Rebel Moon
Netflix
On Thursday night, Netflix will debut Rebel Moon: Part 1 – A Child of Fire, Zack Snyder’s sci-fi blockbuster that has a second matching part in 2024. But then it also has…another part. A director’s cut, which are two words you are intimately familiar with if you know Zack Snyder’s history, but the way this is being orchestrated seems truly strange, and it already appears that Rebel Moon is suffering for it.
In an interview with the AP, Zack Snyder talks about the extremely unusual situation where he wanted to make an R-rated feature, but Netflix wanted a PG-13 one. However, they compromised with this idea that he could make a longer, R-rated cut filled with whatever he wanted, which would air later.
“In this case I almost think the director’s cut of Rebel Moon is an alternative reality version,” Snyder says. “It’s not an extended cut of this movie, it’s almost like a different movie….The reason for that is that it’s such a philosophical thing to shoot a director’s cut of a movie before you finish this version.”
“We knew it would be a PG-13 movie, but in my heart of hearts I always wanted it to be rated R…but you realize it’s not 100% responsible to have that be the demand…It was Netflix’s idea who said ‘why don’t you do whatever you want over here. Here’s the PG-13 version, then go nuts, we don’t care.’ That really was a thing I’ve never experienced before, it was bizarre.”
Bizarre is certainly the right word, and while Snyder seems excited that he did get to “go nuts” and do whatever he wanted, this whole situation seems like it was played terribly by Netflix. If you hired Zack Snyder to make some sort of insane riff on Star Wars, and you are a streaming service that is not courting opening weekend box office receipts, I have no idea why you wouldn’t just let the man make what he wanted from the start and just air that version instead of a neutered, cut up PG-13 alternative.
Rebel Moon
Netflix
In this interview, Snyder talks about how his director’s cuts are always better. Which I mean, if you’ve seen the two Justice Leagues, that’s certainly true. But the implication there is that this version of Rebel Moon, which Snyder calls practically another universe away from his full R-rated cut, is worse than it would be otherwise.
This seems to be a Netflix decision, and I understand why Snyder took the opportunity to run with the super cut they’re giving him, but again, this is a baffling decision by Netflix to demand some PG-13 only version here. Are they saying that David Fincher should have made a PG-13 version of The Killer? That Martin Scorsese should have made a PG-13 version of The Irishman? Of course not. Not equating Snyder’s talent to those two, but you see what I mean. And we are already seen the results of this, as Rebel Moon, with a 22% Rotten Tomatoes score, is tied for Snyder’s worst reviewed movie ever with Sucker Punch. A film, incidentally, he says he’d want to do a director’s cut for.
This absolutely feels like Netflix trying to triple or quadruple dip with two parts of a PG-13 Rebel Moon then perhaps two more parts of an R-rated Rebel Moon later, attempting to recreate some sort of demented version of the Snyder Cut fervor, albeit much more disingenuous and planned out. I can easily see a situation where even Snyder die-hards don’t like Rebel Moon and then blame Netflix for saving the “real” movie for later. What a mess.
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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
