Rebel Moon final trailer

[Mordar]

It really feels like there is two camps here, we have camp the bigger a director gets the more control they have.

And camp, the bigger a director gets, the less control they have.

And personally I find myself in camp a little from column A and a little from column B. It's clear that studios will invest more money and are more likely to take a chance on a big directors more outlandish ideas. But it's also clear that when they have invested a lot of money they will want to keep an eye on the project.

How about this - the more successful a director has been, particularly with their last couple projects, the greater relative control they will have for future projects.

By this I mean the bigger your box office, or box office per movie, the more say you get in a new project as compared to a less successful director. Assuming your name isn't Spielberg or Cameron you're never going to have absolute power on a $200M+ budget. But Nolan, Bay, Jackson, and well down the list Snyder...they'll get more input on Studio A's big $350M production than directors who have grossed $250M across 10 pictures.

Re: Campaigning for release of the Snyder cut

Why in the world would it be a bad thing for a commercial art producer to advocate for fans to want to see their commercial art? Even if they dress it up in humblebrags, it is literally the point of their chosen career.

- M

[Eldan]

The part two trailer is infinitely better than the part one trailer. Part 1 gave me "tonally confused StarWars with too much stuff and too many characters", this gives me "badass action, cool pulp setting". I don't know what the actual difference is, but this works for me.

[KorvinStarmast]

If I had known that Rebel Moon II had dropped on Friday, I'd have given it a look. Might be able to this weekend.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/movies/new...be760fdb&ei=17

A review, but it has some spoilers.

[Sapphire Guard]

It's a pretty competemt action film, not groundbreaking, nothing especially wrong with it.

[KorvinStarmast]

It's a pretty competemt action film, not groundbreaking, nothing especially wrong with it.

There is one thing very "off" about this film. It's the consistent glaring anachronism and tech mismatch factor.

You have an anti-gravity cart on which the grain is collected and piled during harvest, but the grain harvest is solely by hand tools. Jarring discontinuity in tech level.

The battleship guns (near the end) and how they are trained and aimed. IT's right out of a WW II movie but this is a space faring culture. We had better fire control for remote gun mounts in the US Navy in the 1970's for goodness sake. (The 5" guns on the Spruance Destroyers/Ticonderoga Cruisers).

Dude with two hand axes fighting squads of infantry in powered armor who are supported by tanks in what is basically an open field. Not to mention the volume of fire coming out of the tank's machine guns that don't seen to hit anyone or anything.

Those are only three. I'll stop there.

But let get to a few of the positives:

Some of the in-close combat scenes (how to get a satchel charge into a drop ship, or a grenade into a tank) were quite good
The hand-to-hand combat is mostly well choreographed.
The red blades were hot, the blue blades were cold, and it hurt to hold them without gloves/wrapping. I liked that.

Back story for the blade-mistress was cool.
Back story for the general: wait a sec, why was he left alive?
Back story for the mask lady: OK, that's how you get a rebel.
Back story for the handsome prince: OK, I guess? (And it appears to be linked to the back story of Kora).
Back story for Kora: OK, not sure why the princess isn't dead but I guess we'll find out in chapter 3.

Fixing the old drop ship by turning it on two years later: OK, they have better batteries than we do.

The Death of Caeser, reskinned. OK.

Parking the drop ship behind a waterfall in a large cave. I like that a lot.

The can-of-beans sized timed-to-go-off charges for sabotage: like them.

The terrible marksmanship of the guys in powered armor: well, if this is like Star Wars then it's tied to "Stormtroopers can't shoot straight trope." If you are gonna do that, go all in. They did.

I'm not dead yet: OK, that was fun and reasonably well done.

Ambush / surprise attack: Well done.

The doctors / scientists in robes with masks and weird hats/helms that entirely encase their heads: uh, WTF? OK, I guess that's an artistic choice.

The Grain. OK, sure.

The love scene / scenes: tastefully done. +1.

The dialogue: for the most part stilted and forced. Little of it flowed naturally, but it was effective in getting most points across.

Super Duper Robot Ninja Warrior: OK, why not.

[Sapphire Guard]

'Anachronism' is an interesting criticism, because there's no reason space combat should resemble air or sea combat at all, but writers do it anyway for the effect.

