Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver
In a current moviegoing era full of artificially constructed, lifeless, synthetic images, a select few filmmakers have made it their mission to dazzle audiences with never-before-seen frames that propel the visual medium of cinema forward in ways no one else could’ve imagined. However, they’ve mostly been ridiculed by a mass who prefer green screen/volume-laden slop to shots with daring kinetic energy and visual poetry.
But these filmmakers have eventually stood the test of time and have inspired countless other artists to follow their dreams. One of them is Zack Snyder, whose style is consistently referenced and appropriated – most recently, Storm’s flight in X-Men ‘97 is directly inspired by Clark’s first flight in Man of Steel – no matter the vitriol he gets from an audience who don’t know any better than shots with no horizon lines, proper blocking, and depth of field. It’s easy to say the current moviegoing audience has “no standards.” However, the truth is they have never been taught basic notions of photography and shot composition, so they would rather say, “It’s too blurry” or “There’s way too much slow-mo” instead of looking at the images and attempting to figure out what Snyder is doing with his ever-changing lenses and holistic approach to sci-fi/action filmmaking.
In any event, some of the greatest filmmakers of our time respect (and even adore) Snyder, including Christopher Nolan, who said of him last year, “When you watch a Zack Snyder film, you see and feel his love for the potential of cinema. The potential of it to be fantastical, to be heightened in its reality, but to move you and to excite you.” That’s exactly what Snyder has always been doing since 2004’s Dawn of the Dead – creating fantastical realities and images to move and excite audiences and always finding new ways to approach and reappropriate his singular filmmaking style for his larger-than-life, mythic stories.
Twenty years after his feature debut (whom he co-wrote with James Gunn, dear Snyder cultists who still haven’t touched grass since the release of Zack Snyder’s Justice League and have deluded themselves in thinking Netflix could restore a SnyderVerse that not even the filmmaker and its actors want to revisit), Snyder has released Rebel Moon: Part Two - The Scargiver. Picking up right after the first one left off, the sequel sees Kora/Arthelais (Sofia Boutella) and Gunnar (Michiel Huisman) arrive in Veldt with a group of skillful warriors, General Titus (Djimon Hounsou), Nemesis (Doona Bae), Tarak (Staz Nair), Milius (Elise Duffy), and robot Jimmy (Anthony Hopkins) to fight off against the King’s Gaze, who have resurrected Atticus Noble (Ed Skrein) after losing his first fight with Arthelais.
The warriors train the villagers to take up arms to resist Noble’s army, whilst Arthelais and the others rekindle their past as victims of the Slain King (Cary Elwes) and Balisarius (Fra Fee) and vow to never again back away from the tyrannical despots that have controlled the known universe and stand up to the people who need help the most.
Rebel Moon: Part Two - The Scargiver could be Snyder’s simplest film from a storytelling point of view and one very much inspired by the second half of Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai – with the “training” part acting as its first hour until Snyder pulls out all of the stops with his long action-heavy climax. Some have loathed Snyder’s (and co-screenwriters Shay Hatten and Kurt Johnstad) minimal character development for the warriors, which can only be pointed to Netflix’s attempt to reverse-engineer a Snyder Cut movement once again instead of releasing Snyder’s original, unbroken vision first. And, yes, this is very dumb because fans won’t be uproar if they think Snyder’s world is incomplete, whilst 2017’s Justice League was desecrated by major meddling from its studio heads and Joss Whedon after the filmmaker left the project.
However, even with a hackneyed PG-13 version, Snyder can still connect audiences with its protagonists through striking, visually audacious sequences that brilliantly showcase their innate humanity and love for the people of Veldt as they help them harvest grain. In the first film, audiences are introduced to Kora as she works in (and smells) the dirt, a primal connection to the most important part of life – the seed. In The Scargiver, Kora and the others directly play with the dirt and wheat as they harvest it, which Snyder superbly captures as their “reawakening” as they connect with Veldt’s farmers and the Earth itself.
With incredible actors like Djimon Hounsou and Doona Bae, Snyder captures their protagonists’ most fundamental instincts in slow-motion as they remember the most human parts of themselves before the slain King’s iron fist ruined their lives. Bae’s light smile as wheat falls on her face conveys more about Nemesis’ broken psyche than a traditional exposition dump would’ve. Snyder eventually fills the gap with a light flashback of her origins, which in turn gives the character more emotional texture (cutting her arms, the ultimate sacrifice of her “old” self. Nemesis eventually rediscovers it as she spends time on Veldt). But it’s all in the eyes and not necessarily in what’s “said.” Dialogue can only get characters so far (which is always more apt for television). The audience has to feel the characters’ plight through the lens of their filmmake,r since it is a primary visual medium.
In those intimate moments, Snyder reveals their most vulnerable feelings as they attempt to pick themselves back up before battling the forces of the Motheworld. A table conversation in which they explain their past seems like a rudimentary “middle section” to add more character development, and while the dialogues aren’t as inspired as Snyder thinks, the visuals do so much more to draw the characters’ emotional complexity for their redemption to be driven by the suffering they no longer want to feel. As a result, Snyder's adoration for his characters makes its actors continuously give compelling turns, regardless of the storytelling shortcomings caused by the Netflix PG-13 mandate.
