Rebel Moon – Part 1: A Child of Fire Movie finally arrives on Netflix. Zack Snyder's new film, which will only be completed in 2024 with the release of The Scar, will in fact be available on the platform starting from December 22nd.
Initially conceived as an integral part of the Star Wars universe and then settled as a stand-alone project following the exclusion from the franchise wanted by Disney and Lucasfilm, the film therefore represents the latest effort by the controversial American director, an authoritative figure in the pop panorama -contemporary cinematographic and manifesto of an aesthetic that has divided audiences and critics since its inception.
Making up the varied cast of performers are well-known names and faces from the big and small screen, from the protagonist Sofia Boutella, who appeared in Star Trek Beyond (2016), to Deadpool's Ed Skrein, via Djimon Hounsou (Gladiator, Blood Diamonds, Guardians of the Galaxy) and Charlie Hunnam – star of Sons of Anarchy. Inside a film which, starting from the space-western setting, is configured as an ideal continuation of its author's digital poetics.
Rebel Moon – Part 1: A Child of Fire: the plot
Having crash-landed on a moon at the edge of the universe, Kora (Sofia Boutella), a foreigner with a mysterious past, is welcomed into a peaceful agricultural settlement. Here the life of the community seems to proceed peacefully, marked by seasons of sowing and harvest; but the unexpected "visit" of the evil Admiral Noble (Ed Skrein), emissary of the cruel Regent Balisarius, who has come to disturb the peace of the village and threaten its survival, drastically changes the cards on the table.
In an attempt to defend Vedt from the tyrannical authority of the Mother World, Kora, therefore, decides to embark on an interstellar journey aimed at tracking down the Bloodaxe (Cleopatra Coleman and Ray Fisher) - leaders of a fierce group of rebels - and gathering courageous warriors willing to fight for the village and its inhabitants. And together with the bold farmer Gunnar, her faithful traveling companion, she brings together a small group of renegades seeking redemption.
Rebel Moon Movie Cast:
The team, composed of the great General Titus (Djimon Hounsou), the noble Tarak (Staz Nair), the mercenary pilot Kai (Charlie Hunnam), the intrepid swordswoman Nemesis (Doona Bae), and the rebel Milius (E. Duffy), is therefore called to join forces against the common enemy. The clash with Admiral Noble and his dangerous henchmen looms dire and hidden in the darkness of cosmic space lies a traitor.
Rebel Moon Movie Analysis:
“Try to be a team” suggested The Wise Scott Glenn to Babydoll and her companions in the middle of Sucker Punch. And it matters little about the historical-scenographical location, the battlefield, or even its numerical composition; on the other hand, whether they are five, six, or 300, Snyder's hypertrophic bodies have always been - and still remain - the actants of an authorial poetics which, since its inception, proceeds with a systematic rereading of the "myth" in digital key. A process that literally exploded in the muscular Thermopilian revisitation of 2006 and refined over time through the multiple DC cuts.
Rebel Moon – Part 1: A Child of Fire, from this perspective, rather than a mere extension of the way of understanding a cinema device devoted to the staging of men of steal replicants declined from time to time within different narrative frames, rather resembles the realization of a specific will of its creator; eager to test the conceptual possibilities of his own gaze, through a product which, after having sunk its roots in the beating heart of the American epic - the Wild West - begins to devour symbols and icons of every known dimension of the Hollywood universe (and not alone), swallowing up its aesthetics and language.
Rebel Moon – Part 1: A Child of Fire, an intergenerational mash-up
Suspended like a kick in mid-air between myth, collective imagination, and its cybernetic overwriting, Snyder's film thus performs a powerful intergenerational mash-up of "all" film production. Mixing Kurosawa and Cameron, Tarantino and Lucas, Jackson and Scott; in a continuous interpenetration between genres which - seasoned with the usual dose of refined magniloquence - transposes onto the big screen today's conception of the image as an unstoppable flow that overwhelms and submerges the contemporary.
Photographed by its creator himself in the vigorous surfaces that direct its meaning, Rebel Moon – Part 1: A Child of Fire thus proceeds rhythmically by overlapping action choreographies and actor masks. To the point of confining the only hope of humanity behind the tin gears of an old reconditioned robot - a new man of steel.
And planning a very tight journey walking between worlds - constantly interchangeable videogame techno-arenas - where the absence of gaze seems to exhaust any chance of salvation. Traceable only, as was the case with Babydoll's dreaming escapes, in the blind spots of the great enemy Eye. On the other hand, "he can combine the best of these two worlds and create a more beautiful humanity." Even if broken in half.