ReWatch-ish: Rebel Moon: Director's Cuts: Pt 1 & Pt 2

2024, Zack Snyder (Dawn of the Dead) -- Netflix

Also called:

Rebel Moon – Chapter One: Chalice of Blood
Rebel Moon – Chapter Two: Curse of Forgiveness

Full disclosure. It took me from the release date on Aug 2 to now (draft: Aug 16th) to watch all six hours and eleven minutes of these new versions. And I don't intend on doing any sort of recap; I just did those. 

So, this is the world we are in now? This is the new product of the #snydercut now? All Zack's movies will get re-presented in ever longer lengths? What I want now is the theatre release that combines both extended cuts plus some more stuff, but comes with a meal voucher and a proper intermission (with cartoon) so you can make a day of it.

Anywayz, I am not going to have as much fun ripping these apart as I did the previous MegaIndulgence of Zack. I just don't have the energy.

So, there are three themes to the extended versions: blood, splodey-heads, and sex. Lots of the first two, a wee bit of the latter. I was sort of surprised at the PG-13 level of sex in the initial releases, as Snyder is known for loving his sex scenes.

"Yeah, I don’t know. I’m a huge advocate. I like erotic content in motion pictures. I don’t understand, frankly, what would be the why of that. We’re sexual creatures, and that’s what we do."

That said, the scenes are rather toss-away which makes them more gratuitous than all the exploding head (music?) scenes.

Yeah, so blood and brains. In the universe of the Rebel Moon all of our bodies are more blood-filled sacks than bone & meat we traditionally think of ourselves as. Every punch, stab, magma-bullet shot and lazer-sword slice causes a massive burst/flow of digital blood, more akin to those horror movies where in one scene, the heroine is drenched from head to toe in blood, and in the next scene, she has a slight smudge on her cheek. The decks of the spaceships must have been deadly slip zones.

And brains. The movies open with an entire new scene where we are introduced to the Bad Guys invading a planet, the populace fighting back (and losing), and Admiral Atticus Noble convincing a young prince to cave in the head of his father in return for the lives of his mother & sisters. We are subjected to an incredibly detailed scene of the kid slamming that bone-cane thing into his father-king's skull, and then Noble reaching into the crushed bone & brain matter to make very very evil comments about memories. The young prince is then dragged off to become a soldier in the Motherworld forces. And then Noble kills the rest of the family, because we all, and the queen, knew he would. And then they raze the planet.

And teeth. A repeating small detail is that those weird masked priest guys that follow Noble around like to fish out a tooth from the ruined remains of a head and shove it into a molar-mosaic portrait of the Fallen Princess they are making. If anything, the Motherworld has an appreciation for fine art.

This prince turns out to be the young soldier Aris who protects pretty-young-thing Sam when his squad is left on the Rebel Moon at the beginning of Part One.

That sets the tone for people getting their heads destroyed. Sindri, the leader of the Rebel Moon village, is not just struck down by the bone-cane thing, but his head also caved-in. And when someone is shot with those magma-bullets from the Motherworld weaponry, either most-of or all-of the victim's head disappears. Or later, during the battle scenes, with bigger guns, entire upper torsos or entire bodies just explode. 

Now, beyond the gore indulgence, does the longer lengths add to the movie? Nope, not one bit. I did some research and it can take 120 days for a grain to grow. That's assuming standard Earth rotation. So, when Gunnar tells Noble how long it will be until the crop is ready (nine weeks I believe he says), let's assume their week is longer than ours. The original cuts made it out as if Gunnar and Kora had been flying around with Kai for a handful of days, but since we have no idea how space travel works in this universe, beyond a brief scene of the dreadnoughts using big lady-shaped generators to open rifts in space, we can assume there is lots of down time between the pickup of the space weirdoes. That more believably could add up to the nine weeks, this time.

Speaking of, the giant generator lady is show to be also an enslaved being... maybe? Its shown more as a vision than reality but "she" forgives Kora for blowing her up. I had just assumed it was just symbolic Motherworld design in using a female form as the centre of the ship.

There are also some additional scenes of Aris pretending to send in reports about what is happening on the rebel moon. What Aris doesn't know is that the Space Orcs, the mercenary aliens that Noble makes use, have been surveilling the village the whole time... that is until Jimmy the Space Robot Knight smooshes their heads.

The second movie ends up not as irritating to me as much as it did the first time round. Is that the additional footage? The additional "plot" ? I doubt it. I think I am just past it all now. There is a lot more confirmed death (exploding villagers) in this cut so it does have more weight to it -- the fight comes with losses beyond the symbolic loss of a few recognizable faces. But again, the movie pair is ending with a very open ending, as if all is a prelude to something more -- a greater battle against the Motherworld, the return of the young princess (is she Sam? is she? is she?), the Rise of the Jimmies. But will Snyder get anything more? Or will he just end up relegating it to spin-off novels and comic books? 

Answers will appear in slowmo.