Rebel moon proved you could combine 40k, Star Wars and Dune and still make a insultingly bad movie

"Things just happen because Zack Snyder thinks they are cool". That is the perfect summary of his film making capabilities. He does not care about story making sense or set up and pay off.

You know what killed this movie for me? This line: "I am a child of war. To truly love and be loved, I don’t know if I’m capable of either. The very idea of love, of family was beaten out of me. I was taught that love is weakness. And I don’t know how that will ever change.". Such a 12yo edge lord moment 😅

Zack Snyder is a grown man who never outgrew the mindset of an edgy 12 year old, and also lacks the self awareness to see that about himself. He really believes his worst creative impulses are peak storytelling. He's literally been stuck in "I'm 14 and this is deep" mode for 40 years.

My favorite scene is the follow-up to the spider fight. Kora praises side-kick guy for helping the little girl and says not many people would risk their lives to save someone, he responds saying how she would. Which is funny considering the previous scene she stood there and didn't help anyone.

Zack Snyder: “It’d be cool to make a Star Wars movie for adults, since all those Star Wars fans who grew up with the movies are adults now.” Also Zack Snyder: *proceeds to make the equivalent of an angsty teenager’s fan fiction of Star Wars*

Y’know, the death of Boromir might be one of my favorite examples of slow-mo enhancing a scene. Rather than throwing it all throughout the movie, they waited and used it to draw attention and emphasis to the scene.

My mom clicked off the movie 50 minutes in, and she watches EVERYTHING that's big on Netflix. That should tell you what you need to know about this movie.

The ultimate “We have Star Wars at home” movie

Rebel moon is the straight to dvd action movie from 2003 but for the streaming age of 2020s.

How do you make a movie both washed out and neon orange? How do you make both the background AND the foregroud look out of focus at the same time? Some of the many terrible secrets of Zach Snyder.

There couldn't have been a better time for a Star Wars replacement to come along and Snyder fell into the same pitfalls as Disney lmao

Come on, give him a little respect. It's not Walmart Han Solo it's Great Value™ Han Solo

Snyder is perfectly capable of directing a good film, as long as someone hands him a good script and a detailed shot-by-shot storyboard to follow.

One thing I thought of when you mentioned how even Evil Empires can’t just go around murdering everyone is how at the start of A New Hope Luke was planning on attending the imperial academy to join the imperial military. For places like tatooine there was no difference between the republic and empire when it came to governance or lack thereof and so nobody batted an eye until the Empire killed his family.

From the looks of this movie it seems Zacks inability to write an actual coherent story is put on full display. For once, I am with disney. This would have been an awful star wars movie

One of the worst decisions (amongst MANY) was the killing of the spider lady chick, thing… she was literally the only sympathetic character, who actually had some semblance of a backstory and realistic motivation. This “movie” fails on every measurable film metric

I like how in a galaxy potentially full of alien life every member of the 'team' is just a human. I also like the 13 year old trope of 'if you want people to know they're bad guys just have them want to rape for no reason'. I'm pretty sure that's like one of the first things they tell you not to do in writing. Also the only thing the world can pay these people with is grain, which the empire also wanted (the excess grain at the start anyway) so I mean if you defeat the empire and have to pay 8 of your 9 bushels of food then I mean you didn't really win much. Also why is a galaxy spanning empire so concerned with a few bushels of food? They'd have a lot more if they weren't constantly razing planets they don't like and instead using them to produce said food. None of this makes sense.

Battle Beyond the Stars already did Seven Samurai in Space more than 40 years ago, and it had the good graces to be less than 2 hours long and actually moderately entertaining.

When post-2003 Michael Bay starts thinking he's Chris Nolan.

Remember, Denis Villeneuve was able to condense half of the first DUNE book into a 2hr30min film but somehow REBEL MOON need a longer version to flesh out characters? Come on man...

I am proud of you. Unironically. It takes true dedication to watch this for more than 12 minutes.

