Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire movie review (2023) – Roger Ebert

The tip is simply “the beginning of one thing,” in accordance with one of many action-figure-deep heroes of “Insurgent Moon—Half One: Youngster of Fireplace,” the lumbering first half of Zack Snyder’s deliberate two-part “Star Wars” knockoff. After 133 minutes (give or take seven for credit), Snyder’s newest gang of misfits are lastly able to combat house Nazis. It’s Akira Kurosawa in house once more, solely this time every part’s rendered with storyboard perfection and a irritating emphasis on sheer visible scale, regardless of a basic lack of eye-catching particulars.

Snyder (“Military of the Lifeless”) and his two credited co-writers, Shay Hatten and Kurt Johnstad, by no means actually attempt to be authentic. As an alternative, they joyless trudge by formulaic territory, solely now with a much bigger finances and a Snyder-y compulsion to copy the appears to be like and types of different motion pictures and comedian books, amongst different media. “Insurgent Moon” usually appears to be like extra like an animated pitch for a film than an precise film with human characters, pressing drama, emotional stakes, and so forth.

Every part’s large—and corny, and ungainly—in “Insurgent Moon,” beginning with the house farmers who try to clearly fail to withstand a visiting occasion of house fascists, representing the Motherworld’s previously nice colonial energy. The farmers are initially led by a brawny Corey Stoll, whose needlessly swole physique and braided pushbroom beard ostensibly contrasts his character with Admiral Atticus Noble (Ed Skrein), a really pale goose-stepper with a brief mood and a military at his again.

Stoll’s character dies fairly shortly, as a result of even a father determine with a barrel chest and Viking Snuffleupagus beard can’t defeat Noble and his fellow would-be overlords. Now the farmers of, oh gosh, Veldt should plan for the Motherworld’s subsequent go to. Their champion, a petite farmer with a previous named Kora (Sofia Boutella), then units out to search out warriors who can practice her folks to combat again. She finds inventory sorts with prominently exoticized backgrounds, just like the Scottish mercenary Kai (Charlie Hunnam) and the beastmaster prince Tarak (Staz Nair), now a slave.

As typical, Snyder doesn’t appear to care about these characters a lot as he likes their style-guide options, like their cleavage, their haircuts, and their hard-stressed accents. Some actors, like Hunnam and Stoll, dig in with each fingers, however not everybody fares as effectively with dialogue that by no means stops expositing at the same time as matte-painting reproduction panorama pictures threaten to swallow up whoever’s pushing the plot this time round. It’s normally Kora, however different characters assist to determine the film’s passing curiosity within the typical post-“Star Wars” house opera themes of resistance, hope, and compassion, principally by bumpersticker dialogue and G.I. Joe poses.