Zack Snyder’s Insufferable Schtick Zooms Into Overdrive in ‘Rebel Moon—Part 2’

Zack Snyder dreams in slow motion, his reveries alight with cascading sparks, mushrooming fireballs, and brightly colored energy beams streaking through the air. There’s no modern director more adept at crafting gorgeous pseudo-static tableaus of superhuman and science-fiction mayhem and madness, and he reaffirms that reputation with Rebel Moon—Part Two: The Scargiver, which hits Netflix and select theaters April 19, the second half of a two-movie epic that began with last December’s A Child of Fire.

Alas, the downside to Snyder’s fondness for hitting the figurative brakes to gaze at men and women in over-the-top, fit-for-Heavy-Metal-magazine panoramas is that his material often grinds to a halt, and that’s never been truer than with his latest, whose visual splendor is no match for his simplistic, derivative plot.

Having defeated admiral Noble (Ed Skrein) at the conclusion of the prior film, fugitive rebel Kora (Sofia Boutella) returns with her mates—love interest Gunnar (Michiel Huisman), general Titus (Djimon Hounsou), cyborg swordswoman Nemesis (Donna Bae), animal tamer Tarak (Staz Nair), and soldier Millius (Elise Duffy)—to Gunnar’s home planet of Veldt. There, she delivers the good news that Noble is dead and that their crops are now safe from the predatory clutches of the Motherworld. What she doesn’t know is that Noble didn’t perish in their last scuffle and has been resurrected by his comrades in a techno-chrysalis that’s juiced via shiny blue and red tubes. Even without this information, however, Veldt’s celebration is short-lived, since one of their own is working as a double agent for the Motherworld, and reports back that the villains will arrive (in five short days) to make their regular grain pick-up.

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