People say “oh the company wanted a pg-13 movie but Zack made a rated R movie so he had to edit it down its not his fault” it is his fault he knew he was breaking the rules and he did it anyway then plays the blame game over and over

Don’t worry he’ll explain everything in the 4.5 hour long cut that has unnecessary slow mo close ups of sesame seeds

Watching Zack Snyder films could be a daytime job. If you wanna get paid to watch all of his “director cuts” you’d run out eventually so why not do it over again. Like an actual job

To me, this movie felt like Zack was a child being like “and then they did this oh and then he rode a giant bird, and then this guy got eaten and then they talked to some lady oh another planet and she is like really cool with lightsabers and had children’s but they died and kills a spider lady and then-“ For like the whole movie. I wish we actually got something more than the most generic movie of all time with a little bit of everything where nothing worked. I’ll give it points for the robot. He’s the only character I liked in the first one. I might like it more if they were to idk, PROPERLY INTRODUCE THE CHARACTERS. It’s weird. Maybe part 2 and the director’s cut will fix this.

Good Ole Zack, can never resist the temptation to reach new lows

After this film, I am deeply convinced that the adaptation of "Starfield" by the hands of Zack Snyder would be an ideal option! A crappy movie adaptation for a crappy game

The irony of this movie is that the flashback scene of Kora's childhood stretched across two hours would have made for a great Part One movie

Disney didn't pick this up, because this movie is blatantly Zachs role playing group stumbling on an old copy of 40k: Inquisitor and just fucking around with the character creation and tithe rules until a vague plot emerged. On the positive side, I discovered that this movies dullness counteracts the effects of alcohol, and got to drink more than I normally could. I might also have broken the post button somehow. So I can blame Zach for that too.

Given the context of how the "Imperium" is portrayed in the movie and how the soldier's costumes look like, i wouldn't be surpised if the newest, very creative, masterpiece of bestslowmowriterdirector himself gets a letter from Games Workshop's legal department soon.

I'm liking this video and commenting to incentivize you to watch the second part and summarize it, because I really don't think I can sit through it, and I need you to take one for the team.

Snyder has always kind of come off to me as an edgy teen who never grew up.

I love that little detail when you show the imperial engineer from “Andor” demanding “Let the boy go”, while you’re talking about imperials not being exclusively evil. Great vid as always!

He was too busy Zach'n off to write a good movie

The 'theatrical cut' followed by a directors cut is just a gimmick with Netflix trying to recreate the JLA Snyder-cut buzz. Its manufactured excitement that didn't work and actually just makes this whole mess even more messy.

I really enjoyed listening to this guy pick apart a movie I've never heard of and will never watch. The Internet.

Disney shutting down Rebel Moon from being a Star Wars movie was the only good decision they ever did in Star Wars.

When you make a seven samurai, in space, and STILL fail, even if the story you are adapting has proven itself TWICE to be a success!

Happy new year Sheev, didn't think you'd survive this long

You know when you're a kid and you make up stories by smashing your toys together? That's Zach Snyder.

I can't wait for Zach Snyder to fulfil his destiny and shoot a whole 12 hour film in slow mo, except for the fight scenes that would normally be in slow mo, those would be regular speed of course.

Remember guys, this is supposed to have a second part! help

You know that part of heist movies where the protagonists recruit a crew in a montage where we only learn surface-level things about each character? Rebel Moon is basically that, but bloated out into a movie.

I'm actually intrigued by the idea of different directors trying their hand at the same movie idea as someone else. Comparing how people might differ in their execution would be pretty neat 😊

The weirdly stupid thing is when the contact gets nabbed by bounty hunters I thought, ok so here’s we go, they have to rescue this guy, or maybe go warn the rebels that the empire will find them shortly but no. No. They just let it happen, then have zero urgency getting to the rebels meandering around collecting individual characterless heroes before getting to the rebels. Also what in the hell was the plan, half a dozen heroes vs orbital bombardment? I mean.. there’s so many problems I can’t even begin to name them all.

