Because I am an ass who can't help themself:
Rebel Moon Part 2: THE SCARGIVER
Thoughts in rough sequential order:
- Anthony Hopkins intro narration is something. One particular thing is that he says that after Kora defeated Noble at the end of the first film, our heroes returned to Veldt to collect their pay because they stopped the Dreadnought...but they didn't? And I never got the idea from the first film that that was what the characters assumed, that they had won and were returning in victory.
- And then the characters' newfound assumption of victory is immediately discarded. Why bother?
- I know this is one of those questions one shouldn't ask but why is Noble revived? He is just a guy, a guy who lost at that, so why bother bringing him back? If the story had made him the top badguy then, sure, his cronies would revive him. But he is just a cog in a bigger villains machine.
- The flashback to the death of the royal family was terrible even by Rebel Moon standards.
- Slo mo faming!
- More slo mo farming!
- Slo mo Djimon Hounsou getting water from a barrel!
- Slo mo milling of grain!
- Village girl gives our heroes gifts, ones based on how she sees them, but, um, at no point does she ever interact with them to make any of this makes sense. "Tarak, you are untamable. Milius you shine like the sun. Nemesis you are the storm." Wtf, they have done nothing but farm for you.
- This all being about a village's worth of grain is insane. And it was the grain that could be harvested in 3 days, that is a tiny, tiny amount of grain.
- When they are training the villagers, a woman is attacking a strawman and (according to the subtitles)Tarak has a couple of lines("Great. Looks like we got a natural." or something of the like) but he sounds weirdly digital. @37:50-ish. Only noting this because it is the oddest thing to hear, so much so that I listened to it like a half a dozen times.
- I was not expecting a literal sitdown with the characters explaining their backstories to each other, and it was all so perfunctory.
- It is wild how small the film feels. And I don't mean narratively, or the stakes, or anything. But you can just feel the artifice and soundstage-ness of it all, even when there aren't soundstages.
- Nemesis' death. What a monumental letdown.
- Jimmy the Robot's arrival into the battle is so embarrassing. He is just not a character so his grand entrance is nothing but *deflating balloon sound*
Why did Snyder do a riff on Seven Samurai anyway? It is readily apparent that he has no interest in the majority of the characters making up our band of heroes. Random blonde villager man and Den(?) are just as impactful and given as much prominence as Nemesis or Milius or Tarak or Jimmy.
Positives:
The moody Veldt farming music.
Djimon Hounsou's still got the gravitas and his singing was a nice moment.
It was better than the first, for what little that is worth.
Unless Snyder does something really different, a straight drama, a romcom, a horror film, something, I can't see myself ever watching another one of his films. He is a filmmaker who not only is really bad at storytelling but he is getting worse and worse without the good grace to do it while getting interesting or weird. He is just getting worse and boring.
