The great news is that the element you found so aggravating about the first one, the blatant Star Wars derivatives, is not in the second one, save for a couple of pesky laser swords. Synder isn’t trying to entertain you by playing against built-in pre-conceptions like in the first one. Here, he goes The Road Warrior route and gives us a simple siege story that is easy to follow and very engaging. We collected all our action figures in the first movie, so this time, we get to see them in action as they defend the farmers. While this keeps the audience down on the farm for the picture, we still get a glimpse of the scope of this space opera with eye-waveringly surreal memories.
Also, if you relax, you can really enjoy the pastoral scenes in the opening with the harvest. It establishes why we should care so much for the Sweet Moon people, as well as getting to see a more personal side of the band of hired guns. Besides, it all cumulates in an hour-long battle that is truly epic, the way only a Snyder battle can be. The odds are impossible, and the carnage is top-notch. Are you not entertained?
Rebel Moon — Part Two: The Scargiver. (L-R) Staz Nair as Tarak and Djimon Hounsou as General Titus in Rebel Moon — Part Two: The Scargiver. Cr. Clay Enos/Netflix ©2023.
“I applaud Snyder for keeping the tradition up…”
There are many times the fantastic visuals reach the level of a Hawkwind album cover, which I smoke enough pot to really appreciate. The movie also opens with hyper-charged optical splendors, with neon tubes and everything. It is interesting that Snyder uses these points of intense wonder sparingly so that they really pop when they occur. We also have hints at how intensely filthy the unreleased images will be on the hard R version of this movie this summer.
Swing your peepers over to the ship’s engine room and notice the position of the giant eyes that open up. I know it has been a long time since the 90s, but I could swear I saw a graphic outline of a man sucking a c**k made of glowing cables. It goes with the space p***y that opened in the first movie, so the horizon is rich for some high-end Beast In Space-like nastiness. The kid’s table PG-13 version is more than satisfactory, as it would be impossible to keep the wee ones from wanting to see it. It worked very well with the PG cuts of Excalibur and Saturday Night Fever back in the day, so all the kids saw was swords and dancing.
I applaud Snyder for keeping the tradition up, as the Rebel Moon dirty verse cuts harkens back to the Wild West of VHS bootlegs when you would finally see what you missed out on due to the censors in your country. As we have it, the first movie was a tasty bacon double cheeseburger of a space opera. Rebel Moon-Part 2: The Scargiver is the cinematic sci-fi equivalent of that delicious chicken sandwich people punch each other in the face to get. Unscrunch your face and allow yourself to have an intergalactic blast like you did before you grew up to be so picky.
"…the cinematic sci-fi equivalent of that delicious chicken sandwich people punch each other in the face to get."
