Micah BlackLight

So, I am honestly at a complete loss as to how this movie is being hailed as ‘original’ on literally any level. To be clear, I am not a Zack Snyder hater. I LOVED Army of the Dead. Like, LOVED it. (It was so much FUNNN!!) That being said, Rebel Moon is the single most derivative thing I’ve ever seen him make. The worst part is I was actually EXCITED to see this! So it hit me so much harder because of that. He almost wholesale stole the main characters’ backstory from Gamora of MCU, the villagers might as well be from any Viking series of the last 60 years, they live in wood cabins in the middle of a plain with zero trees for miles and miles; the tech the baddies use to revive the main villain looks like it was literally stolen from the Matrix film lot, and the list goes on and on. I found the writing horrible: main character relating her backstory sounded like some stilted narrator of a really badly written sci-fi spoof; they made the quasi-native American character basically speak what sounded a lot like Nah’Vi to an animal that then understood the language; the plot line, ways they went around collecting hotties, sorry, I mean warriors, for their crew made zero sense; the scene where the disgraced ex-general goes from drunk and disorderly to…sober and super corny? would have been AMZING—if this was a spoof. In fact, I think this entire movie would have been infinitely better if it had periodically inserted character cameos letting you know it was a spoof, and didn’t try to take itself seriously. I honestly feel badly for the actors because I REALLY love most of them outside of this movie and I think THEY think they’ve starred in a good movie. Reading some of the articles regarding the main co-writer’s views on what this is, and what Zack was trying to do made me realize all of them think this is original. It’s like they have blinders on to the sheer level of unoriginality they unwittingly sunk to in attempting to make ‘his version’ of a Star Wars/Seven Samurai story. They dipped too deeply into the trope pot and wound up with nothing fresh or original or even different to add. And the actors can only do so much with the writing they were handed. Villain was nice, traitor was a good touch, the rest felt a lot like rubbish. I know it can be hard to put artwork out there and not have it received well. What’s amazing to me is the amount of folk who legitimately think this is an ‘original’ or ‘new’ take. To be honest, I was actually pissed at the level of biting in this movie. I KNOW he Can do better bc he’s shown us that with some of his other creations. So this was and remains triply disappointing.