Thoughts I Had While Watching Zack Snyder's 'Rebel Moon: Part Two - The Scargiver'
A liveblog of Zack Snyder's latest.
Happy Rebel Moon: Part Two - The Scargiver day to all who celebrate! The sequel to Zack Snyder’s Rebel Moon is out this weekend on Netflix and I had so many thoughts while watching it that I decided to whip out my laptop and write them all down, liveblog style. Please note: I do not endorse anyone watch a film in this way and you should assume there are massive SPOILERS for the movie below. Enjoy!
Rebel Moon: Part Two - The Scargiver opens with a ridiculous voiceover by Anthony Hopkins, who plays a robot named Jimmy (don’t ask). He’s explaining all the stuff that happened in the first film but it comes off as a random jumble of names and places. About 30 seconds into this film, my wife popped her head in from another room and, without looking at the TV screen, interrupted to ask for something. She then said, “Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt your funny YouTube tutorial.” Based on the audio, she thought I was watching a YouTube video instead of the latest sci-fi epic by visionary director Zack Snyder. (Also: all the great movies begin with a clunky expository recap of the prior film, it’s just how things are done).
Ed Skrein’s character Atticus Noble was almost killed in the last film. The very first scene in this movie shows us that they were able to bring Atticus back to life by connecting a bunch of brightly colored tubes to him. Also, according to one of his helpers, Atticus was near death and suffered massive amounts of brain damage. Could have fooled me! Dude seems exactly the same in this one.
We arrive back on the planet of Veldt and see just endless amounts of wheat, the true crop of People Who Are Virtuous And Can’t Possibly Be Evil.
One of the soldiers who originally invaded Veldt has fallen in love with one of the villagers and he’s also a mole, feeding false information to the Imperium. I believe this couple was introduced in the first film but I literally have no memory of them.
It turns out the Imperium really needs crops from Veldt and they’re gonna be back in 5 days to collect them. So Djimon Hounsou’s character Titus comes up with a plan: they’ll harvest all the grain ASAP and use it as leverage in the battle to come. Being completely serious here: I appreciate that the movie actually figures out a somewhat plausible plot reason why the Imperium doesn’t just bomb the shit out of Veldt.
Michiel Huisman’s character Gunnar has a heart-to-heart with Sofia Boutella’s character Kora and explains that dying isn’t what he was most afraid of last movie. “It was losing you!” I say at the screen. And sure enough, that is pretty much the line he says. An AI could have written this movie, is what I’m trying to say.
Kora has a flashback showing how she became an outlaw. It turns out she was part of a plot by Balisarius to assassinate the former king’s family, but was framed for the entire incident. In the room where the assassination happens, there’s a string quartet playing appropriately dramatic music but everyone in the quartet is wearing a black sack on their heads. The musicians keep playing, as the King and his wife are murdered and Kora shoots the princess in the chest. This is obviously just Zack Snyder’s way to have diagetic quartet music in an assassination scene (otherwise the musicians would probably freak out and stop playing on account of all the killing).
The people of Veldt are trying to harvest all their grain and there is just an endless amount of slow motion of these scenes. Sometimes there will be slow motion and then it will cut to an even slower speed of the slow motion! I suspect I know how this movie is going to reach a 2+ hour runtime…
There’s a montage! The villagers figure out how to store the grain for maximum strategic advantage and also how to use knives and lasers. They also find and recover the ship that Kora arrived in, which has somehow not only remained untouched after crashing in the mountains (despite being fucking massive) but is still completely functional. Super easy, barely an inconvenience.
It’s the night before the attack and our heroes are meeting together and we’re getting another flashback. And another, and another. One is from Titus and about how he defied Balisarius and got all his men executed. The other is from Millius (Elise Duffy) who talks aboout how she was recruited to the resistance. Then there’s a story from Nemesis (Doona Bae) about how she cut off her own arm and put in a cybernetic one. It turns out all these people have some beef with the Imperium, but none of their beefs are particularly interesting or insightful. I also have no idea why we’re getting all these backstories in this film as opposed to the last one, which was sorely lacking in character development! (That said, I’m grateful we don’t get another flashback from Kora, whose story we’ve already seen multiple times at this point).
Atticus shows up with his Imperium ships. He confronts Kora who seems completely unsurprised that the guy is still alive and breathing comfortably. The two negotiate and Kora is ready to turn herself in to prevent any more fighting but Gunnar won’t have it and instead triggers a signal for all the village people to attack. They manage to blow up several of the ships (in slow motion!).
A bunch of Imperium soldiers break into the room where Nemesis is protecting a bunch of villagers and they decide to use their laser swords instead of guns, so that Nemesis can fight them with her laser swords in slow motion. But she gets one of her arms cut off in the fight and then is stabbed in the abdomen by a soldier before an absurdly young blonde villager boy decides he’s had enough of doing nothing and runs up to stab the soldier, which ends the attack. Gotta love some good old' fashioned child-on-soldier violence in your sci-fi action movies. Sadly, it seems Nemesis doesn’t survive, but this is a movie that opens with a dead character being brought back to life so who knows.