Space combat makes no sense in basically anything, from Warhammer to Star Wars to Honor Harrington, because once you have FTL tech, you don't need any other weapons. Why are they using powered armour at all instead of drones? The other problem is the implication of 'I understand perfectly how this crazy future tech works, and according to me it should work differently'.

[warty goblin]

Most cinematic sci-fi is using the furniture of sci-fi (space ships, laser guns, etc*) as set dressing to tell a story where the writer has more complete control over plot and tone than a real world setting would allow. This also creates some useful distance between the film and its real world inspirations; Star Wars is famously partially inspired by Vietnam, but think about transplanting the plot of Star Wars to SE Asia for half a second and I suspect you'll conclude nobody would go see that version.

Rebel Moon does the same thing, and is profoundly transparent about it. Only it aims even earlier, it's in a lot of ways late Roman but filtered through a very 19th century colonial vibe due to the massive technological imbalance between the Empire and everyone else. Which is another advantage of the fictional setting, you can smear a bunch of real world influences together to constitute your theme. Besides that, the sci-fi layer gets rid of any cognitive dissonance about who the good guys are and which side your country was on, and allows for a satisfying ending with some personal and very heroic violence**.

*Since space ships as shown in 99% of sci-fi absolutely cannot actually work, pretty much anything you could call space opera or planetary romance is doing the same thing. Actual "the future could look like this" sci-fi is fairly rare in movies.

** I'm guessing here, I haven't had time to watch part 2 yet.

[KorvinStarmast]

Star Wars is famously partially inspired by Vietnam,

Not likely. It was inspired - per George Lucas' own commentary - by the films about WW II, and the newsreels about WW II aircraft carriers and carrier born planes. Granted, the helmets Wedge and Luke wore were knockoffs of contemporary (mid 1970's) USN flight helmets. (I still have one of those things from flight training).

Rebel Moon does the same thing, and is profoundly transparent about it. Only it aims even earlier, it's in a lot of ways late Roman but filtered through a very 19th century colonial vibe due to the massive technological imbalance between the Empire and everyone else.

Yes, there is that.

Which is another advantage of the fictional setting, you can smear a bunch of real world influences together to constitute your theme. Besides that, the sci-fi layer gets rid of any cognitive dissonance about who the good guys are and which side your country was on, and allows for a satisfying ending with some personal and very heroic violence**.

I think they got a lot of their Sci Fi influence from video games.

Since space ships as shown in 99% of sci-fi absolutely cannot actually work, pretty much anything you could call space opera or planetary romance is doing the same thing. Actual "the future could look like this" sci-fi is fairly rare in movies.

Yes. And hopefully, Logan's Run won't.

I'm guessing here, I haven't had time to watch part 2 yet.

It is worth a look.

[Sapphire Guard]

It's just,kind of interesting, because looking around at the criticism (not necessarily on GITP) it's about standard action movie stuff, that happens in every other similar film.

[Errorname]

Not likely. It was inspired - per George Lucas' own commentary - by the films about WW II, and the newsreels about WW II aircraft carriers and carrier born planes. Granted, the helmets Wedge and Luke wore were knockoffs of contemporary (mid 1970's) USN flight helmets. (I still have one of those things from flight training).

Lucas has also talked about the Vietnam influence, especially with the third film. Art is rarely inspired by just one thing.

[wilphe]

So Ewoks are VC?

Is that the take from that?

Because that's is pretty close to my head-cannon that Ewoks are terrifying and the only people who think they are cute have never seen them fight

They took out an entire Legion of the Empire's best troops with rocks and sticks and then ate them

[Sapphire Guard]

Aw crap, I mentioned Star Wars.

[Wookieetank]

Aw crap, I mentioned Star Wars.

At least you didn't misspell wookiee

[KorvinStarmast]

Lucas has also talked about the Vietnam influence, especially with the third film. Art is rarely inspired by just one thing.

If Viet Nam inspired RoJ, Lucas fell down on the job. But I believe that he'd have made that allusion, so thanks.

Aw crap, I mentioned Star Wars.

Don't worry, I did mention it a few posts back as regards the Storm Troopers can't shoot straight trope so you are not to blame.

