 Within a 24-hour span, I managed to watch one of my favorite movies of 2023 and this, one of the worst films I saw all year, Rebel Moon. I'm sorry, Rebel Moon, part one, A Child of Fire. Let's burn this to the ground with a review. This is gonna be a spoiler-free review, but if you've ever seen a Star Wars movie, you already know the entire plot, so there's really not much else to spoil. That said, let's just give the surface-level thoughts on Zack Snyder, A Child of Fire. Part one, I don't know when part two comes out, I think in a few months, actually. So there you go, there's something for you to, I guess, wait for, set your watch to. Or you might wanna wait another year because Snyder said there's a better version of this movie that's rated R, that's even longer, that has a bunch of cool stuff that wasn't in it. It's like a totally different movie, he said. Why would a director say that? Unless he already knows that his movie sucks, that's on Netflix, and he's trying to rile up his super hardcore fans to get them to release the Snyder cut all over again. Can't wait for that. What an amazing experience it's gonna be. You know what wasn't an amazing experience? Trying to sit through this schlock with my wife, it was miserable. She passed out, of course, halfway through, at which point I just suffered to try to finish the movie so I could do a review. About an hour and a half in, I thought, you know what, I hate this, why do I need to finish it? If you know a meal's bad, you don't have to eat the whole thing. But I sat through it, I slogged it out, and yeah, what a terrible time. Let's get into it. So, Cora is the main character played by Sophia Boutella. She's a sad sack, stick in the mud. Cruddy character that really has nothing exciting going for her. I don't like this character. Sophia looks fine, she's pleasant on camera, but outside of that, what do we have? Nothing, really. We will follow her as she, you know what? Let me back up. Because I had this complaint about a different movie and people said to me, well, you know what, Adam? During war and other terrible times, people aren't happy. They're not pleasant, they're miserable, they're sad, they cry, da, da, da, da, yeah, of course. That's not the criticism I have. You can absolutely have a person that's broken and sad, but is still interesting to watch and rally behind. That is not what's happening here. This person is sad and broken, but not interesting or captivating or giving me anything to really go on outside of, okay, she's just now standing in front of another green screen, awkwardly having dialogue with someone. This is miserable. The movie is large scale, yet somehow at the same time, incredibly small. It feels so quaint because Snyder, unlike almost every other director I know, has not grown past 300. He's still on a sound stage, doing the same shtick over and over. 300 is badass, I love that movie. I will always love and defend that movie. It was, I mean, it was ahead of the game. But Snyder, since then, has gone, he's gone backwards, he's devolved. It's insane. And I think a lot of it is because he's now writing these movies or has a big hand in that department and he should stay away from that. Of course, this is all subjective, this is my opinion. He's got his audience that loves his films. They don't need to listen to me. If you're a huge Snyder fan, you don't need to listen to me. Why are you watching me? I clearly, I've fallen out of favor with him. Ever since 300 and Dawn of the Dead, he's really let me down over and over. But I keep coming back, hoping. Man of steel I liked, that was fine. But man, what is going on? This doesn't feel like a movie. It feels like a weird school project where he took a bunch of scenes and different things that he thought were cool in other films and tried his hand at them and then just loosely tied them together. Let's get a little bit into the plot. So Korra, main character of course, she has been saved by an older gentleman and brought to a planet for a couple years. It's basically Tatooine. She was saved from the evil empire who's going around looking for rebels and taking them out and showing dominance throughout space. They're not called the empire, but that's what they are because this is Star Wars done stupid. She actually shares room and board with this old man too. And there's a funny scene early on where she's gonna get dressed. And so she shuts the curtain, which is just the see-through separator. And all I'm thinking is what, you can see everything. It's basically like closing a glass window. Nothing has changed at all. It was just comical. I thought that was funny thinking, what are we doing here? He can see everything going on. Anyway, this is a small quaint little village. They grow crops. They have enough to feed their family and sell some off to the different traders and maybe some to the empire. That's the idea because these guys come down and they demand everything from this farm. They want all their crops, everything that they produce, they're gonna give to the empire. They're not good people. They're actually garbage. They also brought with them a C3PO robot who's going to kind of understand