Surprisingly, the new scenes improve both the impact and pacing of the story, even if the three-and-a-half-hour runtime enters the Scorsese zone. The most enriching addition is the gorgeous illuminations of the feral C3PO storyline with Jimmy. It’s a high-kicking blast seeing Jimmy slowly become one with nature while Hopkins goes deep in robot reflection. While mellow as a three-paper joint, the underlying violence of the rise of a robotic elk king makes these scenes border on thrash pastoral. It is a head-scratcher that this material was left out of the PG-13 version, as kids love robots and forest creatures.
Overall, the best parts of the movie are still parts we saw in the first cut, especially Jena Malone’s show-stopping performance as the alien spider monster Hermada. Also, Bae Doona’s sword woman, Nemesis, is the ultimate new badass in both versions, completely stunning as an intergalactic Solomon Kane. But this version does have a much better flow, ramped up by the new 20-minute opening massacre.
Rebel Moon. (L-R) Doona Bae as Nemesis and Jena Malone as Harmada in Rebel Moon. Cr. NETFLIX ©2023
“…the best parts of the movie are still parts we saw in the first cut…”
In the end, Rebel Moon – Part 1: Director’s Cut is not the movie I was expecting after months of hope about how hard this R would be. I came into this expecting shinbone hard, but I found a Hollywood loaf instead. Yes, we finally get to fully see the suggestive interstellar drive, only briefly glimpsed in the first version. It is an amazing spectacle of a giant bald humanoid bent over while fellating tubes of neon light. Ironically, here, it is shown to be a female figure, while PG-13 suggests a much kinkier male or androgynous form in its scant depiction.
And we get more oral fixation with Skrein’s recreational tentacle sequence. But the new sex scene with Boutella feels completely gratuitous and doesn’t add a damn thing. It doesn’t have the post-exploitation vibe that the full-frontal nudity in the branding iron sequences had, a huge missed opportunity. The cantina-like space brothel would have been a great moment to really work the Giger-like possibilities of alien skin, but instead, we only get added cuss words and some shiny sex androids.
I guess I was hoping for a high-art sleazy sensation rather than restrained mature sophistication. What is hard R-worthy is the delicious ultra-violence, delivered in that precise detail that is Snyder’s trademark. But even that is tempered by having to play with the MPAA, as it looks to me like a key graphic child slaying by the admiral was trimmed out to avoid NC-17. The MPAA doesn’t realize that if you ban depictions of authoritarian brutality, then all screen violence becomes a power contest that desensitizes even worse.
So yes, this is the better version if you aren’t watching it with kids, but it could have gone much further into darkness.
"…the new scenes improve both the impact and pacing of the story..."
