Review: With the first installment of 'Rebel Moon,' director Zack Snyder pulls out his old visual tricks in a space epic cobbled together from spare parts

With the ungainly title “Rebel Moon - Part One: A Child of Fire,” director Zack Snyder’s new monster-sized science-fiction franchise for Netflix launches with a lot of bombast and big action — but for several reasons, not just the ones hinted at by the title, it feels like an unfinished work.

The movie starts on a bucolic planet, Veldt, and a young woman, Kora (Sofia Boutella), pushing a plow behind a horse-like creature. She’s a resident of a peaceful village — peaceful until a ship from the ruling Motherworld descends, led by the movie’s main villain, Admiral Atticus Noble (Ed Skrein). Atticus demands the village sell most of its grain harvest to his army, and even kills the village’s leader (an unbilled Corey Stoll) to put fear in the other villagers.

Kora is not afraid, and we learn of her backstory that she’s not from this village — but a war-hardened former officer in the Motherworld’s army. The opening narration (by Anthony Hopkins, voicing an enigmatic android) explains that the king of the Motherworld was assassinated, and the power struggle that followed left the nasty Regent Balisarius (Fra Fee) in charge, prompting a rebellion in the outer fringes of the empire.

Gee, plucky rebels going up against a powerful evil empire, fighting wars among the stars — where do Snyder and his co-writers, Shay Hatten (who worked on Snyder’s “Army of the Dead”) and Kurt Johnstad (who worked on Snyder’s “300”), get their ideas? (Yes, the legend is that Snyder pitched himself to direct a “Star Wars” movie, and when Lucasfilm turned him down, he recycled his ideas into this.)

Kora — who takes down the occupation force Atticus left in the village in one of Snyder’s familiar slow-motion action sequences — teams with Gunnar (Michiel Huisman), a villager who has sold surplus grain to the rebel side, to start assembling rebel fighters to fight against Atticus’ main forces when they return. Thus, Snyder engages in some universe-building, as we hop from one thoroughly production-designed planet after another. 

Among those Kora and Gunnar pick up are: A homeless former general (Djimon Hounsou), a vengeful assassin (Doona Bae), a hunky prince (Staz Nair), a rebel leader (Ray Fisher, aka Cyborg from Snyder’s “Justice League”) and a roguish thief and space pilot, Kai (Charlie Hunnam). 

Some of the action sequences Snyder devises are propulsive — my favorite is when Bae goes up against a spider-like creature with a head and thorax (played by Jena Malone) that resembles the Borg Queen from the “Star Trek” franchise. But, too often, Snyder falls into his regular habits, creating empty spectacle that’s quite violent, though bloodless enough to get its PG-13 rating. 

The world-building is all in the visuals, with no attempt to guide viewers from planet to planet — and the character development is much the same, with only Boutella’s Kora provided much depth or explanation of who she is and how she got here. The audience is forced to fill in the gaps, using the clues of other movies Snyder references. And, perhaps the greatest crime of all for an action franchise, there’s absolutely no humor to lighten the heavy material.

As the title tells us, this is the first installment of what has been announced as a two-part epic — the second part, with the subtitle “The Scargiver,” is scheduled for an April release on Netflix. And Snyder has recently said in interviews that this movie, which is two hours and 13 minutes long and carries a PG-13 rating, will have a three-hour, R-rated “director’s cut” released sometime next year. Yes, Snyder himself has succumbed to the allure of “the Snyder cut” that his legion of fans demanded after “Justice League.”

The problem with announcing a “director’s cut” for “Rebel Moon - Part One: A Child of Fire” is that it tells us Snyder was so disenchanted with his movie that he started editing a different version as a distraction. If the director can’t be bothered to pay attention, why should the rest of us?

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‘Rebel Moon - Part One: A Child of Fire’

★★

Starts streaming Friday, December 22, on Netflix. Rated PG-13 for sequences of strong violence, sexual assault, bloody images, language, sexual material and partial nudity. Running time: 133 minutes.