Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver

With Rebel Moon – Part Two: Scargiver, Zack Snyder continues his extended Seven Samurai sci-fi homage. This time with an additional Star Wars filter and a dash of Game of Thrones for good measure.

Viewers who didn’t enjoy Part One: A Child of Fire aren’t going to suddenly become converts here. In full fairness, Scargiver provides a healthy dose of ridiculousness but eventually provides some solid fun in a check your brain at the door kind of way.

Like most Snyder productions, what he does well he really does well. This is a visually stunning and dynamic movie with some crazy spectacle action scenes. His creativity in staging those sequences is commendable. Snyder’s reliance on slow-motion is not.

In that sense, Snyder’s weaknesses haven’t changed either. Snyder is very similar to the largely unfairly maligned M. Night Shyamalan. They both stick to their style of filmmaking and you either like it or don’t feel it. And there’s an admirable quality with Snyder not chasing some Oscar dream. Scargiver is mostly successful even if the first full hour is a near complete waste of time.

When A Child of Fire ended, Kora (Sofia Boutella, Hotel Artemis) and her ragtag collective of skilled warriors successfully battled against Atticus Noble (Ed Skrein) and his Realm forces. Kora thinks Atticus is dead, but he’s merely on death’s doorsteps. Thanks to his healers and tech geniuses, he’s ready for a rematch.

That rematch is set for Kora’s new home, the Veldt, where the outmatched villagers are rightfully petrified at the thought of a war on their lands. Good thing Kora has enough skilled fighters by her side to make things interesting and teach the villagers the art of warfare. Even if it’s the Cliff Notes version.

Former general Titus (Djimon Hounsou) leads the battle plans. Warrior Tarak (Staz Nair, Supergirl) offers swordplay tips. Nemesis (Doona Bae, Cloud Atlas) can’t tell the villagers how to fight as skillfully as she does with her flaming swords but forms a bond with a young villager. Millius (Elise Duffy) was part of another clan of warriors and happily joined Kora’s crew to battle the Realm.

Gunnar (Michiel Huisman, Game of Thrones) gets a hero’s welcome as the sole villager to accompany Kora on her quest.

Scargiver is two hours and three minutes. Of the first 45 minutes, there’s about 10 minutes of useful information. Some of that is simply watching Skrein go full pompous main heel. The majority is Kora explaining her complicated backstory to Gunnar.

This origin also features the goofiest aspect of the film. The King (Cary Elwes) and his family are about to be betrayed. As they enter a docking bay, musicians are playing with hoods covering their faces. It looks weird and gets outright silly as they play more intensely as the coup starts up. That scene was a sterling example of what it looks like when Snyder loses the style over substance tightrope.

Scargiver is probably the first action movie to do an overly dramatic slow-motion scene of people working in the field. Of course, for Snyder there is no question of “to slow-mo or not to slow-mo” It’s also to go slow-mo. Any scene is fair game for some slow-motion regardless if it means anything more than padding out the run time.

The good news is Snyder shouldn’t need a special edition of Scargiver as this is padded with seemingly all the extraneous deleted scenes he’d ever need to tell the full story. Easily the best sequence of the first hour is when Titus has the group share their origins. Maybe it’s just an excuse for some cool visuals and dramatic beats, but it looks terrific. And provides some necessary backstory on the heroes.

Snyder and co-screenwriters Kurt Johnstad (Atomic Blonde) and Shay Hatten (John Wick Chapter 4) could have used the first hour just focusing on the heroes. A Child of Fire basically just assembled them in the quickest manner possible. More character development would make scenes when they’re facing death more meaningful.

While Boutella’s Kora is showcased as the main character, it’s Hounsou’s Titus who gets the best character beats in Scargiver. Normally, Hounsou is the second-in-command, but he’s given a spotlight here and shines.

Once the pesky plot gets out of the way Snyder gets to have far more fun in the second hour with the big battle. Pressed for time? Just fast forward to the second hour. It covers all the essential parts of Scargiver.

For all the buildup, Snyder majorly delivers in the second hour. The action scenes are spectacular. And he pays off the random subplots with the robot bodyguard Jimmy (performed by Dustin Ceithamer and voiced by Anthony Hopkins) and Realm defector Aris (Sky Yang).

No, Snyder doesn’t ease up on the slow-mo, but in the spirit of high stakes and death-defying action, it makes far more sense. And at least some of the action admittedly does look pretty darn cool in slow-motion.

Scargiver has an ending, but it hardly wraps a bow on the Rebel Moon storyline. While that might not be welcome news to the Snyder haters, with greater development towards the sword swinging, blaster-wielding characters, this franchise still can soar.

Rating: 7.5 out of 10

Photo Credit: Netflix