles of exposition as characters state their backstory and their exact current emotional state. This movie foregoes the “buzzing around random planets gathering folks” plot of the first film but this instead settles for training montages, more flashbacks, and then explosions and action in the last hour. But it is a pretty fantastic stretch of action and if one wants to see some sort of Star Wars stuff but with more grit, it is delivered in part 2 of Rebel Moon. 

Kora (Sofia Boutella) has gathered a gaggle of soldiers and returned to the farming planet of Veldt to help the hapless citizens fight against the dominating forces of the fascist Motherworld. They are various badassess with an axe to grind against the Motherworld like Titus (Djimon Hounsou), Tarak (Staz Nair), Milius (Elise Duffy), and the cyborg assassin Nemesis (Doona Bae). And also the local resident, Gunnar (Michiel Huisman), who strikes up a romance with Kora. Off in the woods watching the farmers is the eccentric robot, Jimmy (voiced by Anthony Hopkins). Returning to Veldt and leading an army for Motherworld is Atticus Noble (Ed Skrein), which is disconcerting to Kora as she killed him the last time they met. But since he got better with fancy Motherworld technology, he is in a mood for revenge upon Kora and all the people of Veldt. Now Kora and her warriors must strike back against the evil galactic empire.

The framework of the world building in Rebel Moon owes quite a lot to Star Wars, even complete with not exactly lightsabers but swords that ignite with energy. It’s just legally different enough so Lucasfilm doesn’t sue anybody. Nobody can use the Force but there is a young princess that seems to have magic power but that is also, somewhat frustratingly, teased out for a future installment. Remembering this very important space princess and her magic powers depends on how much one paid attention to a small moment in the first film that came out a few months ago, so the answer is unlikely.

In Star Wars there is a gaggle of aliens and robots and here there’s basically only Jimmy the robot and only one single alien in one shot when rebel fighter pilots show up in the finale. It is weird that this sci-fi epic is so human-centric and having one random alien guy in one shot seems discordant with the rest of the movie. The first Rebel Moon had this problem too, basically only one alien shows up the entire movie. If it is going to be a sprawling sci-fi epic with aliens they should probably add more, or at least make one of Kora’s crew distinctly alien.

It’s not as if any of the crew is particularly memorable, the only one that stands out is the cyborg Nemesis mostly because the name of “Nemesis” is kind of a lame character name that clunkily promotes that this is a mysterious person of mystery. In one scene that has an awkward setup, Titus says they must “speak their truth” which is basically an excuse to have the characters talk about their backstory with copious flashbacks, and Nemesis’ vignette about her attaching psychotic robo-arms to her body is an interesting three-minute piece. These flashbacks are where Snyder’s always strong visual sense pops, like shots of the Motherworld ships taking out civilians that feels very apocalyptic. The voice-over and slow motion is heavy handed, this all seems very important, but it has a visceral impact.

When Kora has an extended flashback of her being betrayed by her adoptive father, who happens to also be the leader of the Motherworld, it has muted screaming and slow-motion rage, and even an execution set to a string ensemble. Boutella has her character growl a lot and look ticked off, which she is good at, and she gets in an emotional payoff eventually. Huisman ends up the hapless sidekick tagging along, but he pulls off important bits near the end. The other interesting member of the crew is Jimmy, only because it takes the whole movie to eventually do something cool, but it pays off. Skrein’s bad guy Noble comes back from the dead and even more ticked off. When the freaky looking scientists are telling him they need to run more tests to make sure his resurrection worked, he just screams and shoots one of the scientists.

The film has a few pacing problems as there’s a whole scene of one of the villagers handing out tapestries that drags out. And there’s a lot of scenes of training and farming that isn’t very enthralling. But the second hour is much more engaging, as the Motherworld attacks with soldiers and land crawling vehicles. It’s a little silly that so many are engaging in mele not-lightsaber combat when they have ray guns, but it does look cool. The finale features the ship falling apart from the sky while Kora battles with Noble which provides great spectacle. Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver is an imperfect and incomplete capper but when Snyder just does cool sci-fi imagery of sci-fi warfare, it is pretty fun.