‘Rebel Moon: Part 2 — The Scargiver’ Review: Zack Snyder Doubles Down

1. At all times rent Anthony Hopkins to ship exposition. The person is an Oscar-winner, he’s performed everyone from Hamlet to Hannibal Lecter, he’s received the very best butter-melting British purr within the enterprise. So for those who’re Zack Snyder — and even for those who’re not Zack Snyder, however are dropping the second chapter of a needlessly difficult house saga and have to get of us again in control — you enlist Sir Anthony to say issues like: “On the far edges of the Motherworld’s attain, circling the gasoline big Mara, was the small moon of Veldt… So it was {that a} lady named Cora and a person named Gunnar set forth from the village, to collect warriors to face in opposition to the dreadnought. In an ambush on the floating docks of Gondoval, Cora triumphed over Admiral Noble, leaving his shattered physique on the rocky shoreline.” It’s nonetheless nonsense, however man, does it sound cool when he intones it with the utmost gravitas. Moreover, Hopkins is already voicing a robotic with a penchant for Pagan headgear, so he was within the neighborhood.

2. Sofia Boutella is cool. An Algerian actor, dancer, gymnast, and mannequin, Boutella has constructed up a hell of a resume since 2014’s Kingsman: The Secret Service upped her profile. (She was the murderer with the prosthetic legs.) You’d now acknowledge her from any variety of films, from Atomic Blonde to The Mummy to Gaspar Noe’s acid-soaked Climax. She will be able to clench her jaw onscreen with the very best of them, her physicality makes her an ideal selection for an motion hero, and whenever you want any individual to information viewers by means of a mythology that retains tying itself in knots, then journeys over these self-tied knots and might’t fairly rise up underneath the load of its personal overstuffed storytelling, she’s your lady. When you can hand her a gun, after which place the digital camera so she’s firing that gun proper subsequent to the lens whereas wanting actually cool, then by all means, repeat that shot one million occasions. When you may give her a sword, even higher. As a result of…

3. Swords are cool. Particularly if they’re glowing. Particularly if they’re being wielded by a type of inventory mystic-samurai character, just like the one named Nemesis (cool title) with a cyborg arm (cool arm) performed by Bae Doona (cool actor, who has a knack for displaying up in wonky sci-fi stuff like Jupiter Ascending and Sense8; she’s nice in Bong Joon-ho’s The Host, which you need to watch as an alternative of this). Particularly if that particular person has two glowing swords and swings them round in a approach that makes you are feeling like these membership medicine are lastly kicking in. Particularly for those who stick them by means of plenty of unhealthy guys’ our bodies, and wow, do they appear shocked to see a glowing sword protruding of their chest. Repeat that shot one million occasions as properly.

4. Slo-mo is cool. Getting indignant at Zack Snyder for sloooooooowwwwwwwwwiiiiiiiinnnnnnggggg his motion sequences down is like yelling at water for being so damned moist. Ever since he turned his 2006 Go-Spartans epic 300 right into a transferring gallery of males killing different males at an operatically snail’s tempo, that’s been his signature transfer. I can’t keep in mind who stated that Snyder’s movies would solely be 22 minutes lengthy for those who ran the entire set items at regular velocity, however whoever it was, I hope they gained a Pulitzer for that assertion. In any case, our man Zack breaks out the insta-majestic slo-mo for lots of issues right here: blasting troopers, leaping off of bridges onto coal heaps, punching, kicking, strolling down a spaceship’s gangway, threshing wheat alone, threshing wheat in teams, threshing wheat at regardless of the cosmic equal of magic hour on Veldt is. Critically, if this movie begins a pattern of younger individuals actually stepping into threshing wheat as a result of the film makes it look so slo-mo cool, we’re all for it. Please get on that, TikTok.

5. Harvest dances amongst outer-space farmers are cool. I imply, it should be, as a result of Insurgent Moon: Half 2 — The Scargiver spends a superb a part of its first hour turning a pre-battle harvest dance into an opportunity for speechifying, some first-class hoedowns, and what’s alleged to cross for character growth among the many band of warriors who will defend this agrarian house neighborhood from the Evil House Nazis. There are coaching montages woven in and round it, in addition to some intimate time between Boutella’s angsty ex-soldier-turned-savior and Michiel Huisman’s good-looking farmboy. However largely, it’s an opportunity for everybody to wax poetic about previous traumas, which kick off extra slo-mo mini-movies inside the principle film. That, and for photogenic solid members in dirty T-shirts and newsboy caps and the occasional house sweater-vest-sans-shirt look to current presents, scream inspirational platitudes, and make merry. TikTok ought to make all of this a brand new pattern as properly.

6. Lengthy, overly wordy sequel titles are cool, particularly if they’ve a subtitle. See title.

7. Pensive robots affected by existential crises are cool. IMDb informs us that the title of the android voiced by Sir Anthony Hopkins is “Jimmy,” however we’ve taken to referring to him as Chekhov’s Robotic, since Snyder and his co-screenwriters Shay Hatten and Kurt Johnstad made some extent of placing him on the mantle in Half One, a.ok.a. A Baby of Fireplace. A part of a royal guard mecha-security pressure left on the planet as a type of protection measure by the Evil House Nazis, Jimmy has as an alternative grow to be a pacifist and brought to sporting antler horns and staring moodily off into the horizon, dropping by the village now and again to philosophically muse about life, the universe, and every part. It’s not a spoiler to notice, nonetheless, that just like the aforementioned Russian playwright’s proverbial gun, Jimmy is supposed to go off in Act 3. Or perhaps it’s a spoiler. Actually, who provides a fuck at this level?

8. Large battle royale sequences crammed with arachnid-like tanks, plummeting spaceships, plenty of explosions, and other people coming out of the bottom with rocket launchers are cool. And to its credit score, Insurgent Moon: Half 2 spends its second hour kind of dedicated to firefights, righteous slo-mo fight, and blowing shit up. After Cora cuts her hair — so that you know she means enterprise now! — and Ed Skrein’s resurrected Admiral Noble reveals up on the planet to hiss threats and ultimatums, Gunnar sounds the alarm after which growth, it’s on. Snyder is in his aspect right here, extending each gutshot and/or sacrificial skewering to a few occasions the the required size, laying within the mournful choirs and triumphant fanfare, and even often supplying you with a picture that appears like a classic pulp paperback’s cowl come to life. Largely, although, it’s simply plenty of sound and fury, and what that tends to indicate. If not, go ask Sir Anthony. He is aware of his Shakespeare.

9. Appearing such as you’re a two-part epic, then immediately kicking open the door for a 3rd half on the final minute due to a complicated plot level that’s now immediately going to grow to be extraordinarily essential, is… cool? You’ve been warned, of us.

10. Life is painfully brief. In all probability too brief to learn cynical, gimmicky film critiques. Actually too brief to look at unhealthy films. Most undoubtedly too brief to decide to a badly constructed house saga-slash-cinematic universe that threatens to take up much more of your time and mind energy whereas merely delivering reheated pop-cultural leftovers smothered in digital sizzling sauce. Flip away out of your screens. Go for a stroll. Begin your individual wheat-threshing collective. Something however endure by means of this.