Rebel Moon - Part One: A Child of Fire (Zack Snyder, Dec. 22 on Netflix)

When a peaceful colony on the edge of a galaxy finds itself threatened by the armies of a tyrannical ruling force, Kora (Sofia Boutella), a mysterious stranger living among the villagers, becomes their best hope for survival.

Tasked with finding trained fighters who will unite with her in making an impossible stand against the Mother World, Kora assembles a small band of warriors — outsiders, insurgents, peasants and orphans of war from different worlds who share a common need for redemption and revenge.

As the shadow of an entire Realm bears down on the unlikeliest of moons, a battle over the fate of a galaxy is waged, and in the process, a new army of heroes is formed.

 

Snyder recently mentioned his Army of the Dead is connected to this new project when his anime series was cancelled. It would be interesting to know how the hell how???

Whatever this Rebel Moon is it was his proposed Star Wars project he planned for Disney. I'm happy to see what's seen so far doesn't have any DNA from Star Wars and Star Trek; I know there's a laser sword in a short clip but laser swords has been around before Star Wars.

 

This is the sort of thing I'd give a chance in the theater, truth be told. I'll be checking it out. It's hard to say from the trailers, but it looks like it has the potential to be great, if they don't snatch defeat from the jaws of victory with a bunch of silly BS. I guess we'll find out.

 

It sure looks great and the trailer did its job to create interest. Then again i have been burned by pretty visuals in the past only for the story to be total crap so i'll wait until i have seen it to form an opinion.

I hope it's good and bucks the trend for the xth sequel or franchise movies, i would like to see something original and interesting.

However i can't shake the feeling that based on the trailer this should have been a cinema release, there's movies you better see on a huge screen with a powerful soundsystem first.

 

Isn't that Netflix' format, they release the movies they produce to theatres first and then is released on streaming. You may get your chance to see it in the big screen, maybe limited.

 

Yeah, I think I read somewhere that this will be getting a very, very limited theatrical release, it's only gonna be in 4 theaters.
Definitely looking forward to it, it looks awesome. And while I wasn't a huge fan of how Snyder handled his DC movies, I did really enjoy 300 and Army of the Dead.

 

I think its DNA might be from the Seven Samurai.

 

I picked up that vibe as well.

 

Snyder confirmed that directly, he basically made a version of his favorite movie.

 

A Star Wars-homaging space-opera pastiche of Seven Samurai? So it's a more expensive Battle Beyond the Stars?

 

Well, in the case of BBTS, the lead was essentially a pacifist forced to fight. In this movie, it looks like the lead is a proven former warrior who is being forced again to fight.

But now this all has me pining for Sybil Danning in a space valkyrie outfit.

 

Zack Snyder's trailer breakdown reveals some fun BTS tidbits, and a bit about who the different characters we see in the trailer are. It's definitely worth a watch if you're interested in the movie.

A lot more of this appears to have been practical than I would have expected.

 

From the trailer, this is to Star Wars what The Orville is to Star Trek, without the intentional parody aspects. Hollywood bigshot wants to work in his favourite franchise, franchise says no, bigshot does it anyway by filing off the serial numbers. It's a Star Wars movie with different aliens and names, and probably more explicit violence. Even the title is a Star Wars reference. There's plenty of Star Wars DNA. And Seven Samurai DNA. Whether there's a hint of originality remains to be seen.

 

I am looking forward to it...i won't tell the wife it was supposed to be stat wars, so she doesn't prejudge it

I will also just think of it as "original" so i won't hang onto the mistakes of the DCFU but rather treat it like 300 or Dawn of the Dead

 

Except that Star Wars already was to Flash Gordon what The Orville was to Star Trek and Rebel Moon is to Star Wars -- the creator's pastiche of the franchise he was rejected by when he applied to make the genuine article. And while we're at it, Flash Gordon was itself a knockoff of Buck Rogers -- and ended up surpassing it in popularity, much as Star Wars did to Flash Gordon.

Also, MacFarlane didn't want The Orville to be a parody -- he wanted to do a straightforward Trek-like adventure drama, but was afraid people wouldn't accept him doing anything but his usual stuff, so he felt obligated to tack on comedy bits. Once he took a chance on playing it straight and audiences reacted well, he mostly dropped the forced comedy and it became a much better show.

 

I suspect MacFarlane also wanted the legal protection of being a parody and not just a knockoff.

 

I doubt it, since seasons 2-3 are, as I said, mostly straight adventure-drama with moments of character humor, rather than anything that could be called a parody. Sometimes it gets even darker than Trek usually does.

After all, it's not like Star Trek was anywhere remotely near the first work of science fiction to have an organization like the Federation or Starfleet; it was just as derivative as the other things we're talking about, distilling decades-old tropes from prose science fiction in the same way Lucas distilled tropes from his childhood-favorite movies and serials.

 

It's very, very hard to find any story that hasn't been influenced in some way by earlier stories.

 

So...how we got Star Wars?

 

Yes -- that's how creativity works. Art is like language -- it's only meaningful because it's assembled from elements that people are already familiar with, put together according to a grammar they understand. Everything draws on prior creations; art is an ongoing conversation as today's creators respond to yesterday's creators and carry their ideas forward in new ways. What makes it creative is how you put those familiar pieces together. As I like to say, originality isn't about where the ideas came from, but where you take them next -- whether you just copy what was done before or take it in a fresh direction.