The Zack Snyder fanboy cult is legion. That's fine. Every crowd likes their own kind of music.

Objectively this is what Snyder produces: gritty, dark, unhappy, overly serious, tedious stuff. Most of it's average, with a few exceptions. But there's always cool stuff to look at. He's kind of a poor man's Villaneuve.

The rabid followers can say what they want about "The Snyder Cut" Justice League, but the reality is there's no broad market for unrelentingly dismal sludge. Why isn't there a Judge Dredd movie coming out soon? Or another Punisher film? Dark and too serious isn't fun to spend money on. Especially when it's not all that new.

I do have to laugh though, at all the media hacks that are pissing and moaning about how derivative this is. And it is. But it mostly feels that way because Snyder wrote a script for a stand alone Star Wars story and was told by Lucasfilm (or maybe it was Disney) "thanks, but no thanks".

So he went to the streaming giant that loves to produce expensive projects so they can cancel them before they can develop any traction. This is that script brought to life. Or death, as Netflix may have it.

It's not nice to hammer on creatives. But I for one am sick and tired of the waif-ish 90 pound girl warrior movies that have been all the rage lately. And while Boutella (Kora, the protagonist in Rebel Moon) was excellent as Jaylah in Star Trek Beyond, I'm over it. Other than Gunpowder Milkshake (which was hilarious) it's all a bunch of BS. I don't care if Maggie Q or Daisy Ridley (both decent actresses btw) are in it or not (they aren't in this, in case you're confused), it's stupid. It was bad enough when Arnold, Sly and Bruce were ignoring the laws of physics in their various franchises, but we're all a little more savvy now and wouldn't buy that stuff from them in today's market either. But maybe I'm wrong, because there are now 4 Expendables movies in existence. God save us from the people who are buying tickets to those.

It's free to subscribers next week, so have at it. Can't wait to see those reviews pour in.

As a Zack Snyder fan I can straight out say this movie is above average. It's not Star Wars, but more Flash Gordon (1980) without the cheese in visual style.

The plot is pretty simple following the template of Seven Samurai, but suffers from too much world building exposition. They say "it's much better to show than tell", but Rebel Moon counter acts that statement. Sometimes a single sentence will do. Look at Star Wars as an example. George Lucas didn't have the money to do tons of flashback sequences and used dialague, which was just as good or even better leaving it up to the audience's imagination. We didn't need a 10 minute sequence for Kora. That time could have been used to develop the other characters, who are sorely lacking in depth.

I know that Snyder loves to use slow motion to highlight moments, but he went a bit overboard with some shots. It was used where it really wasn't needed in some stituations.

Overall the movie is good, but it's very hard to digest in one viewing. It's like Underworld where it takes 2-3 times to absorb it all. If anything I'm looking forward to the longer R rated version.

Ah, the bittersweet symphony of "Rebel Moon." I hear you there, fellow traveler to Pandora and Tatooine. We can both appreciate Zack Snyder's stylistic flourishes - the slow-mo ballet of violence, the operatic landscapes, the characters carved from myth. But as the curtain falls on "Part One," a mournful sigh escapes. This could have been a glorious space opera, a love letter to sci-fi's golden age, yet it stumbles over familiar tropes and squanders its vast potential.

Snyder's fingerprints are all over the screen. The visuals are undeniable - gargantuan spaceships casting ominous shadows, crimson blades carving through darkness, desert vistas whispering forgotten empires. He paints with a grand brush, but the canvas starts to feel repetitive. We've seen the grizzled warrior with a troubled past, the damsel in distress with hidden fire, the villain who chews scenery like it's his birthright. It's a well-worn costume rack, and while Snyder drapes it with his signature flair, the threads of originality begin to fray.

The plot, a familiar melody of rebellion against tyranny, starts strong but loses its harmonic richness. Characters, instead of complex chords, become predictable arpeggios. Their motivations are thinly veiled, their backstories a rushed montage. The dialogue, meant to resonate like thunder, echoes with the hollowness of recycled sci-fi cliches.

What hurts most is the unrealized potential. The glimpses of a deeper world, the whispers of ancient powers, the seeds of a nuanced conflict - all wither in the harsh glare of action sequences. Snyder loves his spectacle, and "Rebel Moon" is awash in it, but spectacle alone can't sustain a film. We crave emotion, depth, resonance. We want to be swept away, not merely bombarded.

So, as the credits roll, a bittersweet symphony resonates. We acknowledge the maestro's talent, the flashes of brilliance, the echoes of what could have been. But the lingering taste is one of missed notes, of potential left unrealized. "Rebel Moon" is a spectacle, no doubt, but a hollow one, leaving us yearning for the sci-fi opera that might have been.