Becoming The Muse

Rebel Moon – Part Two Review: The Scargiver

Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver is a 2024 American sci-fi space opera film directed by Zack Snyder. It is the second instalment of a two part saga and a direct sequel to Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child Of Fire. The movie made its Netflix premiere on 19 April 2024.

Kora and her band of warriors are what stand between survival and annihilation of the farming settlement of Veldt, as they face down a threat from the Motherworld’s imperium forces.

The Good

The cinematography is on point, turning an idyllic harvesting of crops into a poetic canvas, then swirling it into heart-stopping action sequences and of course some slowmotion scenes that are a part of a Zack Snyder production.

 The movie is 2 hours long but the pacing doesn’t drag unnecessarily, unlike the previous movie which was teeming with side quest type missions as Kora recruited her army in a world hopping tour, Rebel Moon: Part Two has a tighter plot mostly set on the farming settlement of Veldt- naturally if a war is coming they will first farm, makes sense.

A couple of characters stand out Kora (Sofia Boutella) naturally as the lead, General Titus (Djimon Hounsou) as the leader and Noble (Ed Skrein) the villain you will absolutely love to hate cause he is so good at being the bad guy…

You don’t need to watch a recap or rewatch the previous one, to watch the sequel as its pretty much straightforward, picking up where it left of but gives you enough to work on and some subtle pointers incase you forgot, who’s who and whats what… 😂

The Bad

Once again, the film encounters challenges in a multicharacter main cast where you never fully get to appreciate or connect with the characters and their backstories which are revealed over a Red Table Talk type tell-don’t-show confession where each character has a turn at telling their traumatic backstory with some accompanying flashbacks – and that’s that. I could never remember their names except maybe for General Titus, Nemesis and of course Kora. 3 out of erm … 6,.. I think, in a Star wars meets Magnificent 7 with a hint of Guardians of the Galaxy space opera.

While Nemesis has one of the most memorable backstories, and had potential to have some seriously awesome action sequences but her character is never fully utilised beyond a set piece sequence. And this is not unique to her character alone, its hard to feel anything for the rest of the cast, even when the movie tries to hastily push them on us in a here are the warriors now fight and die! There is a lot of death and yet no one really lives.

I had hoped Jimmy would make more of a feature in this movie as the previous one ended with what seemed a tease that the humanoid robot might be destined for grand times but it mostly consists him of just watching the citizens of Veldt prepare for war from afar and narrate some key details in Anthony Hopkins’ unmistakable voice.

The Ugly

Rebel Moon underlines a point about making a stand against tyranny and that there is always damage of collateral kind to, either side… Does anyone ever really win or its simply a cycle until the cost becomes too great… Looking at world events, and also our history in a country that recently celebrated 44 years of independence on the 18th of April and the people whose sacrifices we still honour today.

Final Thoughts

If you watched the first part of the movie and are looking for some sort of closure then this might offer that.. There isn’t much of character development but it does look good with some great action sequences. The movie teases the chance of a new adventure so the franchise just might extent beyond a two part saga subject to viewers response.

Have you watched either of the Rebel Moons? Will you or have you watched the sequel?