[gbaji]

Space combat makes no sense in basically anything, from Warhammer to Star Wars to Honor Harrington, because once you have FTL tech, you don't need any other weapons. Why are they using powered armour at all instead of drones? The other problem is the implication of 'I understand perfectly how this crazy future tech works, and according to me it should work differently'.

That does somewhat depend on the FTL methodology, and depends on what you are trying to accomplish, but in general yes. Ironically, despite the occasional wierdness thrown in, Andromeda actually did a pretty decent job of managing spaceships and space combat. Well, except when they dramatically... didn't (which seemed to be proportional to that episodes effects budget). When they weren't showing spaceship pew-pewing each other effects, they did a decently good job of portraying space battles as super long range missile fights (and spoke in terms of light seconds, light minutes, etc for ranges that these battles took place in). The problem is that people like to see space combat. But the reality is that space combat, if it were accurately portrayed, would be boring. It's still probably the best major American Sci-Fi show in terms of getting a lot of those little details right.

Babylon 5 gets an A for effort, showing us at least some semi-realistic space motion effects for battles (with the Earth ships at least), but the star furies were this odd mix of "we're going to illustrate full directional motion in space, but attach that to a short range direct firing space fighter" (the reality is that, unless those things have some absolutely amazing countermeasures, no star fury should ever surrive to get remotely close to the ships they are attacking). So the deesire was there maybe, but they also realized the realities of needing to make things "look cool" (and the "look cool" factor grew over time in the show). And to be fair, the ships in that show travelled literally "at the speed of plot", so there is that. They at least made some effort with the larger capital ships to show them firing really long range weapons, and using interceptors to block them, with beam weapons being used at close range (and usually to brutal effect). So.... Yeah. At least they tried. A bit.

Most shows don't even bother trying though. Which is a style and flavor itself, I guess. And yeah, SW is probably the worst offender of "nonsense sci-fi tech" IMO.

[Mechalich]

Most shows don't even bother trying though. Which is a style and flavor itself, I guess. And yeah, SW is probably the worst offender of "nonsense sci-fi tech" IMO.

Star Wars is very much a space fantasy, so while the technologies on display are a mess (though I feel expectations do need to be calibrated to recognize that Lucas was working on a template of the mid 1970s both in terms of what speculative resources he had access and what he could conceivably film), it's not really important because the technologies are not central to any of the themes of the stories - and Star Wars is sufficiently genre-savy to have Darth Vader say so out loud in ANH.

That said, there's a difference between having futuristic technologies that make no sense considering real world knowledge of physics and having technologies that are not internally consistent within the content of the story itself. Star Wars, at least in the original trilogy, is strongly consistent, because everything is simply WWII air/naval combat ported into a space backdrop (and this is pretty obvious, since there are a number of WWII movies that have combat sequences that are shot the same way Star Wars ones are, including in Red Tails, which Lucas made).

One of Rebel Moon's problems is that it lacks internal consistent within its own setting, and the hand-farming techniques being especially notable in this regard. It's noticeable enough that Snyder included a line to lampshade it 'we do this extremely inefficient thing for spiritual reasons,' only that merely creates more problems because it just sounds dumb and dogmatic to a modern English-speaking audience and undercuts support for the people who the audience is supposed to be rooting for.

But the reality is that space combat, if it were accurately portrayed, would be boring. It's still probably the best major American Sci-Fi show in terms of getting a lot of those little details right.

The thing about realistic space combat is that it's all in the build-up. Everything is going to be long range and, most likely, once weapons start being fired, is going to happen so fast humans can't possibly react anyway. What happens is that there's a planning stage, a very brief combat stage in which the results are basically read out alongside some explosions, and then a post-combat analysis. A really long battle might repeat this process several times.

It's not like there aren't historical parallels. Large-scale WWI battles unfolded in something like this. There was a massive, pre-planned artillery barrage and positioning of troops that might last weeks, prior to the command to go 'over the top' in which a very brief clash of troops unfolded in a few minutes and enemy trenches either were or were not seized, after which commanders struggled to reassert control and support their troops prior to an inevitable counter-attack (this usually failed because of problems with communication and transport technologies).

