Rebel Moon final trailer

[oudeis]

Seriously, what is this guy's obsession with glaring point light sources? Every goddamned movie has them. It might be tolerable if they illuminated something worth looking at, but it's like he purposely makes everything drab and ugly to accentuate the various explosions, energy beams, and other fx that he clearly loves so much.

Two trailers in and he's only succeeded in making this less interesting. If the synopsis below is accurate, this may be even more generic than I first thought.

From The Hollywood Reporter:

In the feature, a mysterious woman named Kora (Sofia Boutella) forms a ragtag team in order to defend a peaceful farming village from nefarious imperialists who want to take their food and starve them out.

Per the logline, Kora is “tasked with finding fighters who would risk their lives to defend the people of Veldt, Kora and Gunnar (Michiel Huisman), a tenderhearted farmer naive in the realities of war, journey to different worlds in search of the Bloodaxes, and assemble a small band of warriors who share a common need for redemption along the way: Kai (Charlie Hunnam), a pilot and gun for hire; General Titus (Djimon Hounsou), a legendary commander; Nemesis (Doona Bae), a master swordswoman; Tarak (Staz Nair), a captive with a regal past; and Milius (E. Duffy), a resistance fighter.”

I don't really want to watch this, but I don't want to miss an opportunity for some good old fashioned ridicule and schadenfreude either. Anybody up for a Netflix hate-watch Teleparty?

[warty goblin]

Funny, I watched it and thought the colors looked pretty good. The lighting is dark, but it doesn't look washed out or low contrast, more deep and with a much stronger black in the grading then usual.

I'm actually moderately looking forwards to this. Snyder might stick too close to his visual style, but, relatively unusually for somebody making big budget VFX driven action stuff, he at least has a visual style. He hasn't made anything I'm interested in since 300 - a movie I hate on a deep level for many reasons and yet cannot deny that parts of it are visual masterpieces.

Added bonus, it's not a sequel, or even an adaptation, and that makes it rare as hen's teeth. Yeah sure it's Magnificent Seven as planetary romance, but that's cool, it's been a while since I saw an M7 pastiche or a space opera that wasn't the flatulent black hole of terrible ideas that is modern Star Wars.

[Eldan]

So wait, by that summary, it really is just Seven Samurai in space?

The first trailer looked like a total mess. Like they were throwing in every thematic element of space opera they could. It looked like it was about a revolution in the Star Wars style, too. I could have sworn it was "I must collect the six mythic heroes to overthrow the galactic empire".

If they can actually keep this relatively small scale and thematically coherent, I'm much more interested.

[Batcathat]

The first trailer looked like a total mess. Like they were throwing in every thematic element of space opera they could. It looked like it was about a revolution in the Star Wars style, too. I could have sworn it was "I must collect the six mythic heroes to overthrow the galactic empire".

If they can actually keep this relatively small scale and thematically coherent, I'm much more interested.

Yeah, my first reaction to this trailer was "Oh, I actually sort of understand what it's about now".

[Mechalich]

So wait, by that summary, it really is just Seven Samurai in space?

The first trailer looked like a total mess. Like they were throwing in every thematic element of space opera they could. It looked like it was about a revolution in the Star Wars style, too. I could have sworn it was "I must collect the six mythic heroes to overthrow the galactic empire".

If they can actually keep this relatively small scale and thematically coherent, I'm much more interested.

Even with keeping something to the relatively simple structure of Seven Samurai, it's really, really easy to mess that up. The most recent Magnificent Seven remake had a murderer's row of acting talent: Denzel, Ethan Hawke, Chris Pratt, Vincent D'Onofrio, etc., and a solid action director in Antoine Fuqua and it was still incredibly meh.

Being generous, Zack Snyder is maybe even with Fuqua in terms of action filmmaking, but the cast is very much inferior. While Ed Skrein, Charlie Hunnam, Djimon Hounsou, and Bae Doona, are reliable journeymen actors, there's some distinctly lesser known presences being asked to step up, and an extremely large chance that Anthony Hopkins mails in his voice over part (Hopkins is a treasure, but he is not above taking a big paycheck for minimal effort, this man did a Transformers film after all). Ultimately, a lot is being put on Sofia Boutella here and I'm...highly dubious. Her best role so far was probably in last year's SAS Rogue Heroes (which is great btw, people should watch that), but even that was a moderate supporting role as the love interest, and her imdb does not inspire confidence.