To think this all started with one fan saying “no, Man of Steel is actually a good movie”

When you mentioned the *total* overuse of slow-mo, I immediately thought of Sucker Punch... (a movie where someone brushing their teeth or taking a bite of a sandwich might use it) Imagine MY SHOCK when I just googled it.. and found "Director: Zack Snyder" in the credits! Ha

the sons of garmadon reference with the harumi flashback footage was so based

Zach's a decent if divisive director with a particular style, but like many other directors these days he can't write his way out of a paper bag. Most of the great movies of history had 2 or 3 writers and none of them being the director for a reason, it's exceptionalpy rare to be good at both and even rarer for someone who's great at one to be great at both, or even good at the other. Hollywood needs to stop with the double duty.

Can’t believe nobody on set mentioned how shit this movie was guess he just has yes men around him

At least this film didnt assault you or your family or property

When "300" came out and I said it was a shitty movie that seemed to exist only as an excuse for TOTALLY! AWESOME! fight scenes and utterly superfluous slow motion, the gaggles of gym bros who loved the many, many lovingly framed shots of greased up man abs in an entirely platonic way told me I was wrong, Zach Snyder was a genius, "300" was amazing and gave them a feeling they hadn't had since their scout master gave them back rubs at camp, etc. And the idea that "300" was good and Snyder was a good filmmaker seemed to have been the majority opinion, at least among the people I knew. But it's nice to see that if "300" is still considered a good film, at least that quality is now generally seen as the aberration in the otherwise consistently shitty Snyder oeuvre.

My brother told me he liked it so I watched it. After 30mins, I don't know how to tell him it sucked and I couldn't finish it. Maybe I should give it another chance when I don't have anything better to do lol.

It didn't shock me one bit. Zack Snyder is the single worst action director wirking in Hollywood. All of his DC work is absolutely terrible. He never understood any of the characters in the slightest.

Feels like a true AI written script. Hey chat GPT, I need a movie script with a strong heroine.. please include inspiration from 7 samurai, magnificent 7, Star Wars, war hammer.. boom movie is done!!!

Snyder was at his best when he was directing other people's stories. As soon as he started doing his own, everything imploded.

All the ways I can think of to improve this film basically makes it into Seven Samurai (for me the much more obvious film to compare with), and I got that one on BluRay, so I might as well watch it instead.

I mean it's Zack Snyder what did you expect a well written movie?

Zack should find two three writers that would make script from his ideas (with his imputs during the proces) and editors that can reject slow motion sugestions a lot.

When me and my sister watched it, I made the joke "if this was a drinking game", and before I could even finish the joke she started laughing, and all I heard in the fit of laughter was "so much slo-mo". If it was a drinking game I'd be drunk by the time the first thirty minutes was up.

No man, please watch the 2nd part as I would just love to see your review of it! I mean I know that watching this is like sitting in a dentist's chair waiting for the anesthetic to hit so the dentist can stick his football-sized fist in your mouth to pull your teeth out but I just loved your review of it.

"There's no reason to be picking up random strays, that can only do so much, when you're on a time crunch." Holy shit, you just explained the plot of Mass Effect 2.

I'd rather watch Mortal Kombat Annihilation. Twice in a row. Sober.

