Time Writer | Minamino
Cult movie gluttony.
In less than half a year, the second part of "Moon Rebels" directed by Zack Snyder - "The Imprinted Man" was launched on Netflix. The new work continues to revolve around the experiences of the heroine Cora and a group of interstellar warriors who fight against the evil "home planet" in order to protect the poor peasants on the planet Emerald Plains.
Moon Rebels: The Imprint
Unfortunately, the film not only continues the story and visual style of the first film, but also inherits its poor reputation. With an IMDb rating of 5.2 and a freshness rating of only 16% on Rotten Tomatoes, Zack Schneider's status in the hearts of fans and passers-by continues to slip.
The do-gooders even asked: Don't they all say that the failure of "Justice League" is all the work of Warner? Now it seems that Schneider's level may be like this.
With "Rebels of the Moon: The Man of the Brand", let's talk about how strong Zack Schneider really is.
Cut the wheat and fight the robbers
The first part of "Moon Rebels" is called "The Daughter of Fire", and the title refers to the heroine Cora played by Sophia Bodola, a warrior who lost her parents and was raised by her enemies.
Although Cora did a lot of dirty things for her adoptive father Balisarius when she grew up, her long-term guilt made her finally choose to escape from this sinful land and hide in the pristine Emerald Plain.
Unexpectedly, in order to collect food, the invincible armada of the home planet oppressed the simple peasants on the Emerald Plains, which made Kora rise up and lead a group of peasants to riot, and with the help of several interstellar knights, finally achieved a preliminary victory.
It can be said that the plot of "The Daughter of Fire" is extremely simple, the first third explains the background of the story, the middle third shows Cora recruiting troops, and the last third of the climactic scene is a contest between Cora and the villain Noble.
The second installment, "The Man of the Brand", followed by Kora's team returning to the Emerald Star Farm, was intended to celebrate, but unexpectedly came the battle report: the Armada would arrive in five days.
Noble, who had been killed in the first part, was resurrected and once again became a major problem for Cora.
So, in order to defend the peasants, Cora and the Star Warriors began a defensive battle. On the one hand, they set up an ambush around the farm, and on the other hand, they taught the peasants to familiarize themselves with weapons and learn how to fight. In the second half of the movie, a lot of action scenes are used to show the battle between the two sides.
In addition, "The Imprinted Man" is also in the middle part, explaining why Cora left her home planet.
It turned out that the assassination of the royal family was planned by Palisaleus.
The kind-hearted Princess Isa had persuaded the king to stop the invasion, but the reckless Balisarius could not agree!
Not only that, but Palisarus also framed Cora as the murderer of the royal family, and placed the charge of murder on her head. Cora is dying.
At the end of the second part, in fact, there is no fundamental difference from the first, the Star Warriors led by Cora still defeated the invaders, and Noble was killed again.
As for Kora's mission, it is still to find the mysterious Princess Isa.
Nothing but fighting
A large part of the reason why "The Imprinted Man" disappointed fans was the thin and boring plot.
As mentioned above, the whole film only talks about two things: one is to harvest wheat, and the other is to fight robbers. How did the complicated relationship between Cora and Balisarius influence the outcome of the war, and what is the history of Noble, the villain who has played the most, is completely unexplained.
You must know that no matter how simple the story of the first "Daughter of Fire" is, there are fresh faces appearing one after another, or thrilling scenes are staged repeatedly.
For example, in the process of Kora's recruitment, the bounty hunter Akai guides Kora step by step, the fierce fight shown by Nemesis played by Pei Doona, or the amazing scene where the fallen prince Tarak tames the eagle beast. When we see these fresh scenes, we will automatically ignore the holes in the plot.
In other words, the reason why "The Daughter of Fire" can still be watched is because Zack Schneider has at least put a lot of thought into the bridges and characters, and the world view of the entire "Moon Rebels" has also been enriched.
Even in the end, Charlie Hunnam's Akai jumped back and became the second or fifth boy who harmed Cora and others, this kind of plot reversal can also increase the narrative tension and keep the film from ups and downs.
On the other hand, in "The Imprinted Man", almost all the characters are continued from the first part, and as for the main scene, there are only two - one is the farm of Emerald Star, and the other is inside the Invincible Armada, which has nothing new to speak of.
