Netflix’s ‘Rebel Moon’ is one of the worst movies ever made

This is the second time that my bosses at SFGATE have forced me to watch a Zach Snyder film against my will. The first time they did so, with Snyder’s hallowed cut of DC’s “Justice League,” I found myself irritated but ultimately forgiving. But this time, I was sentenced to watch all of Snyder’s new space opera “Rebel Moon, Part One: A Child Of Fire,” which dropped on Netflix over Christmas, like a raw potato weighing down everyone’s stocking. This assignment, to me, felt like the bigger imposition.

I had no idea how correct I’d be.

“Rebel Moon” was originally pitched by Snyder as a “Star Wars” film, only a more “mature” one (“mature” in fanboy-ese meaning extra tits and ass, possibly with Leonard Cohen playing in the background to make those tits and asses feel more soulful). But then Netflix gave Snyder both the money (well over $150 million) and the carte blanche to make a “Rebel Moon” that existed in its own cinematic universe, one big enough to accommodate a sequel, an R-rated cut for 14-year-olds who haven’t discovered Pornhub yet, and maybe a spinoff series and even some licensed merchandise made exclusively by Ed Hardy.

But hey, maybe I was being unfair to Snyder in dreading this film. Snyder is, by all accounts, a very nice man, and I have a pretty low bar when it comes to my made-for-Netflix content. If I survived 10 minutes of “Emily in Paris,” I could survive “Rebel Moon.” Or so I thought. Here now is a running diary I kept of my screening.

Our opening prologue is spoken, and not a crawl like the one “Star Wars” movies deploy. A gravelly voiced narrator says something about The Realm, and The Motherworld, and a king and queen who were killed. I forget everything the narrator tells me as he’s telling it. He ends with the dramatic proclamation, “General Balisarius seized power and now has sent the sadistic Admiral Noble to kill those who would call themselves … REBEL.” Then the title “REBEL MOON” appears. I hold up a lighter.

We begin our story on a farmland on the titular moon, with lots of dramatic shots of grain falling to the ground. Every background looks fake. Every non-gun prop looks like it’s made of Styrofoam. Our heroine is a farmgirl named Kora (Sofia Boutella), who we meet out in the grain field, plowing the soil with her trusty space Clydesdale. Kora lives among simple farmers, which I know because one character later says of another, “He is a simple farmer.” But Kora doesn’t look happy to be a farmer. When the “Father” of the farming community tells everyone in town to “make love tonight,” to ensure a bountiful harvest, Kora doesn’t even get horny. So it must be asked: What’s her deal?

Thankfully for us, Kora explains her deal, in full, in a speech to her adopted dad (I think), Hagen. She is a child of war, and is incapable of love. She says absolutely nothing specific. She is all sad platitudes and pouty faces. I still don’t even know what kind of grain she farms.

Kora’s fellow rebel moon farmers are equally anodyne. There’s the sex-positive Father. There’s Gunnar, because a Zack Snyder movie HAS to have a dude named Gunnar in it. There’s a different farmgirl who I’ll call Jenny because I can’t remember her actual name. And there’s a droid named Jimmy (sure) played by Anthony Hopkins, who’s here for a check but still puts in the work to earn it. Jimmy tells Other Farmgirl a melancholy story about a king and queen he loved who were killed. I think this was the same king and queen from the prologue, only I didn’t know they were robot monarchs. Jenny then puts some flowers on Jimmy’s head and the robot blushes.

But then, trouble. Ed Skrein arrives on screen as the evil Admirable Noble (SPOILER: he’s not noble). The Admiral demands the farmers give the Empire (sorry, the Motherworld) all of their grain. When the Father refuses, Noble beats him to death with his trusty cudgel. Dramatic music plays. I feel nothing.

Then a bunch of the Admiral’s troops grab Jenny the farmgirl, and they’re about to ravage her when Kora shows up in the barn. This is when we find out that SURPRISE! Kora’s a badass who used to work for the Not Empire, and that she can kill everyone using the power of digital fight scene choreography. This is the moment in “Rebel Moon” where we, the audience, are treated to every weapon in Snyder’s limited cinematic arsenal: characters dramatically spinning, lens flares (which I am admittedly a sucker for), terrible VFX, every character lit like they’re Scott Stapp, people jumping high in the air with raised weapons, more slow motion than a football game, and blurry shots that make me worry I’m wearing the wrong prescription glasses.

Once Kora kills all the bad guys, she and Gunnar (played by Not Bradley Cooper) travel to Providence (no, not that one) to find partners to help her defeat the Not Empire. Providence has a lot of “bounty hunters” who all look exactly like the Uruk-hai from “Lord of the Rings,” so Kora and company have to watch their step. But they manage to get to Not Mos Eisley spaceport, where Charlie Hunnam shows up as Not Han Solo and offers to join forces with her. The band is slowly, emphasis on slowly, getting together.

At this point in the film, I pop a gummy to see if it’ll help even though I know it won’t.

From there, the rebels are off to recruit more Space Avengers from other planets, all of which are named using “Star Wars”-style consonant salad. We travel to a desert planet where Kora meets Tarak, who looks like Matthew McConaughey if Matthew McConaughey were an AEW wrestler. Tarak is enslaved, but can free himself if he tames a Space Hippogriff, which he does by speaking to it in Hippogriff-ese, “We both know fear. But the biggest fear we face … is the fear of ourselves.” Damn.