There are, however, challenges in doing this from a storytelling perspective. The big one, in my experience, is what might be called 'drama per unit effort.' Big engagements take a lot of work to setup, whether that's wordcount, establishing shots, graphics overlays, maps, or whatever. By contrast, small ones can take almost none, since two groups of armed combatants can simply stumble onto each other in the words. A good example of this is found in the LotR films, which have one fully realized large-scale set piece per film, but a good half-dozen small combats. In film, which is an extremely compressed medium, the KISS principle is paramount when trying to stage something like this. The good guys and bad guys need to be exceedingly clear, the stakes need to be perfectly obvious, and the conditions for victory or defeat likewise need to be readily apparent to the audience. Zack Snyder, for what its worth, ought to know this, since 300, though a film with a great many flaws, absolutely passes this test. Xerxes is bad, the Spartans are good, if the Spartans fail all of Greece dies, and the Spartans can win so long as a they stand fast and don't get flanked.

I will grant that, doing this in an original story, with an original setting, is hard, especially given that because Star Wars already did the 'just play all the archetypes completely to type' approach about as perfectly as can possibly be done, any similar story has to try and spice things up in order to avoid looking like a knock-off, but this risks producing a 'too much spice, not enough soup' scenario.

[InvisibleBison]

One of Rebel Moon's problems is that it lacks internal consistent within its own setting, and the hand-farming techniques being especially notable in this regard. It's noticeable enough that Snyder included a line to lampshade it 'we do this extremely inefficient thing for spiritual reasons,' only that merely creates more problems because it just sounds dumb and dogmatic to a modern English-speaking audience and undercuts support for the people who the audience is supposed to be rooting for.

I don't think this is something "modern audiences" think, so much as it is something you think. People choosing to be inefficient for spiritual reasons isn't dumb, it's a natural and understandable thing that plenty of people both in various works of fiction and in the real world actually do.

[Sapphire Guard]

Yeah, I'm not seeing a worldbuilding issue in that, it happens all the time in fiction and reality. The idea that 'inefficient farming technique' makes people less sympathetic when they're being attacked is also quite a take.

[warty goblin]

I grew up and live in the US Midwest, so I went "oh, space Amish" followed by "oh space Amish who bone down." People growing food using pretty much those methods for religious* reasons is extremely common around here, to the point where roads have specific signage telling drivers to watch out for horses pulling buggies on the shoulders.

In universe I think it makes substantial sense. They're a pacifist agricultural sect who found an out of the way spot to do their thing. The land is extremely fertile, so they produce enough excess to sell for whatever goods they don't produce indigenously. Empires don't generally like pacifist sects doing their own thing, still less ones who sell good to resistance movements, so some gratuitous cruelty is in order. The movie literally just says all this, it's quite straight forward worldbuilding where all of the pieces have direct real workd analogs, about the weirdest thing is that the village consists of space Amish.

*it's a bit more indirect than that, they use 19th century technology because it encourages highly collaborative communities which is valuable for religious reasons.

[KorvinStarmast]

Spoiler: Space Amish

Show

I grew up and live in the US Midwest, so I went "oh, space Amish" followed by "oh space Amish who bone down." People growing food using pretty much those methods for religious* reasons is extremely common around here, to the point where roads have specific signage telling drivers to watch out for horses pulling buggies on the shoulders.

In universe I think it makes substantial sense. They're a pacifist agricultural sect who found an out of the way spot to do their thing. The land is extremely fertile, so they produce enough excess to sell for whatever goods they don't produce indigenously. Empires don't generally like pacifist sects doing their own thing, still less ones who sell good to resistance movements, so some gratuitous cruelty is in order. The movie literally just says all this, it's quite straight forward worldbuilding where all of the pieces have direct real workd analogs, about the weirdest thing is that the village consists of space Amish.

*it's a bit more indirect than that, they use 19th century technology because it encourages highly collaborative communities which is valuable for religious reasons

.

OK, I can buy that. I remember when driving in Delaware and Pennsylvania seeing various Amish or Mennonite areas back in the 1970's. The buggy thing is still around, I guess.

[Saph]

Yeah, I've given them some flack for the weirdly anachronistic tech, but there are ways you can make it work – it's kind of weird and from the clips I don't actually think the movie actually DOES pull it off, but whatever, it's not a hill I care about dying on. The bigger problem (from what I've seen of the movie) is that it just doesn't give viewers any particular reason to care about the village or their Seven Samurai knock-offs.