Atticus kills a bunch of village people before getting on one of his ships. A villager named Den runs onto the ship as it’s taking off and the two have a brief fight scene but Atticus ends up stabbing Den and knocking him off the ship. What’s weird about this scene is that the movie seems to crop around showing Den getting stabbed — as in, it doesn’t show the blade penetrating his body — because I guess then it would run afoul of its PG-13 rating? It’s awkward. But it is okay to show Den falling from the ship and his body smashing into the ground hundreds of feet below, so I guess we’ve thought of the children.
Kora and Gunnar take her ship towards an Imperium mothership with the intention to infiltrate it. They pretend to be wounded Imperium soldiers and there’s a fairly extended sequence with medics who try to take care of them before Kora and Gunnar turn the tables and Kora shoots them all with her laser gun. Felt like pretty unnecessary killings to me? Those Imperium doctors were trying to help, Kora! But I don’t think Snyder can turn down an opportunity to show his heroes annihilating folks in badass ways.
Titus and Tarak (Staz Nair) lead the villagers into battle. Virtually all of their fight scenes from this point forward are in slow motion. After seeming to achieve a measure of victory, they receive an unfortunate surprise in the form of an enormous Imperium mechanical beetle that can shoot lasers. The ultimate wartime trump card.
All seems lost and several of our heroes are about to face the end when all of a sudden, outta nowhere, Jimmy the robot voiced by Anthony Hopkins storms the battlefield and just starts killing dudes left and right and destroying the Imperium beetle mech. Sure glad he finally figured out what his character’s role was in this film would be.
Atticus realizes that Kora is on board the ship. With the Scargiver on board, they don’t need the grain anymore, I guess, for some reason! They have the ultimate prize to return home with and can just destroy everyone and everything on Veldt, including the Imperium soldiers still on the ground! Atticus gives the order to do so, much to the chagrin of one of his peeps. Note to self: Cancel job interview with the Imperium army. (Also: I take back what I said earlier about the grain being a good plot point.)
Atticus’ ship is about to fire on the villagers when some of Kora’s explosive charges detonate, sending the ship reeling. Kora and Atticus have a fight scene while they are sliding down the ships’ hangar, which seems to be the length of about 7-8 football fields (think the ship equivalent of the airplane runway in Fast and the Furious 6). Sure there are one or two cool moments in this fight, but we literally did this confrontation at the end of the first film! Why are we doing it again!? What point dramatically does this serve? Make it make sense, Snyder!
Atticus seems to have the upper hand in the fight but right as Atticus is about to choke out Kora, Gunnar stabs him through the chest with a blue laser sword! Then Kora cuts off his head but again, we don’t see it because this movie is rated PG-13. Gotta save some stuff for Rebel Moon: The Snyder Cut.
Atticus’ ship goes down! The rebel fleet shows up in a bunch of ships led by Devra Bloodaxe (the sister of Darrian Bloodaxe, who died in battle in the last movie) and they start straight up wrecking the remaining Imperium fighter ships. Wow guys, really could’ve this help like an hour ago. Maybe Nemesis would still have her cyber arm.
The villagers pay their respects to the fallen soldiers and Titus reveals to Kora that the princess is still alive! Pretty important information that Titus somehow has that would’ve been extremely relevant to Kora at any point during this entire journey. The movie ends with the villagers pledging to find the princess and fight on her behalf.
I’m kind of in shock that that’s the end of the movie. What was the point of all that, exactly? The plot has barely moved along at all! Balisarius remains fully in play and now there’s a princess to track down and fight for? The Scargiver felt like a single episode of television stretched into a two-hour runtime, and without the guarantee that the rest of the series will ever be made.
What are we doing here, even? What was the point of spending $166 million on two feature-length movies released over the course of 5 months with virtually zero resolution at the end of it? Why have I spent over 4 hours of my life watching and thinking about Rebel Moon? Why am I even writing this right now? What are the series of decisions in my life that have led me, inexorably, to this moment? Hard questions. Fortunately I have until the next Rebel Moon movie to work them all out.
And that’s it! What did you make of Rebel Moon: Part Two - The Scargiver? Let me know in the comments.
Other Stuff Dave Chen Has Made
A quick shout out to this bonus episode of A Cast of Kings, which we recorded to prepare ourselves for the upcoming season of House of the Dragon. Come listen to me, Kim Renfro, and Jessie Earl discuss the latest spinoff news and the Green and Black trailers for HOTD!
On a positive note: This might be the highest budget live action version of the bestselling video game „Farming Simulator 22“ we‘re ever gonna get!
Really appreciate you watching and re-capping The Scargiver. Now I don't need to waste 2+ hours of my life.