Rebel Moon - Part Two: The Scargiver Review

If the first "Rebel Moon" film was director and co-writer Zack Snyder's blatant attempt at making his own "Star Wars," then its sequel (dubbed the very loquacious "Part Two: The Scargiver") is his "The Empire Strikes Back," a film arguably twice as good as its predecessor. That's true here as well, but sorry Zack, you know what two times zero is...

That may be an exaggeration, but that still means his follow-up gets literally just one star.

The interwebs tells me both films were shot back-to-back, which is unfortunate because Mr. Director learns absolutely nothing from his first go about; "Part Two" suffers from all the same shortcomings, and again, the most offensive is the fetishistic obsession with slow motion. This time around we get slow motion crown falling, slow motion people falling, slow motion people dying, slow motion people yelling, slow motion grain harvesting, slow motion romantic gazing, slow motion birds flying, slow motion water canteen filling, slow motion fade to black, slow motion people posing, slow motion self-arm amputation, slow motion people pouting, and slow motion suicide, along with the returning slow motion walking, slow motion shooting, slow motion explosions, and slow motion hand-to-hand combat. If that was hard to read, just imagine having to watch it.

What's funny is the all the nuance to the persistent slow motion, where, mid-sword fight, the action slows down even further to emphasize this or that. It is nothing short of dumbfounding and, well, just dumb. Another humorous moment was when the subtitles read "gunfire in slow motion." Even the subtitles are bored here.

But my favorite (or er, well, doesn't that make it least favorite?) was the long stretch of slow motion grain harvesting. We see people swing the sickle in slow motion, the grain fall in slow motion, people bundle it up in slow motion, being picked up in slow motion, placed on a cart in slow motion (at least it's a floating cart I guess. How "space-operatic..."), then the grain being ground in slow motion. This in itself is silly, but then you realize that with all these flying ships, laser swords, etc., that what we're watching is quite literally how people did (and probably still do) harvest grain. When the hell did it swap to How It's Made? Where's the fun in watching actors pretend to work? It's as thrilling as a historic reenactment without the actual history. 

The grain is critical to the plot, in case you forgot the first film's stale plot about the evil "Motherworld" demanding the heroes' harvest in the small town of (checks internet), Providence. They're so low on food that they have to resort to flying way out into space to get some, apparently Walmarts doesn't exist in this nebulous time. At one point the residents of (double-checks internet) Providence practice defending themselves from the villains by using that very grain as dummies. Think of the wasted resources.

We again follow Kora (Sofia Boutella), the "Scargiver" in the title, but I'm not sure if that was before or after she gave main baddie Atticus (Ed Skrein) a literal scar when she almost killed him at the end of the last picture. Oh what, that's a spoiler? Consider yourself lucky for not having seen it. She, alongside her lover Gunnar (Michiel Huisman), Titus (Djimon Hounsou), Nemesis (Bae Doona), and Tarak (Staz Nair), among others either in the little village or returning from the first film, devise a surprise-attack on the Motherworld's men when they arrive to pick up the grown yield. They are far outnumbered and, as Jimmy the robot (an oddly-cast Anthony Hopkins, hopefully collecting a good paycheck) tells them, they "cannot win." Of course, there wouldn't be a sequel in the works if they lost, or maybe there would? I dunno, I'm not a storyteller, and neither is Zack Snyder.

If he was, the viewer would know when the films take place; the future? Then how come the big ship Dreadnought uses a manual hand-crank to position cannons? Wouldn't that be all electronic or something? OK what if it takes place in the past, then how come characters wear jeans? How are there holograms? How is a basic question like this even a question?!

Then there's the flashbacks, no not to the first film, but new scenes giving some much needed backstory. The day before the attack, our band of protagonists sit around, drink, and share their "truth." Titus goes first, then asks the others. It's all good and all, but once he gets to Kora and ask for her "story," you remember that the small-minutia of a background Kora has, pure "revenge," was shown in a different flashback that opens the picture. Please, Titus, how about YOU watch the damn film you're in! The best part of her flashback is, during an assassination (slow motion, naturally), we see the king (another weird casting decision, this time a barely used Cary Elwes), as he walks in on the trap. A live-band plays somber music as he and his family are about to die, and yet, they still play music. They missed a good opportunity to go "whomp whomp."

