Rebel Moon Teil 1: Kind des Feuers

Like many others I was hoping for something good and a bit different and felt a bit let down. I found it lost itself in connection, there just seemed to be something missing however I now know what was missing and what was missing was literally half the movie. I decided to watch the directors cut out of curiosity as I felt it may have added what I felt was missing and wow just like magic it all seemed so much better and made a lot more sense almost like it was an entirely different movie with some character and story background. I think the short version was an attempt at trying to cater to a commercial audience but in reality the long version should have just been the original. Much better 7-6 stars for the editors cut but only 4-4 for the original. Although it's much better, still lacking something.

I wanted this to be good so badly. Like really badly.

Other than the world design and effects, there really isn't much else to salvage from it.

In true Snyder style we've got lens flare and slow motion, but this time he's dialled it up over the top.

Some of the action scenes are absolutely ruined from way too much diving in and out of slow motion.

The biggest disappointment is the writing.

The first 70% of the film is absolutely a waste of time and not needed.

You don't find out most of the characters actual relevance until the back end of the film.

Everything before that is a mixture of utterly pointless painfully boring scenes done for the sole purpose of filler.

Looks great, but that's all.

It is all over the place. No character connection. Vulgar scenes to force emotions. Weird cheap cocktail of Star Wars and Dune. Felt like fan-made university project with a multi-million budget that was only spend on slow motion CGI scenes. I doubt that the extended edition will have more movie magic since this one already fails in every sense.

Not even the world-building or the design felt worth watching since it felt like the characters were in costumes rather than authentic dresses. No scene composition gave the feeling of a profound world with deep history.

Too many unoriginal ideas that were thrown together with the hope of "Let's hope it will be the next movie success".

I wouldn't say that the actors were weak, rather the error or lack of writers in the writing process of the movie show how important dialogue, character building arcs and real emotional value are in movies rather than gross tasteless blood baths, torture, explosions and one-dimensional characters.

A test of the degree of imagination shown in a sci-fi film is whether it could equally have been done as a cowboy movie. "Rebel Moon Pt. 1" could have, and the movie would have been "The Magnificent Seven" (1960, 2016, 1998-2000 as a TV series, or indeed "Seven Samurai" of 1954), because the plot is err.... identical. And I expect the plot of the second half will be identical too. So if you have ever seen any of those and a spaceship taking off, you don't need to see this movie (OK, some of the spaceship imagery is very good). But I have to wonder whether anyone was actually paid for "writing" the script :-)

What's worse than a movie that shamelessly plagiarizes elements from other sci-fi or fantasy products? A movie that does all this and fails to even build a world in which you feel interest and curiosity in finding out how the story will evolve. However, if the terrible world-building is Rebel Moon's biggest flaw, it certainly cannot be said that everything else is able to compensate for the extremely poor script. Direction, visual effects, photography, costumes are all so aseptic and unmemorable that it is guaranteed that nothing of this movie will remain forged in people's minds for years to come, as movies and TV series have been able to do like which Rebel Moon would pretentiously love to place itself.