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- What is Rebel Moon Part 1 About?
- How does Rebel Moon Part 1 End?
- What is Rebel Moon Part 1’s Rotten Tomatoes Score?
When Lucasfilm turned down Zack Snyder’s pitch for a Star Wars movie, the director decided to take things into his own hands and pitch it to Netflix. Netflix, knowing Snyder’s popularity, green-lit the project eagerly. After the divisive attention on Snyder’s work in the DCEU, fans and non-fans alike have been waiting for Rebel Moon since its announcement with bated breath.
Whether someone is a fan or not of Zack Snyder, he often produces projects that people have talked about for years. Rebel Moon is no different. Inspired by Star Wars and Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai, Snyder is knee-deep in his magnum opus space opera. Netflix heard his pitch and almost immediately green-lit everything from the first installment of the movie series to a dozen spin-offs and a podcast. Upon first viewing, it’s understandable why. The aesthetic of Rebel Moon is appealing, but the ending grips its audience and fills them with more anticipation.
What is Rebel Moon Part 1 About?
With Rebel Moon originating as a pitch to Lucasfilm for a Star Wars film, it’s only natural that there’s an authoritarian empire that dominates the majority of the galaxy with an iron fist. To counter this oppressive regime is a small band of rebels that originates on the small farming moon of Veldt with a woman named Kora (Sofia Boutella). After Admiral Noble (Ed Skrein) visits the moon and requisitions the majority of the crops that the small village harvests, leaving the farmers with scraps, the farmers decide something must be done. However, they are reluctant. When a small detachment of Imperium soldiers assault one of the women, Kora takes action by ending their lives.
Kora and another farmer named Gunnar, who is not-so-secretly smitten with Kora, devise a plan to recruit resistance fighters to help against the Imperium when they return for their crops. This is where the Seven Samurai influence is most notable. They first find a pilot in another village named Kai (Charlie Hunnam), who joins them in their effort to find other individuals who have a vendetta against the Imperium. When all is said and done, Kora manages to recruit a blacksmith and former nobleman named Tarak, the cyborg swordswoman Nemesis, disgraced General Titus, a rebel soldier Milus, and rebel leaders Darrian and Devra Bloodaxe.
Unfortunately, after all of their hard work of recruiting such a rag-tag group of people across multiple planets while evading Admiral Noble, they’re betrayed by the most likely of scoundrels among the group.
How does Rebel Moon Part 1 End?
Much like many of those whom Kora recruited throughout the film, the Imperium had once laid siege to Kai’s planet, leaving its people devastated. Unlike many who would find such an atrocious act a source of motivation to put an end to the Imperium, Kai saw it as a sign to get back in line and:
Never set foot on the wrong side of history.
Instead of standing against those who killed his people, Kai chose to help them by collecting rebels for a bounty from time to time. After Kora recruits strong leaders for a rebellion, she hopes to inspire others to join them in their cause so that they can mount an effective defense against Admiral Noble and his battalion. Unfortunately, when the group, along with the Bloodaxe rebels, arrives at Gondival for Kai to drop his stolen cargo, Kai sells out the team. He reveals that Noble’s ship, the King’s Gaze, is lying in wait.
Shortly after Kai gets Kora and the others secured in restraints, he reveals that he looks out for himself, and that the best way to do that is by not crossing the fascist Imperium. When he tries to convince Gunnar, the farmer instead finds a backbone and stands against Kai, killing him and freeing Kora, which initiates a massive firefight. Kora manages to free the other resistance fighters in the fray before finding Admiral Noble and forcing him into a one-on-one fist fight.
The fight goes back and forth, but Kora gains the upper hand and uses Noble’s staff against him to throw him off the platform and seemingly to his death. Once he’s out of the equation, the rebels take Kai’s ship and return to Veldt. That’s when things get interesting. Imperium shuttles arrive on Gondival to retrieve Noble’s body and connect him to a neural link, confirming that he is part machine, much like Darth Vader in Star Wars. While connected to the neural link, Noble meets with Regent Balisarius. The latter directs Noble to capture Kora, his adopted daughter, and return her to him so that he can publicly execute her to strike fear into the hearts of citizens everywhere.
What is Rebel Moon Part 1’s Rotten Tomatoes Score?
If Rotten Tomatoes has revealed anything about cinema, it’s that the general audience and critics don’t see eye to eye most of the time. The critic score for Rebel Moon: A Child of Fire sits at a rotten 24%, while the audience puts the film at 60 percent. Obviously, critics look for different criteria than audiences when judging a movie. Meanwhile, there are many die-hard Zack Snyder fans who would have a hard time rating anything made by the director too low. That’s true of any director or celebrity. What’s important to remember with websites like Rotten Tomatoes — and media in general — is to let others enjoy what they enjoy.
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