3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Rebel Moon - Part Two: The Scargiver

2024, Zach Snyder (Suckerpunch) -- Netflix

Did I rewatch Part One before watching this? Nope.

And surprisingly, though likely mood is to blame for this, but I really didn't enjoy this one. I guess that means I kind of sort of maybe enjoyed myself watching the first one? Part Two just irritated me, and mostly for all the reasons the first one should have.

Quick recap: The Seven Samurai in space. That's it. That's all you get. Except that the Good Guys think they have defeated the Bad Guy and return to the small village, hoping to find peace. That delusion lasts about ten seconds.

So, before i get into it, I just need to get this out. Why is the movie sub-titled as The Scargiver? Yes, its because people are now calling Kora (Sofia Boutella, Star Trek Beyond) such, but why?!?! You would assume she was given the moniker after she betrayed her adopted father during his coup, maybe .... giving him a big ol nasty scar? But nope, its because the Bad Guy, Admiral Noble (Ed Skrein, Game of Thrones; oh wait; BOTH Daario Naharis actors are in these movies?!?!? tee hee!!) who she initially assumes is dead, is resurrected by the Space Nazi Priest Scientists and chooses to leave a scar. But that happened like, ten minutes ago, not long enough to establish a legendary label.

It is this first minor, admittedly quibbley detail that gives me a hint that Snyder kind of rushed through this part, tweaking the fuck out of it for some unknown reason. Its not like there can be any Purple Suit futzing with his vision, as anyone who would now give Snyder gobs of money to make his petulant Star Wars replacement must be entirely onboard with it? So, did he get bored between one and two? Did he just not feel satisfied with the response to the first movie, and just want to rush this one to completion, and move on?

I don't have answers; just frustration.

So, given The Seven Samurai we know that the gathered weirdo vagabond heroes have to prepare the village for the attack by the Bad Guy and his forces. The Bad Guys want grain, cuz, reasons. I am still not convinced they would commit this much effort to one small moon, for grain. If they need food, why not just resort to their SOP which is taking over entire worlds? I am sure if they just resisted the urge to bomb the planet into dust there would be plenty of food for the taking. But, no, need excuse for Seven Samurai ripoff, so ... grain laden moon Veldt. 

And training, lots of training. It always strikes me as odd in these training sequences, where they have a limited number of weapons and ammo, but use up a fuck ton of said ammo shooting at badly made dummies or bottles, so at least one straw sucking village can prove an aptitude with a big gun. At least the movie removes the "go to Providence and buy more weapons, and hire thugs" element by saying, "the Bad Guy will return in ... five days!!"

Five Days. That's how long they have before the Bad Guys return to the moon, for their grain. The trope requires us to speed run the grain harvest -- at least this movie is built upon the movie that established most of these kinds of tropes. I won't dig into whether Kora and Friends have been gone long enough for the grain to actually have grown while they were gone. The dusty fields were just being plowed in the last movie. But no, they need to condense weeks, if not months or harvesting all those fields spread all the way to the horizon, into THREE DAYS. And then leave two days to the training sequence and DIGGING TUNNELS. Also, they feel a need to mill the grain into flour. The whole point of actually getting the grain out of the fields is to build a barrier between the village and the Bad Guy's guns. Not a physical barrier but a, "If you need this grain so badly, we dare you to destroy our village from orbit!!"

So, being the movie that it is, and we have collected a bunch of weirdos to defend the village, they feel a need to explain them to us. So each character gets a flashback moment. General Titus (Djimon Hounsou, Seventh Son) betrayed the Space Nazis and his own men were blown up in front of him, as punishment. Nemesis (Bae Doona, The Silent Sea) came from a peaceful village whose people had a dark past (that's different, not her dark past but her entire village's) and she cuts off her arms so they can be replaced with murdery robot arms that can weird the lightsabre replacement lazer sword. Tarak (Staz Nair, Game of Thrones), despite never wearing a shirt, does not come from a Conan the Barbarian primitive world but was quite the floppy hat wearing dandy, until his people all died. And Milius (Elise Duffy, debut) was just another victim of the Space Nazis, no real big backstory, but that she was saved by The Rebels -- the same rebels that was the whole point of the first movie, but who (well, those that chose to come to Kora's assistance) were all killed in the first movie; all but Milius. And that's the bunch of weirdos. The backstories, albeit standard-fare Snyder pretty-to-watch, are boring AF.

I guess that is what irritated me most about the movie. As it has to rely heavily on the format we have seen time and time again, it does nothing really interesting or new with the plot structure or tropes. And the plot holes and plot blunders just pile up, one after the other. 

For example, Nemesis is supposed to be the ultimate in bad-ass warriors, using swords when everyone has brought a gun to the fight. But she has one fight, gloriously (*extreme eye roll*) defending the village's elderly and children and women (?!?!?) against a small force of blue lazersword wielding Bad Guys. Sure, this Bad Guy force gets a name, implying they are likely an elite force, but there are about five of them. She kills a bunch but dies. One battle. Swords. Dead Bad Ass. And let's ignore that there is no fucking good reason the women of the village are holed up in there, and you can clearly see in the final scene of that fight, that there are a few young, not children, strapping lads hiding out in the barn. 

For example, the Bad Guys have spider tanks. They drop a bunch of them on the battlefield at the beginning. The farmers destroy one with a rocket launcher (do they? or was that a drop ship?) and Jimmy the Robot (WTF is up with that stupid name) destroys one, during his extremely brief appearance that entirely undermines his cool establishing scenes in the first movie. But the movie forgets the rest of the spider tanks exist until the final WAH HOO (!!!) Millennium Falcon scene when The Rebels finally appear and bomb the shit out of the remaining spider tanks. I guess they were just out standing in the fields, awaiting orders.

But there is one fun sequence, when Kora and Gunnar (Michiel Huisman, Game of Thrones) sneak onto the Big Ship to blow it up from within. Her presence is detected so that leads to another stand-off between Kora and the now resurrected Admiral Noble. She plants her bombs, they go off, but Noble intercepts her before they escape, so the battle in the crashing ship is pretty cool. It is after the destruction of this dreadnought that The Rebels arrive to just do a mop up, fly by, and yet it is considered a saving grace scene.

I don't have any strong, definitive reason why this part, as in Part Two, the entire movie, bugged the stuffing out of me, while the admittedly terrible first part got two (enjoyed) watchings from me. Maybe I like establishing stories better than closing ones? Or maybe I need a ReWatch (shudder) in order to get a better read?

That said, while it has not been stated out loud, this movie did setup either a third part, or more likely, a spin off series that is totally not going to be a Seven Samurai ripoff. I wonder whether we will even see that, as we still have to get some extended, super duper, R rated, Snyder Cuts. Yay?