★ | More is less
I revisited Akira Kurosawa’s masterpiece, The Seven Samurai, at Cannes earlier this year. At three and a half hours, it’s a vast story, yet it doesn’t feel a minute too long. Every second of it serves a greater purpose, each giving space to character beats that resonate 70 years later.
Zack Snyder’s director’s cuts of Rebel Moon, parts one and two, have a combined runtime of six and a half hours. They are proof that longer rarely means better when you have nothing to say.
The first version of this disaster was dull and lifeless. This second cut, a full hour longer, is worse. It’s every bit as unimaginative, childish, and insipid as its shorter sibling. Except now, it comes saddled with Snyder’s tedious idea of mature storytelling. Meaning, it’s pointlessly violent and gratuitous in nudity. Neither addition serves the story. It’s how Snyder sees adult content.
The new additions bring little to the table. Most of it is extra violence, which only highlights how bad the fight choreography is. A new opening sequence is one of the biggest new inclusions. To its credit, it does give backstory to a woefully underdeveloped character. It’s just a shame that the story is exactly the same as with every other character, with the Warhammer-lite bad guys visiting death and destruction upon a peaceful civilization. Now, Snyder compounds violence with nudity, drawing uncomfortable and unearned similarities to Holocaust victims. It’s tasteless and juvenile.
Our heroine, Kora, remains the same in both edits of the film. Sofia Boutella is as good as she can be in an underwritten part. Whatever glimpses there are of a better film, they’re all thanks to her. Rebel Moon began as an audition for Snyder to direct a Star Wars film, yet it proves a far more interesting demo for Boutella instead.
The rest of the plotting, pacing, and structure sees little new life in the director’s cut. What doesn’t work in the original version still feels lifeless here. Snyder tries to evoke the gleeful anarchy of the great Belgian perverts, Milo Manara and Régis Loisel, yet has none of their dirty poetry. These are artists who’ve made their careers of subverting classics into adult fare. Manara with Gulliver’s Travels, Loisel with Peter Pan. Neither are perfect, but their works have merit because they understand why they’re impishly lampooning that which is innocent in the first place.
In theory, Snyder’s approach to remaking Star Wars in his own image could achieve the same heights. There is space in this universe for a dark, horny version of this galactic space opera. But it’s not this one, and certainly not at six hours in length. Without brevity, it loses the impact its depravity could achieve as a sensationalist pop spectacle. Instead, it aims for something in between The Painted Bird and Sucker Punch, and misses the mark entirely.
When the director’s cut ends with the same pointless cliffhanger, I had to ask who this second version of the film was for. Compared to Ridley Scott’s superlative Kingdom of Heaven, which turns into a completely different film in its longer form, Rebel Moon is ostensibly the same. There’s certainly more of it, but is it really enough to justify a second release? For those willing to spend an entire day on a pair of his films, it’s preaching to the choir. But for the rest of us, it’s a resounding no.