An Underdeveloped Adventure: “Rebel Moon” was a repetitive and boring movie

Looking for a movie with an underdeveloped plot and characters? A movie with generic settings? How about a movie that glorifies unnecessary graphic violence? Look no further than Zack Snyder’s “Rebel Moon.”

“Rebel Moon” , a film released Dec 15 of 2023, follows a woman named Kora on her quest through sci-fi lands to gather allies and save her farming village. She travels from cities ranging to western towns to futuristic societies while gathering companions to help her fight an evil empire. 

This story however is predictable and formulaic. Honestly, the plot is almost identical to “Rogue One”. There is no clear objective, and the parts of the plot feel only loosely strung together.  

The settings Kora and her companions travel through all look similar, and incredibly derivative of other fantasy and sci-fi worlds, with almost no original concepts. The mountains look like those in Skyrim, the characters look like those in stories ranging from “Saga” to “Star Wars” to “The Hobbit”.

The film takes various plot points from well known franchises, including Dungeons and Dragons, Marvel and Norse mythologies relying heavily on “Star Wars”. Everything from the aliens to the planets look almost exactly like something you would see in a “Star Wars” movie, except in “Rebel Moon” character development has been substituted for suggestive jokes and discussing the same boring details about Kora’s past over and over.

The character that the entire film focuses on is Kora, who is ultimately more interested in attacking side characters and being annoyingly pessimistic than being a solid protagonist. The other characters are portrayed similarly as having no clear motives other than flat stories about their “traumatic” pasts. Due to the lack of exposition, none of the characters’ actions from resisting those in power to killing people completely unnecessarily make sense. 

Throughout the movie there are many small conflicts like killing space spiders and talking to droids, all of which are manufactured and unoriginal. Character encounters are chock full of poorly written dialogue, gratuitous violence, and random slow motion shots that in no way contribute to the scene. 

At various points in the movie, especially during the first half, there are a plethora of references to sexual assault. Leading up to a bar brawl, an alien attempts to forcefully buy a companion of Kora’s for sex, and a group of soldiers attempt to rape a village girl. These pieces were incredibly distasteful, as they in no way aided the plot, and served only as an excuse to exploit a very real problem for views and manufactured conflict.

There are also very strange dynamics between the characters. Characters that are ignored for the majority of the storyline are randomly brought up in order to create an emotional blow at betrayals. Characters that have never been shown to have a healthy relationship are accused of having a deep emotional bond.

If you are trying to find a good sci-fi movie, I suggest you keep looking.