However, this is not the worst part, the ineffective narrative and the plot full of slots have also become the failure of "The Man Who Branded".
Jimmy, the robot who laid out so many shots in the whole film, did not show his unique role at all, except for the voice actor Anthony Hopkins to show off his rich and vicissitudes of voice. After all, the armored cannon he blew up at the end, the nameless peasant did the same.
The key plot of Cora's assassination of Princess Issa has become a topic of conversation between her and Gunna, and has no effect on the development of the subsequent plot. Instead, when General Titus proposed a pre-war confession meeting, Cora kept silent about the bad things in the past.
And what makes many fans deeply confused may be Zack Snyder's use of the scaled upgrade shot, which looks out of place in this film.
After all, when the war report came, and the peasants only had five days to cut wheat, practice weapons, learn fighting, dig tunnels, and do defense, the picture was full of slow motion, trying to show the comfort and poetry of the old peasants, and it was almost the subtitle of "Picking chrysanthemums under the east fence and leisurely seeing Nanshan".
The only scene that can still be watched is the climactic scene, where Cora and Noble fight in the space where the battleship capsizes, and it can still be seen that Schneider put some thought into designing.
Therefore, it is no wonder that the freshness of this film on Rotten Tomatoes is so low, the root cause is that "The Imprinted Man" is substandard in both the plot arrangement and the scene design, which makes it hard to believe that this is the work of the famous Zack Snyder.
The collapse of science fiction films
After all, Zack Snyder is not a good sci-fi filmmaker, and the masterpieces that have put him on the altar - "Watchmen", "Spartan 300" and "Zack Snyder's version of Justice League" are all based on comics.
Even the zombie film "Dawn of the Living Dead", which has a good reputation, is also a remake of George Romero's classic horror film.
Schneider's strength lies in the fact that he can always dig out the graphic sense of these dark stories, and use the elevated shots with a very rich oil painting texture, a large number of cult elements of hunting colors, and tragic epic narratives, which are self-contained and form a unique tie-style film.
Despite his fascination with space operas like Star Wars, he is not George Lucas, without the childlike playfulness and more universal values of the latter. This makes Schneider's two "Moon Rebels" seem to have the same roots as "Star Wars", but in fact the number of paths is hugely different.
Even putting aside the plot flaws in the "Moon Rebels" series, this is not a bright-toned universal entertainment film.
The king's family is killed, the kind princess is stabbed to death by the most trusted guard, the heroine is a wanted criminal with a great sense of guilt, and endless betrayal and death. This series of pathetic elements makes "Moon Rebels" seem more niche and deeper.
Schneider could have worked on the subject, as in "The Watchmen," to tap into the darkness, pain and loneliness of the heroine's heart, but in order to reconcile the usual routines of space opera, it ended up being vulgar and even boring.
Of course, the "Moon Rebels" series has repeatedly suffered Waterloo, which is not an isolated case, and Hollywood science fiction films in recent years have indeed rarely come up with works.
Putting aside "Blue Beetle" and "Madame Spider: Super Awake", which are bad movies under the guise of science fiction, which are actually superhero movie routines, it is also deeply regrettable to take serious science fiction films like "AI Creator".
The director of this film, Garris Edwards, is talented in the field of science fiction films, and his "Godzilla" and "Star Wars Story: Rogue One" are shot with a medium budget to produce rich sci-fi effects.
However, "AI Creator" still lacks stamina in sci-fi setting, character creation and theme expression. This makes it compare with classics such as "Alien", "Blade Runner" and "The Matrix".
Not to mention the more outrageous sci-fi movies such as "Escape from the Cretaceous", "Android" and "Space Alone".
And back to Moon Rebels: The Imprint, which is said to be only the second in the series, Zack Schneider intends to make a total of six films, divided into two relatively separate chapters, to fulfill his grand ambitions of space opera.
But now, with the trend of declining word-of-mouth, can the new owner Netflix continue to pay?
-END-
【 Time Gathering Good Things 】
Anime Session
Genuine introduction of feelings collection
8.6 points! Stop saying "Hong Kong films are dead"
Park Chan-wook filmed a spy drama, and he didn't dare to think about how big the scale was