I mean, a meh version of Seven Samurai, in space, with great action set pieces, is fine. It's quite possible that Zack Snyder avoids screwing that up and makes a meh film with great action set pieces. If that's what we get, great. I'm down for some kick but action in a space fantasy setting and my expectations are low enough to be happy with that. Doubt that will justify whatever giant pile of money Netflix coughed up for this though.

[GloatingSwine]

So wait, by that summary, it really is just Seven Samurai in space?

No that was Battle Beyond the Stars :P

Except that had Robert Vaughan playing the same role as he played in The Magnificent Seven.

Being generous, Zack Snyder is maybe even with Fuqua in terms of action filmmaking, but the cast is very much inferior.

No he isn't. Nobody who's watched the final scene in The Equalizer and anything of Zack Snyder's would put him on Fuqua's level. He is at best the crashy smashy version of JJ Abrams.

[Mechalich]

No he isn't. Nobody who's watched the final scene in The Equalizer and anything of Zack Snyder's would put him on Fuqua's level. He is at best the crashy smashy version of JJ Abrams.

Undoubtedly Fuqua at his best blows Snyder out of the water, but Fuqua's record is decidedly mixed. He was, after all, the director of the 2016 Magnificent Seven, which would be a very close comparison point to this film, and the action set pieces in that film are...good-ish? I guess. Zack Snyder can direct a good action set piece, for that matter so can JJ Abrams, even if both men lean too hard on certain highly specific techniques.

With regards to Rebel Moon, the action set pieces are the thing that is most likely to be good, and by a huge margin, especially as many of these actors have done good action scenes before. I suspect both parts of Rebel Moon will manage to assemble ~30 minutes or so of glorious, highly watchable destruction, admittedly with too much slow motion, but that's okay. It's the other three and a half hours or so of footage where the wheels are likely to come off.

Seven Samurai, in space, with 2020s film-making technology, could be good. Not great, certainly not a timeless classic like the original, but good. Seven, maybe seven-point-five, out of ten. That, however, is probably the best case. This thing could very easily be an unmitigated disaster.

[Eldan]

To clarify, when I say "more interested", I don't mean "This looks great!" I mean this changed from "What a mess, not watchign that" to "maybe stream that for a pop corn evening with friends in a few years?"

[warty goblin]

Right, I'm not expecting brilliance or genius or movie of the year. I want some good action, a plot that is no more than 30% nonsense, and - this is key - zero connected universe continuity servicing or nostalgia baiting or fan pandering or otherwise worming out from making an actual freestanding and watchable movie.

[Tyndmyr]

I don't really want to watch this, but I don't want to miss an opportunity for some good old fashioned ridicule and schadenfreude either. Anybody up for a Netflix hate-watch Teleparty?

While I can't guarantee my schedule will permit attendance, this actually sounds glorious, and exactly like what this film deserves.

Even with keeping something to the relatively simple structure of Seven Samurai, it's really, really easy to mess that up. The most recent Magnificent Seven remake had a murderer's row of acting talent: Denzel, Ethan Hawke, Chris Pratt, Vincent D'Onofrio, etc., and a solid action director in Antoine Fuqua and it was still incredibly meh.

The Witcher prequel also tried to hew to this, and it was...not amazing.

[KorvinStarmast]

The lead actress looks too much like the wife of a certain Royal.
Not her fault, at all, but a real turn off in terms of me wanting to see the film if that's the star.

The Seven Sarmurai was a very good film.
The original M7 was good.
The Denzel M7 had good moments{1}, but was splotchy in terms of good mixed with not well done.
You can see how that story gets a little less awesome with each attempt.
I may still go and see this anyway, but I'm not expecting much.

{1} My wife and I are both big Denzel fans, so maybe my review is too charitable, but that's my take.

[Drake Halfmoon]

Seriously, what is this guy's obsession with glaring point light sources? Every goddamned movie has them. It might be tolerable if they illuminated something worth looking at, but it's like he purposely makes everything drab and ugly to accentuate the various explosions, energy beams, and other fx that he clearly loves so much.

Two trailers in and he's only succeeded in making this less interesting. If the synopsis below is accurate, this may be even more generic than I first thought.



I don't really want to watch this, but I don't want to miss an opportunity for some good old fashioned ridicule and schadenfreude either. Anybody up for a Netflix hate-watch Teleparty?

WHY? Would you want to "hate watch" anything?

{scrubbed}

What's "ugly" about this movie? It's the same as Dune in terms of colour.
What's so generic about it? The rebels uniting for a cause? You haven't even watched it.
And who cares about light points? Nitpicking to the nth degree, here.