the world on his own and learn to love. And that's just a side story that goes nowhere right now because this is a two-part thing. So really, really looking forward to seeing where that story goes, said no one. There is another hilarious scene in this town. I have to spoil a little bit because it was so fucking dumb where this girl's out getting water. We'll call her Water Girl because that's all I've seen her do. Her only job is to walk around with pictures of water and deliver it to people. So Water Girl is out in the middle of the night for some reason, I'm not even sure. And she's walking around with water and the bad guys that they kept there, the evil empire guys, there's probably a dozen of them or so. They're all just super handsy and super rapy and they're like, hey little girl, come on over here. And they're all gonna have their way with her except for one younger guy who's like, ah, I don't know about this. I don't like this idea, but everybody else is on board. It's quite amazing. Anyway, the Korachik, she sees what's going on and she comes over and she's not having it. She says, nope, I'm gonna throw down with all of you guys and win because I'm awesome, fine. We're gonna get some horrible slow motion in this section and then every action scene going forward. Typically, I'm a fan of the slow-mo speedup, but I feel like Snyder's going out of his way to slow things down that aren't interesting at all. He's not slowing down stuff where people are throwing axes and goes. No, he's throwing down slow-mo when people are pulling out like a comb and then brushing their hair or flicking some dust off their shoulder or just kind of turning a corner and standing against a wall. Not the cool stuff. What are you doing, dude? Moving past that. In this scene, she takes these guys out and then the entire town congregates by the front door of this barn. She turns around, they're all just there. What were you people doing? That you all came single-filed together. It was crazy. Was there a party going on? And just nobody knew Watergirl was in trouble and then you all heard at the same time. It was just so fucking dumb. I didn't understand. And the fact that no one heard her screaming and stuff earlier is even more impressive. But regardless, that's just one of many issues I have with this film. Nothing really moves well together. There's a lot of just head-scratching ideas and camera shots and it's just a mess. What's gonna happen next is Cora is going to decide, all right, we have to build up an army to fight the capital, to fight the empire, to fight these bad guys. From this point forward, so about 25, 30 minutes in, this is a single-note film where all we're gonna be doing for the next two hours is jumping from planet to planet recruiting dudes for this ragtag rebel mission. Going back against the empire, against the capital, against the bad guys. It's so boring. It's so tedious. And every time she goes to one of these places and gets a new character, it's always something we've seen. One person has freaking budget lightsabers. Another dude is trying to train a hippogriff. He's trying to get to ride Buck Beak so he can make the slave owner proud so he can get out of his debt. It's terrible. It's just terrible. I felt zero emotion throughout this entire film. No laughing, no smiling, no sad, no happy, no joy, no sorrow, no nothing. It's just there. Everything is there. And the final moments of this movie, the cliffhanger they leave us on is so anticlimactic, so dumb. I can't imagine a single person watching this and going, oh, wow, I can't wait for part two. What? That was wild. It was awful. It was embarrassing. Why is Snyder still getting all of these deals with studios? I don't understand. I don't get it. I don't get it. And that's Rebel Moon, a child of fire part one, or Rebel Moon part one, a child of fire, who cares? This is a dumpster of a film. It's one of the worst movies I saw all year. And that's actually saying a lot because I saw some real garbage this year. Let me know though, am I way off and this is just top of the line Snyder? This is the Snyder that Warner Brothers was keeping from us for all those years. He's back in full force. Or is this just, just like I said, a miserable waste of time with no heart, no emotion in the slightest, with people that seem so stuck going from scene to scene without any real direction. Let me know, leave a comment, like the video, subscribe. If you haven't, if you like brutal honesty, I'm here for it. I appreciate it in return. Let me know in the comments. Become a Patreon at patreon.com slash Adam does movies or a YouTube join member by just hitting that join button. Or maybe if you just wanna do a one time thank you for the holidays, you just hit that super thanks icon underneath the video and say, hey Adam, happy holidays, you piece of shit. Here's a few bucks and I would appreciate it. Not so much the name calling, but the few bucks that I would appreciate that. It's one man operation. It's a passion project. I'm basically the Zack Snyder of YouTube. That's probably not a compliment I wanna give myself. Okay, thank you for watching. Hopefully I see you next time. Take care.