Movie Review: Rebel Moon, The Director's Cut

Zack Snyder’s Rebel Moon (Parts One & Two), first released in 2023/2024

I love movies, and I love sci-fi, and whilst there are plenty of prequels, sequels, reboots, and threequels of well-known and established franchises, it’s always nice to see new IPs entering the entertainment market. So, when Rebel Moon made its way onto Netflix, I was excited to dive into a new sci-fi universe – however, the results were underwhelming. I felt like the movies, the universe they were set in, and the story being told – they all had potential, but the execution wasn’t hitting the notes it needed to. That might’ve been where this review ended if it weren’t for one critical turn of events…

THE DIRECTORS CUT

I wasn’t even aware of the director’s cut until my uncle pointed it out to me. He’d seen the original releases, as I had, and held a similar opinion: not bad films, by any means, but lacking overall. Having seen the director’s cut, though, he thought they were markedly better, and I had to see them for myself.

The results? Sooooooooooooooo much better! Each film feels more fully realised, full-bodied, and truer to its original vision than the sanitised and heavily edited cuts that were served up first. The added footage further develops both minor and major characters, the rearranged footage makes the story flow more cohesively and coherently, and the gore and nudity allowed by the higher rating heighten the horror and the passion of the events that unfold.

In many ways, the changes actually make the standard and director’s cuts feel like different films – and the names given to each part of Rebel Moon reflect this: Part One went from A Child of Fire to Chalice of Blood, and Part Two went from The Scargiver to Curse of Forgiveness.

The films themselves are visually stunning, beautifully scored, and feature the classic Snyder slow-mo. Their areas of weakness include forced dialogue and, at times, generic and tropey plot beats. The world-building isn’t front and centre, but hidden behind the story is an interesting universe waiting to be explored. Multiple worlds, different alien species, strange religions, and interesting technologies populate and enrichen the universe. Snyder has declared his desire for Rebel Moon to become a massive IP, and hopefully, through further films, as well as additional books and games, the universe will be fleshed out and explored further. Already, a role-playing video game is in development, a four-issue comic titled Rebel Moon: House of the Bloodaxe was released by Titan Comics in January 2024, a narrative fiction podcast, The Seneschal: A Rebel Moon Story released its first six episodes, and novelisations of both movies were published.

Development of film sequels is underway, and while the final number of films appears to be undecided, Snyder and his co-writers, Kurt Johnstad and Shay Hatten, have supposedly written the scripts for the third and fourth films.

I look forward to watching further instalments upon their release and exploring the additional material released thus far. If you enjoy sci-fi and are looking for a burgeoning franchise to explore, I recommend watching the director’s cuts of Rebel Moon. If you’ve seen them, let me know your thoughts in the comments below!