Poor farmers do their work by hand on Veldt, a moon that orbits the planet Maura in Rebel Moon -- Part One: A Child of Fire. The farmers battle resistant soil, and refer to themselves as humble. Their grimy clothes make it seem as if the word “laundry” has yet to enter their vocabulary.
Of course, these innocent agrarians are ripe for plucking.
The Motherworld, an evil empire that employs soldiers and robots, is eager to steal the villagers' crops, ravage their women, and lay claim to ... well ... everything.
After some haggling with a vicious Motherworld commander (Ed Skrein), the village's peaceful leader is murdered, and the desperate farmers decide to find their own warriors.
No one mentions Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai, but you wonder whether the villagers might have seen it. Or if you prefer, maybe they immersed themselves in the StarWars saga.
Anyway, what are desperate farmers supposed to do when facing a powerhouse force that knows no mercy?
Director Zack Snyder follows a familiar arc in Rebel Moon -- Part One, a heavily reupholstered version of a narrative moviegoers know well.
In the movie universe, new stories are hard to find and familiarity needn't breed contempt, but Rebel Moon touches many of the usual bases without making a big-time score.
The story centers on Kora (Sofia Boutella), a former member of the bad-guys team who reluctantly agrees to help the farmers. Kora sets out to gather a crew, a task that deposits the movie in various outposts of its fictional galaxy.
A scene reminiscent of StarWars cantina? Yes, that, too, although with creatures of its own.
Kora is accompanied on her recruiting journey by Gunnar (Michiel Huisman), a farmer who mostly watches the action, presented with the snippets of slow motion Snyder frequently employs.
Those who join Kora’s renegade band include characters played by Djimon Hounsou (as the fallen General Titus), Staz Nair (as the muscular Tarak), Bae Doona (as the sword-fighting Nemesis), and Ray Fisher as Bloodaxe, a character who demonstrates that names can tell us all we need to know.
Charlie Hunnam signs on as Kai, a mercenary who joins with Kora and adds a bit of wise-guy flourish.
Tolerable for about an hour, the movie eventually bogs down, trapped by its need to introduce more characters, tell Kora's backstory, create additional bizarre environments, and plod toward the inevitable showdown with Skrein's Admiral Atticus Noble, the sadistic chief solider in the Motherworld’s repressive empire. Another space Nazi.
The movie’s creature-feature aspects can be imaginative, notably a large spider with a human female torso, but battle sequences break no new ground, hand-held weapons are more clunky than streamlined, and some of the space ships look like barges.
Beyond all that, the movie could have benefited from more verve — not to mention a few more memorable characters.
Snyder has a following and his Army of the Dead (2021) was fun, but Rebel Moon too often feels warmed over, more like leftovers than an appealingly fresh meal.
Perhaps redemption awaits. Snyder has split his space opera into two parts with the second helping due next April.
For now, though, it's arguable that Rebel Moon stands as an overloaded space opera that offers too much, too late.
Rebel Moon streams on Netflix beginning Dec. 21.
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