Netflix is in the buzz/attention business, which likely explains why the service would write what appears to have been a very big check to “Justice League” director Zack Snyder, letting him produce a two-part science-fiction epic that will continue next year. “Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire” might have skipped the “release the Snyder cut” preliminaries, but only his most loyal fans will find much in this dreary exercise to warm them.
The shorthand description of the movie would be allowing the visually ambitious director to try his hand at a “Star Wars” movie, but that’s actually a poor representation of the underlying bones of the story, which owes more of a debt to “The Magnificent Seven” (or “The Seven Samurai,” take your pick), which itself was adapted in 1980 by Roger Corman into the space-set “Battle Beyond the Stars.”
Unfortunately, even that latter low-budget effort generated better characters than “Rebel Moon” can muster, and the latitude of the two-part structure merely allows Snyder (who wrote the story, collaborated on the script and also served as director of photography) to plump up the introductions in less-than-flattering ways.
Building not just a world, but an entire galaxy, “Rebel Moon” paints a portrait of a universe that saw its royal family murdered, leaving its planets under the boot of an imperious regent. Cut to a farming community on a small out-of-the-way outpost, where a former soldier, Kora (Sofia Boutella of “The Mummy” and “Kingsman: The Secret Service”), has taken quiet refuge.