I watched Rebel Moon (or Rebel Moon, Pt1, PG-13 edition as it’ll become known) and while the whole movie is trash, I can’t get over one thing: the scale is wrong.
The movie’s premise is the same as The Seven Samurai: Small town has to defend against bandits by collecting a group of fighters. The movie gets half of this right: the town is small. The bandits however, are the galactic empire.
Like, imagine if Seven Samurai opened with Oda Nobunaga coming to town? Because that’s what happens: the second-in-command of the GALACTIC FLEET shows up in the imperial flagship to threaten a village that can’t have more than 200 residents.
Can you imagine living in a galaxy where you can travel from planet to planet quickly (on the UGLIEST ships, but i digress), where dozens of planets are inhabited, have their own alien races, cultures, etc, and the conquerors of said galaxy just fly around harassing small farming communities for food?
The scale is wrong.
The movie is trash for many other reasons, but it has me thinking about the stories I always wanted to write when I was younger, and how if I ever do get good at writing I should not write them because they have too many stupid ideas I thought were cool when I was fifteen. So that’s good, that revelation.
Thanks for the review was already luke warm on seeing it so prob will pass. Although I am slightly curious on the sudo Star Wars that it is said to be.
I think I now like Yojimbo more than The Seven Samurai.
I say write your stuff you never know. Maybe one short story to see how it goes.
Rebel Moon was thoroughly ridiculous.
Saw a screening and the Kurosawa film was mentioned as inspiration.
Truly head-scratching.
Also, tho glad the director was having fun as DoP, perhaps he’d be better picking a lane.
Bunch of exposure/focus issues throughout.
Enjoyed blue eyed samurai much more.
Better use of time,/genre imho.
I got around to watching part two. I could not tell you what happened at all in the first hour and I spent much of it thinking about on Charlie Hunnam’s career. He is not in this one because he was killed for-real-for-real in the last one (as opposed to space hitler, who was reved via glowing tubes). Realizing I was fucking around on my phone more than I was watching the video, I skipped ahead to every thumbnail that looked cool (mostly denoted by a visible color shift away from brown), with the goal of getting to the splash pic, which is a Geiger-esque machine woman. Turns out she is the engine of the ship and may or may not be sentient (she speaks, but it’s a dream sequence I believe). I cannot overstate how much cool shit they could have done with a enslaved machine person as the heart of a ship–I want a whole movie about ships like that: their capture, their control, their rebellion–but the hero blows it up and we move on.
It reminds me of pulp sci-fi and Heavy Metal magazine stuff. A terrifying idea that might not have been explored properly, but was expressed in unforgettable imagery. I like bad movies like this because of those crumbs.
The best part of the film is the splash screen on Netflix.
My phone is too old and a splash screen on Netflix looks like the sort of thing that needs old person magnifying glasses. At which point I collapse and concede.
Murderbot series has a sentient AI-ship-brain called ART - Asshole Research Transport. Well, official designation is Perihelion, but ART is much deeper, imho.
Oh, and also God Engines by John Skalzi, is all about chaining intelligent, human-like creatures called gods to a spacecraft and torturing them to drive the ship.