My attempt to fix it. Act one. Cora is the one hunting the animal. When she returns it to the village there is a mixed reaction. They are happy for the meat but the elder guy declares it is not the season of the hunt citing the ancient laws of the ancestors. It’s a bit tense but farmer guy convinces the elder that Cora does not know all their ways and the waste of the great beast would anger the gods more than a mistaken hunt. This helps to show that Cora is an outsider and is trying to earn her place in the village but results are mixed. Her and farmer can have a bit of a heart to heart about the rules of the village. Now we are on the ship with the admiral and his senior staff. One of them announces that they believe they have located the main food supply for the rebels. “Farm” planet was previously the personal hunting grounds of the kings but hasn’t been used by the royal family for 20 generations. The admiral says that according to the law former properties of the slain king can be claimed by the nobility. He sees an opportunity to expand his personal power and damage the rebels at one go. Set course for farm planet. Back on farm planet the admiral lands and talks to elder. “You have been supplying the rebels?” “No my lord we are loyal we would never sell to rebels. We were offered a fair price by the servants of lady bloodaxe and we took it.” The admiral believes that the village didn’t realise that they were Supplying rebels. He announces that they are all under imperial interdict for supplying the enemies of the empire. They will be indentured servants for 5 generations for their crimes but they will live. Elder praises admiral for his beneficence. In the background Cora runs off. Cora and farmer have a chat. Cora says they need to get off world. Why farmer wants to know, indentured servitude won’t be that bad. Cora explains that the admiral will bring in machines and people from other worlds. He will leech the knowledge of the village and scatter them to the corners of the galaxy. Destroying their home. Okay so what can we do against the power of the empire asks farmer. I don’t know, but o know a man who will know what to do; general guy. Farmer says he knows where there is an old shuttle. It’s probably not up to much but it’ll get them off world. The shuttle really is in a bad state but it was an imperial shuttle at one point so it’s not bad underneath the years of neglect. Cora gets it working and off they go to general guy. The general is working on an urb world. He is training militia of the local lord. We she his skill in commanding men and inspiring loyalty. Cora and farmer land on world. Cora uses some emergence imperial code as customs to secure transport to the general. The customs guy calls her my lady. Farmer guy is suspicious but is happy enough with Cora’s explanation she bought the code from a trader years ago. The get their meeting with the general. He won’t mind giving the empire a black eye but how can he leave his post. He is under an interdict - little better than a slave. Cora says as long as he can make it to their shuttle they can get off world. Maybe have a firefight where the general gets away show case his tactical brilliance. Back on the shuttle the general says the best way to protect farm world is to keep the admiral spinning from one disaster to the next. General will need some operatives he can trust for such an operation. Sword woman, his former personal body guard. Animal tamer, formally one of his captains and beardy pilot guy, his former quartermaster. Off they go to collect them. To streamline it a little they are all now operating as traders on the border of legality. On the way there d’amener goes to sleep and the general and Cora have a conversation that hints that she once held very high office in the empire but it is left there. Reunion happens. They are mostly happy but beardy is angry the general just abandoned them when he refused some orders. Beardy storms off whilst he explains the idea of hitting key imperial targets to destabilise the empire in this sector. They come up with a plan. The next day they are getting ready to leave. Beardy returns seemingly having gotten over his resentment and asks to join them. We see press a piece of tech that flashes twice and a quick sound pings. It’s not explained but perhaps enough for us to know we shouldn’t trust him. So they hit the imperial fuel refinery or whatever. It’s all going well. They lay the charges and return to the ship they press the button to blow the main fuel dump and nothing happens except a small bang. A bunch of imperial ships jump in and surround them. They are under arrest for treason. Beardy had betrayed them and the admiral wanted to make sure he could lay treason charges. We can have the reveal Cora is the daughter of the regent. Farmer is dismissed as a mere pawn in the game. He will be returned to farm world and serve out his interdict. The rest will be returned to mother world. Beardy is left in charge of farmer. His is taunting farmer as a fool etc. Farmer surprises and overcomes him. Farmer is initially scared but soon realises the people on the imperial ship pay him little attention assuming he is a servant of some sort. With a bit of cunning he manages to free sword woman who fights her way to animal guy and together they free the general. Cora and admiral guy are verbally sparing when warning sirens blast out. Prisoner escape. Prisoner escape. Then some rebel ships jump in and start attacking. The general suspected that beardy might betray him so paid someone to tail beardy. When they knew he’d contacted the imperials they nearly left but Cora sensed an opportunity. She got farm guy to contact the man he sold the grain to who was able to pass a coded. Message to the rebels. “They won’t last in a prolonged fight against you but your ship is in chaos and your crew aren’t at their best. They will last long enough to cripple your ship. And then you’ll have ti explain ti high command how you lost control of the situation.” “But I’ll still have you as a prize.” The admiral goes off to take command of the situation but we hear the cage stand robot disarm. “You didn’t think to check if my imperial codes were still valid.” Cora and admiral have a fight. She wins but is wounded. Farmer finds her and together they get to their shuttle with General, sword and animal. They escape. “Today was a great victory. But we will need many more.” The rebel ships jump away as the imperial ship is badly damaged but beginning to get its guns firing. Admiral is revived by his crew and we leave with the mysterious figure of the regent demanding a report as it seems he will need to take personal charge of the situation.