Boutella herself continues to bring massive amounts of vulnerability and heart to Kora as she grapples even more with her dark past as Arthelais (through the Julius Caesar-like assassination of the slain King, ending in one of Boutella’s most potent line deliveries as Arthelais, in which she directly tells Princess Issa to not pray for her redemption), which feeds her attempt renewal as Kora, longing for a peaceful life in Veldt with Gunnar (Huisman is also terrific, and the final exchange the two share is devastating).
Her rivalry with Skrein’s Noble (he knows how to play the most despicable, power-hungry antagonists and absolutely enjoys it) also leads to the film’s best fight sequence, which was so good this critic rewinded the film ten times to watch it again (and again) before continuing on. That alone showcases why Snyder’s image-making is so potent: as Kora and Noble fight each other while the King’s Gaze sinks, Snyder slows the frame down as Noble attempts to pick up his sword again, while caught in a massive explosion until it rapidly twists itself with Noble falling down through its changing gravity. It may be hard to put into words, but the absolute awe-inspiring spectacle on display is second to none and consistently reaffirms Snyder’s penchant for visual kineticism, exacerbated by beautiful, painterly lens flares and slow-motion that consistently enhances the action instead of detracting from it.
When someone asks, “Why is there so much slow-mo?” when discussing Snyder (or any film), they’re unwilling to engage themselves with the imagery on screen. Slow-motion doesn’t always work, and there are instances in which it feels more showy than effective, but Snyder’s approach to slow-motion has never been boring or “overindulgent.” In fact, to say he’s a “hack” for allegedly “overutilizing” slow-motion is not only childish but is a complete refusal to look at what he’s doing and painting on-screen directly. The action is continuously embellished by slowing down to appreciate the warriors’ strongest moments of derring-do, including a not-so-subtle callback to Henry Cavill’s Superman with Hopkins’ Jimmy, as his cape flaps in the ground before flying off in the sky to destroy one of Noble’s ships. This achingly sincere moment isn’t excessive but beautifully heroizes (and humanizes) the character, who has been questioning his entire purpose after the King was slain by Arthelais’ hand since his introduction with Sam (Charlotte Maggi) in the first film.
Audiences should instead ask themselves, “Does the slow-motion look cool?” If so, why care about the use of it? Especially when Snyder, who acts as his own cinematographer once again, knows how to frame the slow-motion to achieve immaculate levels of depth of field. It almost feels like the audience is viewing the image in 3D. No filmmaker can do this right now because image-making in Hollywood is at such an all-time low that no one knows the word “depth of field” anymore. When the lens flares of its guns fill the foreground as Titus and Tarak fight off against a horde of generals, it directly puts the audience in the middle of the frame and forces them to look at different parts of the image instead of having its horizon line at the middle while one CGI blob fights another CGI blob.
Snyder’s earnestness is so pure that it almost overwhelms the audience with intense emotion, forcing them never to look away, no matter how they think it’s “excessive.” There’s nothing excessive here: each image shown feeds the characters, while its beautifully crafted, kinetic action solidifies their emotional shifts as they attempt to reconnect with themselves and Earth. The images are as nourishing as when they feed and harvest the grain, a soulful reminder that life begins (and ends) in the dirt. It’s therefore unnecessary to ‘develop’ the characters through dialogue, because Snyder’s emotional attachments to the protagonist are treated through poignant moments of visual poetry, made by an artist who always imbues their characters’ most innate feelings through their longing faces and perfectly-constructed bodies (the homoerotic tension between Tarak and Titus continues Snyder’s long love of the male form, as intensely depicted in Man of Steel and Army of the Dead).
Cinema is all about visuals. Television is about dialogue. But since audiences now conflate cinema with television, especially with the advent of streaming services that have created large-scale television series with a ‘cinematic’ look (most recently, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power and Masters of the Air, both solid, large-scale productions from a technical perspective), audiences are lost. They have no idea how to discern what’s made to be appreciated visually and textually. While some movies were able to compensate for rudimentary visuals with a sharp screenplay, it doesn’t cut it anymore to not care about how your art looks because film is primarily spoken through images, whether in the frame or through the micro-expressions of its actors.
When focusing on the visual medium of cinema, everything about the characters’ desires becomes as clear as day because everyone is forced to look at cinema differently. Of course, relatable, fully-developed characters are always fun to watch, but that’s not the point of cinema. And if your film does not look good, the chances of it being good are near zero.
With Rebel Moon: Part Two- The Scargiver, Zack Snyder reminds us of the important power an image holds as the primary function of all great works of art. He continues to keep cinema moving in his own right as a singular auteur who will always make anyone who dares enter his films feel nourished and renewed, just like the characters who inhabit Veldt represent the best parts of ourselves as we long for redemption. It’s the sole takeaway anyone should have in watching Snyder’s cinema and his Rebel Moon saga, whose entire basis is developed around humanity’s connection to themselves and nature. And while studio shenanigans prevented him from initially releasing his complete vision, Snyder’s image-making is still in top form its visual mastery more than outweighs its corporate shortcomings. Now, enough toying around and release the full movie already.