[Sapphire Guard]

Relevant: What have you seen of the movie?

As a criticism, 'doesn't give you a reason to care' is an interesting one, because different people care about different things. Different viewers may care about different things than you, so how do you know it doesn't give them a reason to care?

[warty goblin]

It's pretty normal stuff for planetary romance/space opera. The tone is darker, and the cinematography is very stylized, but there's nothing terribly weird about the setup. It's really only the one village that is deliberately low tech, which is explained quite clearly on the film; they're a pacifist religious sect doing it for religious reasons. This religion isn't terribly detailed, but it clearly involves things like fertility rituals and hospitality to strangers, which is enough to be getting on with. The rest of the galaxy is frequently dirt poor, but not deliberately anachronistic.

Otherwise it's a very standard mix of laser guns and swords and stuff. Star Wars does it, Star Trek does it, the Riddick movies do it, it's been totally standard since A Princess of Mars came out 112 years ago; this trope is so standard there's a not terrible chance that passengers on the Titanic would recognize it.

I also think the overall sort of technology and its various imbalances fit very well with the age of imperialism tone and setting of the movie. Sure it'd be "realistic" if everybody was using remote piloted drones or weaponized nanobots or whatever, but movies don't run on realism, they run on film language, which compresses meaning into visual shorthand to convey lots of information quickly. This particular setup combines Roman, late 19th century, and Nazi imagery in fairly blunt but I find pretty effective ways to communicate the ideas of empire, colonial policy, and rampant military cruelty. More modern or futuristic imagery would fail to do as efficiently because to the presumed audience of people in wealthy nations with advanced militaries, modern military kit does not communicate ideas of cruelty and illegitimate violence.

This is just normal movie stuff in a not great but basically acceptable movie doing normal movie things.

[Saph]

Relevant: What have you seen of the movie?

The trailer, some adverts, some discussion. I didn't see a single interesting character.

[Sapphire Guard]

That's a lot of confidence in your judgement of something you haven't seen.

[wilphe]

The purpose of a trailer and adverts is to make people want to see the film

If they don't, then discussing why is perfectly valid.

[Palanan]

Speaking of caring and wanting to see it—I’ve seen one scene that does the absolute opposite:

Spoiler: This Scene

Show

When the female lead murders a child in cold blood, and then inexplicably fails to shoot her boss who just double-crossed and scapegoated her. And then murders any number of unarmed crew who had nothing to do with any of it.

But apparently we’re supposed to root for her anyway, despite all that, because…reasons? Can someone explain this?

[Saph]

That's a lot of confidence in your judgement of something you haven't seen.

I'm not sure how you think people decide whether or not to see a movie, but FYI, it generally does involve making some sort of judgement. Typically along the lines of "this looks good" or "this looks bad". But if you really insist that no-one's allowed to comment on a film who hasn't seen it, I guess we could look at the film's critical reviews . . . what were its RT scores again?

[InvisibleBison]

Speaking of caring and wanting to see it—I’ve seen one scene that does the absolute opposite:

Spoiler: This Scene

Show

When the female lead murders a child in cold blood, and then inexplicably fails to shoot her boss who just double-crossed and scapegoated her. And then murders any number of unarmed crew who had nothing to do with any of it.

But apparently we’re supposed to root for her anyway, despite all that, because…reasons? Can someone explain this?

We're supposed to root for Kora despite her actions in that scene because she clearly feels that her actions were abominable and is fighting against the Motherworld in no small part to atone for them. Or at least, that's how I understood that scene. Far be it from me to imply that Rebel Moon has well-written characters.

[KorvinStarmast]

Speaking of caring and wanting to see it—I’ve seen one scene that does the absolute opposite:

Spoiler: This Scene

Show

When the female lead murders a child in cold blood, and then inexplicably fails to shoot her boss who just double-crossed and scapegoated her. And then murders any number of unarmed crew who had nothing to do with any of it.

But apparently we’re supposed to root for her anyway, despite all that, because…reasons? Can someone explain this?

It didn't make sense to me, how that scene ended. I think we are supposed to get more fleshing out of that scene in episide 3? Seemed incomplete.