Re: slo-mo. I agree with you that slo-mo is generally used to help the viewer see something that's happening to fast to see at regular speed. I'd also add that you can also use it the same way you'd use a splash page in comic books: to really emphasize a cool scene. "Hey, I'm going to slow down here so we can linger on this sickass moment, 'kay?" So the two examples you showed are... a bunch of people running down a field shooting at people offscreen, and Kora hiding behind a table during a shootout? That's not cool, and we don't gain anything from it slowing down. I really don't understand how you could be a big-name movie director and not understand basic principles like this.

My favourite thing about Rebel Moon was tearing it apart while watching it with my friends. It was more fun pointing out the movie's copious amount of flaws, than actually trying to watch the movie seriously.

It was such a horrendous film, thanks for proving I'm not insane by hating the entire thing!

None of Zack's shortcomings are news, it's been obvious since sucker punch, when he wrote the script he thought the audience wanted to see. And somehow people are still surprised.

What I want to know is how Anthony Hopkins got roped into this to voice that robot guy

Honestly, this movie feels like a child playing with his lego characters.

The empire captain initially offers to buy their grain at three times its value. It's only after they blatantly lie about not having anything beyond what they need that he kills the village leader and decides to steal the harvest instead.

What I don’t understand is why the women in these movies and TV shows are directed to deliver their lines in such a flat, monotonous manner devoid of facial expression. Do directors think it makes their characters look tougher and more masculine? Because all it does is make them come across as excruciatingly boring and unengaging. Meanwhile the male characters lack even the most basic control of their emotions and come across as weak and unhinged.

Zack is useless without a strong script and a producer. What a shock.

The empire raiding and pillaging would make sense if they were stealing from another state or empire but stealing from your own territory does not. As per usual having the entire galaxy be ruled by a single government leads to the question of what goals that empire even has.

Never forget, 300 was good only because it was a comic book adaptation, pages turned into scenes 1:1, perfect fit for Snyder who could turn epic panels into slowmo,

While there are plenty of people who are randomly cruel, they are the exception and not the rule (even when Tarkan blew up Alderaan he had a purpose behind doing it since it was to show how powerful the Death Star is), even in an evil dictatorship a regime that does cruel things for the sake of doing cruel things will never survive because people won't be afraid to fight you because if they do they're going to be killed anyway, and that's just the beginning of the reasons why it's stupid for people to commonly do cruel things for the sake of being cruel when it comes to a keeping a regime intact.

Snyder is not a good director plain and simple. This isn't a surprising outcome for this movie. Disney Star Wars is fucking garbage but this is in no way better. He had the perfect opportunity to combine Dune, Warhammer, Star Wars, Riddick and whatever else into some cool new space fantasy adventure and dropped the ball completely. What a shame but it is not surprising.

Glad there’s somebody else out there that thought “the Snyder cut” was trash.

Why is no one talking about how she had a gun. She could of shot the bad guy but chose to run to him and fight him with her fists

Zach Snyder should just go into production design. He's great at managing that aspect of filmmaking. As for story and directing...FUUUUUUCKKK NOOOO.

Fun fact, this movie has both Daarios.

8:26 You just described "Film as a Service", complete with bugfixes and promise of new content.

I would love if you followed up on this because I have no interest in watching it myself but love hearing your takes. Even if I disagree like I think Rogue One and Star Wars Prequels and Clone Wars were amazing. I'm still saving your Clone Wars video for when I rewatch it myself in chronological order.

10:40 About the slow motion In my experience Slow Mo is best used in scenes, where you must emphazise on the impact. Where you take a moment that would otherwise pass ot quickly for you to fully comprahend its meaning and drag it out to let the message sink in. Like in a boxing film you use it to show the punch that knocks out a fighter. When an accident is happening, that will kill a loved one, you slow down to show the last few moments of life before the crash. When the main character makes it to the hospitale and learns that their mother is dead, you slow mo their knees giving in, as the message gets processed. You show a scene of Spidey face tanking a grenade and that moment matters because its when we as the audeince and Spidey realize that this isn't a game anymore and its hurts. Zack Snider just does them all the time for no real reason. It sucks.

