REBEL MOON: PART TWO – THE SCARGIVER
AS ZACK SNYDER RETURNS TO HIS R EBEL MOON UNIVERSE, THE WRITER/DIRECTOR TEASES THE SCARGIVER, TALKS EXTENDED CUTS, AND A DMITS HE’S “NOT REALLY A FOCUS GROUP FILMMAKER”
LONG TIME AGO – 1980 to be precise – a generation of cinemagoers walked out of The Empire Strikes Back knowing they’d have to wait years to learn the truth about Luke Skywalker and his absent dad.
Fast-forward to our current era of instant gratification, however, and space opera cliffhangers are being resolved in a matter of parsecs. And so Rebel Moon: Part Two – The Scargiver, the second half of Zack Snyder’s interstellar riff on The Seven Samurai, lands on Netflix mere months after its predecessor A Child Of Fire made its heavily publicised debut in December.
“My initial idea was to actually have them come out closer together, closer than Netflix did,” the writer/director tells SFX. “I wanted them out, like, a month apart, because I just felt like the idea was to strike while the iron is still hot, when more people remember [the first film], you know?”
“It’s really two parts of the same story we’re telling in these two movies,” adds Deborah Snyder, who’s been producing husband Zack’s movies since 2006’s 300. “It wasn’t realistic to put a four-hour movie on [Netflix], but to really give these characters their due, to tell the story, to have the action and have it be compelling, we needed that time. They’re not sequels, they’re parts, and that’s intentional. They’re meant to work together.”
SCAR TACTICS
We’re assuming you haven’t forgotten Rebel Moon in those few short months, but here’s a quick recap. Having tackled Spartan armies (300), comic book heroes (Watchmen, Man Of Steel, Justice League) and zombies (Dawn Of The Dead, Army Of The Dead), Snyder blasts into outer space in the nascent Netflix franchise. The long-gestating project – Snyder first discussed the idea with co-writer Kurt Johnstad in the late ’90s – was unsuccessfully pitched as a potential Star Wars movie before George Lucas sold his empire to Disney.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Rebel Moon shares plenty of DNA – if not midi-chlorians – with a certain galaxy far, far away. For the dreaded Emperor Palpatine and Galactic Empire, substitute regent Balisarius (Hawkeye’s Fra Fee) and the Motherworld, a totalitarian organisation with a penchant for precision-cut military tailoring.
It’s a universe of bizarre aliens, spectacular planetscapes and an energy sword or two, where ordinary people rally against fascistic oppressors. The first film even featured a very Lando-ish betrayal. But to dismiss Rebel Moon as Star Wars 2.0 would be unfair. It’s darker (yes, even compared to The Empire Strikes Back) and considerably more violent, set in a universe where the agents