The whole thing plays like a film suffering from corporate meddling, as if everyone from the executives to the janitors trying to make it "theirs." It has this overly-homogenized feel that is sadly what happens when you give a blank-check to a man who made one good film back in 2004. I'm sure he's a nice guy and all, but like the saying goes: "nice guys make terrible, mundane, long, laborious, obvious, banal, and probably even more adjectives, movies."

While this time around there isn't any rape attempt (a particularly unsavory moment from the first film), at two different points two different "strong" female characters need to be rescued by a man. Or boy, in the case of Nemesis, who you could argue is a symbol of her losing her children, as explained (badly) in the first film, but then you'd be giving it more thought than I think the filmmakers did. It's the kind of cinematic sexism that only a male director and three male credited screenwriters could mistake as a good idea.

Characters speak in terse and tedious terms, consisting of nothing but demands and arbitrary name-dropping in lieu of actual world-building; at one point the subtitles read "birds chirping," which is easily the best dialogue in the franchise.

Sting Review

Monster movies have existed almost as long as movies themselves, "creature features" if you will, and anyone who grew up on a steady diet of cinematic dinosaurs, alligators, snakes, mantises, and of course, spiders, laments the current CGI cheese that is the world today. But much like how "Jaws" is, and probably will be forever, the defacto "shark movie," 1990's "Arachnophobia" is the spider movie to beat, and "Sting," while far from made-for-TV schlock, is unlikely to turn anyone into an, ahem, arachnophobe.

It's biggest issue isn't its special effects, which seldom look fake, but it's own ambition. It wants so badly to be bigger than its seemingly small budget can afford, taking place in a single-location (a snowed-in apartment building), sports a very small cast and gives the characters such detailed backstory that it sometimes forgets it's a movie about a killer spider from space (space!). We follow Charlotte (a terrific Alyla Browne), a spunky and kinda weird preteen who finds the little arachnid in her grandma's apartment. Her grandma is suffering from Alzheimer's (or at least it suggests as much), which leads to some surprisingly funny dialogue, like her trying to pet the "big black dog" that came out of her wall.

Alyla strikes the perfect balance of naivety and maturity, initially fascinated by the little eight-legged pet she names "Sting." But he grows quickly and soon begins sneaking out of his glass jar home and attacks no less than a bird, cat and dog. Yes pet-lovers, you'll probably need to shield your eyes a few times.

She lives in a different apartment, with her mom Heather (Penelope Mitchell), stepdad Ethan (Ryan Corr) and baby brother. Both her parents work during the day and are working on their own comic book at night (yes really), but thanks to Ethan, who's the complex's maintenance worker, they don't have to pay rent. Or something like that. See, there is far FAR too much characterization in a film about a giant space spider.

Her parents are too busy to notice that there's this evil carnivorous monster in their daughter's room, instead too stressed about the deadline for their moonlighting gig. And about Heather's mom. And their infant son, who we're told will eat no-less than paper and paint if unsupervised. But the real core of the story is Ethan feeling disconnected from Charlotte, who still misses her real-dad despite having abandoning her and her mom. Scenes go on and on about non-spider stuff, and while well written and well performed, means we sit in a dark theater wondering if the reels were swapped mid-showing.

Charlotte takes Sting to another resident, some college kid who's using fish to try and cure diabetes (naturally what tertiary characters in these sort of movies do) named Eric (Danny Kim), who tricks her into leaving him with him. He (logically and rightfully) calls her dad, tells him it's dangerous, poisonous, etc., but instead of thinking "this is probably what killed the alcoholic women down the hall," Ethan, stressed about the fact that he was fired from his maintenance gig AND his publisher (or agent, or whoever) passed on his comic book (or something like that), explodes about how the spider could be a danger to her brother.

Family drama existing to an almost unspoken spider plot means characters inhibit a world that, while interesting in its own right, robs the moviegoer of what they came here for: giant spider action. Sting goes from something that could fit in the palm of your hand (scary in its own right) to like four-feet big in the matter of just a couple of scenes, which forces the narrative to become about trying to kill it. Something that, considering the brief ninety one minute runtime, means we don't get to see the damn creature we all came here to see.