{scrubbed}

Also Snyder is just as good as Fuqua on his best day if not better. Watchmen is a masterpiece.

[Callos_DeTerran]

I mean...I actually just want to watch the movie. Like not even hate watching it or someting, I just think it look like a fun time.

[ecarden]

I mean...I actually just want to watch the movie. Like not even hate watching it or someting, I just think it look like a fun time.

My position is 'trailers can't be trusted' and 'I'll try to give any original sci-fi a chance, as I'd like to see more of it.'

[Errorname]

Honestly I find Snyder mostly inoffensive, with the exception of 300 but even that's mostly from stuff inherited from the comics. Dude's clearly very passionate, seems nice enough, and he's got a distinctive creative style. The industry could use more blockbuster directors like that, even if I don't particularly like any of his movies.

[Dragonus45]

I mean...I actually just want to watch the movie. Like not even hate watching it or someting, I just think it look like a fun time.

Same, but some people just have a bone to pick with Snyder regardless of the actual quality or content of his works. It's turned into one of those self sustaining hate spirals that's probably not really even worth engaging with anymore.

[warty goblin]

Honestly I find Snyder mostly inoffensive, with the exception of 300 but even that's mostly from stuff inherited from the comics. Dude's clearly very passionate, seems nice enough, and he's got a distinctive creative style. The industry could use more blockbuster directors like that, even if I don't particularly like any of his movies.

Also same, it looks like a fun space fantasy sort of thing. I generally like Snyder's style (and at least he has a style,) it seems pretty well suited to magic space destiny nonsense, and hey, it's actually an original setting. Yes yes it's a Star Wars ripoff, fnar fnar. Still looks higher effort and less agonizingly derivative than most official Star Wars ripoffs, er, products. Besides which, the American pulp planetary romance/space opera is as venerable as any sci-fi school that doesn't start with Mary Shelley or Jules Verne, can be plenty grand and weird and is far too excellent a tradition to let Disney utterly convert into beige entertainment paste product because they wrote Lucas a check.

Probably not movie of the year, but hey, I can stay home and eat cheap leftover Halloween candy while watching it.

[Callos_DeTerran]

Probably not movie of the year, but hey, I can stay home and eat cheap leftover Halloween candy while watching it.

To be honest, I generally enjoy Zack Synder's movies most of the time so this is a better bet for me, but what you just said is honestly all I'm wanting. A nice planetary romance movie that isn't boring or paint-by-numbers to the point of silliness. If I can watch it at home and enjoy myself, that's perfect. I already saw what I consider movie of the year so this is just so I can enjoy myself.

[KorvinStarmast]

It's turned into one of those self sustaining hate spirals that's probably not really even worth engaging with anymore.

Is this similar to the "I hate Nickelback" thing that cropped up (and that I never understood).

[DaedalusMkV]

Is this similar to the "I hate Nickelback" thing that cropped up (and that I never understood).

While I can't speak for the entire world, I can certainly speak to the Nickelback phenomenon here in the area I live. Nickelback are from a small town in my region, and them going on to be not just a major band nationally (happens semi-regularly) but a big-time international thing meant that they reached a saturation here that's almost unheard of. Imagine a period of years where every fourth or fifth song on the radio is from that specific band, regardless of which radio station you tune in to, and you might start to understand just how oversaturated Nickelback music was at the peak of their popularity. Now, for a subset of the population this was no problem. Nickelback was their kind of music, they loved it, they wanted to hear it and didn't get tired of it. But for everyone else, you very quickly start to get tired of a song the 60th or 70th time you've heard it this week, and Nickelback being a weird country/metal/grunge hybrid is already in a bit of a weird place to the point I'm not even sure how the hell they got as popular as they did so fast.

It's not like Nickelback is alone in oversaturation, a few chart-topping pop bands have been in similar positions (Lorde has a substantial hatedom for basically the same reason), but Nickelback got maybe a bit more of it because of how similar all their songs sound to basically anyone who isn't a huge fan of their composition style, which was a big part of the 'I hate Nickelback' meme. But at least here in Alberta (and Saskatchewan), the big problem was just that you couldn't get away from it from about 2007-2012. Eating lunch in a restaurant? You will hear a Nickelback song unless it's a fancy restaurant that doesn't do pop music. Shopping at the mall? Nickelback every 20 minutes. Driving in your car? Unless you love talk radio, get ready for that Nickelback. Attending a rodeo or something out in the rural area? That playlist might rise as high as 50% Nickelback. Try not to go insane.

