Noble (Ed Skrein), a vindictive admiral in the Motherworld’s Army, brings his troops to Velt, an independent farming planet, in search of grain.  After his request is denied, he kills Sindri (Corey Stoll), the Chieftan of the planet, and strips the inhabitants of all the grain his troops can find before departing.  Kora (Sofia Boutella) and Gunnar (Michiel Huisman), enraged at their treatment by the imperial army embark on a journey across the galaxy to unite the other independent nations in an effort to unseat Balisarius (Fra Fee), the tyrannical ruler of the Motherworld. 

Zack Snyder continues his partnership with Netflix with his sci-fi epic, Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire.  The passion project had been shopped around for a while, originally developed on spec for Lucas Films under Disney, then later to Warner Brothers, before settling in with the streamer on a two-part film with the promise of a separate director’s cut.  Kurt Johnstad and Shay Hatten assisted on the page, but the film has all of the trappings (read: stink) of a Snyder Original. After a qualifying theatrical run, the 132-minute film made its way to the small screen and showed off a grab bag of Snyder’s signature style and well-worn sci-fi tropes.  With the exception of Stephanie Porter’s costumes, Rebel Moon is a rather muddy mirage that does not contribute anything new to the genre, or even particularly interesting for those at home during the gloomy winter months. 

It seems reductive to say that the film feels more like a collection of scenes when a film, by definition, is a collection of scenes, but the differing factor is that the narrative thread that is supposed to connect these scenes is not present here.  The main goal of the film is for Kora and Gunnar to assemble a team of skilled warriors to take on Noble and restore peace to the galaxy.  It is an age-old arc, and when done well it can be thrilling and exciting, but here, Snyder banks on his audience already having been inundated with these stories and writes in a shorthand.  We can fill in the gaps easily enough because the story is not very deep, but it is frustrating that a fantasy epic that relies on its lore and world-building, those elements are handled so nonchalantly. Especially when you take into account the bloated run time, A Child of Fire quickly shows signs of suffering from Part One Syndrome in which there is no true resolution, and audiences, once keyed into that fact, will struggle to stay invested.  Snyder throws us into the pool to tread water for over two hours, and while we cycle through just an incredible amount of different locations, none of them leave an impact, blurring together into space junk. 

His character work also leaves much to be desired.  We understand Kora is important thanks to, in addition to her saturation in the script, Dody Dorn’s editing and Snyder’s own fascination with her from behind the camera, but Boutella has nothing to work with on the page to tighten her own performance. She fades into the background and most of what we learn about her is dictated to us by other characters.  The one exception is that she does dispel some secrets of her backstory to Gunnar, but none of this matters for A Child of Fire so hopefully one will remember this story about Princess Issa (Stella Grace Fitzgerald) and her lifegiving powers and how Kora used to be her bodyguard before fleeing her post and hiding as a farmer on Velt.  Gunnar sits on and looks confused about what is going on – a perfect reflection of our own reconciliation with Snyder’s nonsense – and oftentimes finds himself pushed to the margins as well in a story full of more interesting and charismatic figures.  A farmer with no particular battle skills, once Kora has her fighters in place, Gunnar finds his usefulness to her pretty much spent, but that does not stop Snyder from hinting at a romance between the two; again, something that will be fulfilled in the spring-slated sequel and this is the only way to keep Gunnar along for the ride even though the two display no chemistry when sharing the screen. 

As is often the case in these getting-the-team-together movies, the supporting cast are a lot more enjoyable than the main characters in these stories as they get to come in, have their moment in the spotlight, and hang out until needed again.  With characters as dull as Kora and Gunnar, it is not a high bar to cross, and thankfully Snyder rises to the challenge in his conception of his ensemble cast.  The glaring exception to this, though, is Kai (Charlie Hunnam) who will be immediately recognizable as a Han Solo stand-in; mercenary tradesman with a ship that is recruited at a cantina.  He tries to bring a level of charm to the film, but the role is poorly written and conceived that Hunnam is just going through the motions unable to shake the unoriginality of the role and bring his own voice to style to the performance.  Soon after, they meet Tarak (Staz Nair), a captured noble warrior working off a debt as a blacksmith.  Nair brings an electricity to the screen unmatched by anything else, and while his taming of a bennu is just a reskinned version of the hippogriff sequence from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004), Nair at least appears to be having fun with the role so he can conjure up some enjoyment with the audience.  Next on the call sheet is Nemesis (Bae Doona), an android swordsman with dangerous and deadly maternal instinct.  Her introduction is a battle against an ogumo, a giant spider creature reminiscent as she comes down from her web of Shelob in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2004).  Good writers borrow, great writers steal, but what Snyder forgot to do is take these elements and make them into something interesting, engaging, and exciting.  Instead, because he does so little with these elements except regurgitate them on screen, it just reminds us of these far better modern fantasy sagas. 

When it comes to the action sequences, Snyder continues to reveal himself to be a one-trick pony, relying on the same slow-mo fight sequences he adopted as his signature style in 300 (2006) and has not grown or evolved since.  Much of the action feels like watching a commercial for a video game which keeps audiences removed instead of immersing them in this world that was thought about if not fully conceived. Further, with the large scope of A Child of Fire, he has shown that he is not well suited to be working in these larger, more epic stories.  300, while epic, is still a rather contained story and Snyder is able to craft memorable moments and build characters.  More recently, Army of the Dead (2021), his first endeavor with Netflix, has this same obnoxious bro tone as Rebel Moon, but, being a smaller more focused story, it is far more enjoyable as it feels like Snyder is actually telling a story and not just throwing out ideas and furiously working his way through the streamer’s cash.  As presented, A Child of Fire has all the trappings of a deeply conceived world with its planet names, strange characters, and talked-about importance, but it is like hearing a child retell a complicated story in that major chunks of information are glossed over or omitted so that while the framework can almost be ascertained, there is very little context to any of it. 

To say that A Child of Fire is inspired by the works of Akira Kurosawa and Star Wars is both obvious and aspiring.  Snyder puts off for Part Two what he could have done in Part One, and it is a frightening prospect because Kora’s journey so far has basically been reset, albeit with a few extra friends she made along the way.  We are told in one of the final scenes that the team that she has assembled are a formidable crew, in addition to Kora’s own accolades from the battlefield, but we have not been able to see it through the incomprehensible melee fighting sequences, and with Noble’s grave injuries healed, we are gearing up for just more of the same when the sequel drops.  There is so little of interest – no hook – to really keep us invested in the film at hand, let alone hold out hope that Snyder will somehow become a better filmmaker in time for the sequel.