Zack Snyder’s ‘Rebel Moon’ gives him final cut on a sci-fi epic, just not a very good one

Review by Brian Lowry, CNN

(CNN) — Netflix is in the buzz/attention business, which likely explains why the service would write what appears to have been a very big check to “Justice League” director Zack Snyder, letting him produce a two-part science-fiction epic that will continue next year. “Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire” might have skipped the “release the Snyder cut” preliminaries, but only his most loyal fans will find much in this dreary exercise to warm them.

The shorthand description of the movie would be allowing the visually ambitious director to try his hand at a “Star Wars” movie, but that’s actually a poor representation of the underlying bones of the story, which owes more of a debt to “The Magnificent Seven” (or “The Seven Samurai,” take your pick), which itself was adapted in 1980 by Roger Corman into the space-set “Battle Beyond the Stars.”

Unfortunately, even that latter low-budget effort generated better characters than “Rebel Moon” can muster, and the latitude of the two-part structure merely allows Snyder (who wrote the story, collaborated on the script and also served as director of photography) to plump up the introductions in less-than-flattering ways.

Building not just a world, but an entire galaxy, “Rebel Moon” paints a portrait of a universe that saw its royal family murdered, leaving its planets under the boot of an imperious regent. Cut to a farming community on a small out-of-the-way outpost, where a former soldier, Kora (Sofia Boutella of “The Mummy” and “Kingsman: The Secret Service”), has taken quiet refuge.

When the empire’s (for lack of a better description) fascistic troops arrive under the leadership of Admiral Noble (Ed Skrein, perhaps the most arresting presence, channeling Christoph Waltz in “Inglourious Basterds”), the villagers face a choice between fighting back and surrendering. Given a few weeks before they must act, Kora takes off with the farmer Gunnar (Michel Huisman) to recruit mercenaries who might help them, realizing that the odds are stacked against them.

The structure allows time to flesh out Kora’s backstory while she pulls the team together, which includes Charlie Hunnam, Djimon Hounsou, Doona Bae, Staz Nair, and “Justice League” alum Ray Stevens.

Still, despite Snyder’s stylistic gifts – having mastered the art of the superhero pose all the way back to “Watchmen” – there’s not enough reason to invest in the larger story or indeed even smaller aspects of it. While the movie possesses a vast scale and scope, the heavy reliance on slow-motion sequences (which worked a lot better on “300”) also does as much to blunt the excitement of the action as enhance it.

As noted, for Netflix, giving subscribers a reason to show up for what feels like an event, in concert with the avid nature of Snyder’s fan base, might justify the investment (and if it doesn’t, the service will doubtless find a way to spin the numbers to suggest that it has).

Just extending its reach into the Zack Snyder business, however – after his very different genre film, the horror-heist mashup “Army of the Dead” – isn’t the same as delivering on the promise of that partnership. “Rebel Moon” might look big and splashy, even on a TV screen, but in terms of working as drama, it’s less a rebel yell than a low-key rebel grunt.

“Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire” premieres December 21 at 10 p.m. ET on Netflix.

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