[Mechalich]

Anti-Zack Snyder feeling is all about DC. While people may dislike 300 or Watchmen, the popular cultural penetration of these movies is small enough that it doesn't really matter. Instead, there's a considerable contingent of people who really, really don't like choices Snyder made in Man of Steel and BvS, mostly regarding Superman, and those people have a fairly loud presence on the internet. At the same time, Snyder has a core group of fans who really like his work and are equally vocal in support, which has amplified the issue.

One thing interesting about Rebel Moon, to me, is that apparently Netflix only spent 166 million making it. That's actually really cheap for a 4+ hour space fantasy epic. Even if the movie doesn't really work, or is merely decent and forgettable, so long as it still looks good there may be interesting lessons in how to save money while making a blockbuster here. Of course, since it's a Netflix-only release, we'll never know how popular it ends up being.

[Errorname]

I think the general consensus on 300 is broadly positive, my visceral dislike of it is an outlier, and it's hard to find many people who care about Sucker Punch or Guardians of Ga'hoole. So yeah, the vast majority of anti-Snyder sentiment comes from people not liking how he handled his DC movies.

[GloatingSwine]

I think the general consensus on 300 soured over time after the memes and the novelty of ratchet slow-mo wore off and all that was left was all the late-stage Frank Miller stuff and historical revisionism about Greece and Persia.

[Mechalich]

I think the general consensus on 300 soured over time after the memes and the novelty of ratchet slow-mo wore off and all that was left was all the late-stage Frank Miller stuff and historical revisionism about Greece and Persia.

If 300 is treated as a historical epic, it looks really bad, and plenty of analysts have treated it that way (notably Dr. Bret Devereaux in his internet-famous This. Isn't. Sparta. series). However, such a treatment really isn't fair to the movie. 300 is not a historical epic, it's a comic book movie, something Zack Snyder has been very open about since before the film even came out. Now, turning a late-stage Frank Miller comic into a major studio production was a dubious idea, but that's not on Snyder. He pitched the film, but Legendary Pictures (a division of Warner Bros) was the studio that agreed to make the movie. And, 300 was highly profitable, so there's that.

This is a useful comparison point for Rebel Moon, since it was originally pitched as a Star Wars film, only this time Disney rejected it. Now, I suspect that regardless of whether or not Rebel Moon is good, it will be something that would have been profoundly out of place as a Star Wars film. It's better for everyone that this is nominally its own thing.

[GloatingSwine]

Yeah, but it's a movie of a comic book that had pretensions to historicity but was actually based on a combination of pop-history versions of Sparta and Miller's broken brain meats.

[warty goblin]

One thing that I do have to give 300 the movie is that it's really super duper obvious it isn't a history lesson. Like, 10 seconds of research obvious. Hell, just pondering combat rhinos for a moment will do it. Yes I'm sure you can find a number of people who take it seriously as a piece of history. This is because you can find a decent number of people who believe any crazy thing you can think of, it's not so much a statement about the work as it is about the nearly infinite dumbassery of our species.

The other thing I have to give 300 is that at its best it looks goddamn epic. Tired cliche word I know, but it's really the only one that applies. I rather detest the film's politics and message, but the opening battle is, in terms of cinematography, basically perfect. With very few exceptions there just isn't anything that sells "ultimate badass" as well as when the Spartans break formation and Leonidas goes on his hyper-edited rampage.

[Saph]

Finally got around to looking at the trailer and . . . eh. Am I the only one who's getting a bit bored with "skinny girl beating up hordes of faceless mooks"? It feels like we've seen this same movie 10-15 times at this point – all that changes is the face of the actress and the uniforms of the mooks.

[Batcathat]

Finally got around to looking at the trailer and . . . eh. Am I the only one who's getting a bit bored with "skinny girl beating up hordes of faceless mooks"? It feels like we've seen this same movie 10-15 times at this point – all that changes is the face of the actress and the uniforms of the mooks.

To be fair, that description is vague enough to be nearly useless. By the same metric, we've seen "muscular guy beating up hordes of faceless mooks" roughly a billion times.

[Saph]

I mean, I know it's a vague description, but watching that trailer all I could think of was "haven't I seen this exact same thing before?"

If it was originally sold as a Star Wars script but Lucasfilm didn't buy it, that would explain a lot. Really does feel like they took the script, did a Ctrl-F for all mentions of "stormtroopers" and replaced them with whatever those weird uniform guys in the trailer are called.

[t209]

Since this is seven samurai homage, most of the film might involve assembling her and various characters along with backstory and introductory deeds.