Then we go to a mining planet to find a woman named Nemesis, who wears a witch’s sun hat. Nemesis brings the rebels to a cavern where a giant spider lady resides, for reasons I either do not understand or simply fail to hear. Maybe Jon Peters demanded there be a spider in this thing. Spider Lady is very sad and embittered. Then she gets mad at Nemesis, and that’s when our be-hatted friend busts out the Not Lightsabers, which are flat and not round and surely 56% meaner than normal light sabers. Nemesis kills the spider lady and then joins the fellowship. Great success.

We then go to a Gladiator Planet of Pollux (subtle), where Kora must find General Titus, played by Djimon Hounsou. Titus is a washed-up drunk, but Kora successfully recruits him to her cause using a speech. In Zack Snyder’s movies, all speeches work. Then we’re off to some other planet to meet King Levitica, who looks like if John Travolta played Jar Jar Binks. Then we meet officers of the Not Rebellion, one of whom is Not Furiosa, who are clearly important people in the cause because they wear face paint. They have no interest in joining with Kora.

“Do not confuse your business of commerce with our business of revolution,” they tell her. Every line of dialogue here feels like a meme that Trump would post.

I am suffering. This movie is awful and promises to get no better. None of the characters are interesting. All of the visuals look like a high-budget Scorpions video. The script is like if you assigned a dozen seventh graders 10 pages each. And the fight scenes are boring as s—t. The more of “Rebel Moon” I watch, the more running time I appear to have left. You should get your name on a wall for finishing this movie, like when you polish off the 96-ounce London broil at Jim Bob’s Steak Barn. I really want to stop watching “Rebel Moon” and play some PlayStation. The effects alone would be 10 times better, and I can just finish the movie tomorrow morning. But I’ve come too far now. At this point, “Rebel Moon” is less a movie to me than it is a challenge, and I refuse to back down. I will defeat this movie, even if I die in slow motion while trying.

But first, I pause the movie to eat a sandwich. It’s not a good sandwich, but at least it looks and tastes like a sandwich. At least it makes sense.

I put the movie back on and get to the part where Kora tells the story of a magical princess named Issa, who heals a dead bird using her magical Not The Force powers. And this is where I ask myself, “Does Zack Snyder even know HOW to make a movie?” Because this is barely a movie at all. Nothing here works. Nothing. If this movie was your spec script, you’d never get an agent in Hollywood. I begin to regard the film with a kind of twisted awe, because this got made when even the people who made it can’t possibly have thought it was worth a s—t.

I keep watching anyway. The gummy isn’t helping, but at least I’m high now.

I see a spaceship that looks like Jabba the Hutt’s sail barge. I see King Jar Jar get killed. I hear one character tell Not Bradley Cooper, “I know you’re in love with her.” I missed that completely. I also don’t care. I see Hunnam betray Kora and her gang to the evil Noble, leading to this Oscar-worthy bit of dialogue between Hunnam and Boutella:

“What happened to honor?”

“What DID happen to honor?”

After that, a huge fight breaks out. More spinning. More slow motion. Kora and her crew kill Noble’s goons, but lose the head rebel in the skirmish. Despite all of the dramatic music playing in the background, I feel nothing. Mostly I wonder what happened to Robot Anthony Hopkins. I have been paying attention to this film as best I can for the better part of two hours and it has been WORK. By the end, I’m looking at it but not really watching it. I do not respect it, nor should I. Save for Hopkins’ day of voiceover work, nothing about “Rebel Moon” feels professionally done, on any level.

And yet, on it goes. We learn that Kora is not Kora’s real name. ZOMG! Her real name is Apollonia, I think. And she is no ordinary turncoat to the Not Empire. She’s IMPORTANT, perhaps like the magic dead bird princess was. Kora gets into a final battle with Noble and breaks not just one of his arms, but both. This is EASILY the coolest part of “Rebel Moon.” They should’ve made the whole thing out of broken arms. She finally kills Noble and again, I feel nothing. Mostly I’m just glad the movie is about to end. It’s about to end, right?

Not quite. Because at the very end, another robot like Hopkins shows up, only it has antlers. Maybe that’s still Hopkins? Maybe it’s The Joker? We aren’t told. Meanwhile, Admirable Noble is reanimated thanks to a space-age buttcheekectomy and then sent to meet the Not Emperor, who’s dressed like Serious Willy Wonka. Emperor Wonka informs the audience that Kora is — ZOMGx2! — his daughter. Again, I feel nothing. And then the end credit hits and I feel true elation.

Because “Rebel Moon” is, without question, one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen. It’s not coherent enough for me to hate it. It’s just a profound waste of time, and at age 47 I don’t like having my time wasted. This movie doesn’t even have kitsch value, the way other awful films might. It’s just an incoherent, deadening mess. It’s a movie that shouldn’t be watched so much as it should be biopsied. The fact that it ends with the title card “END PART ONE” feels like a hostile threat more than anything exciting. If my bosses force me to watch Part Two, I will leave this job.