Zack Synder has ideas but its not always good ideas. His visuals are indeed amazing, but he really needs a solid writer.

your videos really helped me on my creative journey as a star wars fanfiction writer. realising how extremely confident dave filoni and all of the others are about their storytelling skills while pissing and shitting on lower tier canon and character development or just common logic, has made me realise how much time i spend on studying lore so my work is as grounded in the universe as possible and the plot decisions make sense. after watching rebel moon i am never ever doubting my storytelling skills again.

With each new Zack Snider project that comes out, the more convinced I become that Legend of the Guardians was an anomoly.

Snyder's mouth constantly writes checks his movies can't cash. Every character in this movie is some sort of super ultra mega badass but most of them don't do anything. In an earlier Zack Snyder cinematic abortion, Sucker Punch, one of the characters was said to possess the skills to a dance so amazingly erotic it would boil the blood of any man who saw it and then said character never did an on-screen dance. His dedication to tell don't show is impressive considering film is a visual medium and so all that is required to show is to have an actor do something while the camera is aimed at them. If you want to write a hacker character the Zack Snyder way simply have another character tell the audience that this guy is the greatest hacker in the known universe and then never have him be in the same room as a computer for the rest of the movie.

15:50 To answer this, Zack is using retrofitted cameras from the 60's to film Rebel Moon as he did with Army of the Dead. The problem is that these camera lenses "intentionally" cause issues with actors in shots getting blurred and the fish eye lenses causing distortion in the background. It was extremely heavy in Army o the Dead and makes it borderline unwatchable.

Most ridicilous thing is idea that interstelar empire depends on supplies from ONE VILLAGE. And that bunch of mercenaries can defeat Imperial Dreadnought. All the time ignoring Galactic Civil War for Succession (Rebel siblings, Princ) and Army of Rogue General.

The idea that Zack Snyder makes his films with an eye to release an extended director's cut further down the line explains a lot about his films. The Krypton sequence in Man of Steel is so poorly edited that, when I started to watch it, I wondered if it was a recap of some other film I haven't seen. Except, as the movie continued, it seemed more like they'd wanted to emulate the 1978 Superman and its sequel by spreading the story over two films. Only then - very late on - it was decided 'no, make it one film' and then there was a desperate rush to cut it down. And the only instruction given was 'keep all the special effects sequences; that shit was expensive.' That's why, when Superman and Lois are going to the Krypton ship, it's a supposed to be a real moment between them - only it's the second time they've met and so it means nothing.

Snyder fans be like: "Wait for the 4 hour cut, its way better"

Can anyone help me figure out how to deal with a good friend who liked this movie? Obviously I can't trust his opinion on virtually anything at this point, probably forever but... is he a danger to himself and others because of this viewpoint?

Engaging for the memes. Make a part 2 for part 2 〽️〽️

I really do enjoy these rants, cheers.

Zack Snyder is one of the worst directors in blockbuster filmmaking with an extremely toxic fanbase that will dickride him to the end.

We have Star Wars at home, the movie.

I’m no cinematographer but one criticism I think isn’t mentioned enough about this film, is that many of the shots are blurry which makes it really hard to see what is going on and strains your eyes to the point of giving you a headache.

When i watch the trailer when it first dropped, my friends said it looked awesome. My reaction was more toward the "this looks like a montage of movies coming out next year." and after watching it, my thoughts toward the trailer are fully vindicated. When i watched it, it was the first time in a long time that I was mad at a movie for wasting my time. I describe this movie as the Longest movie where nothing happens. Sheev's comparison to the Nazis being how you would play with your action figures hit home, but i would extend that to the entirety of the movie. As a kid, I had Power Ranger action figures, GI Joes, Jurassic Park toys, and the TMNT, and they would fight together against villain figures. That is exactly how this movie feels. this movie is the personification of Zac playing with his He Man toys, Star Wars figures, and Samurai figures.