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Versione 4
Rating:
The film opens among the stars, with a voice-over that introduces us with a few words to the world where the narrated events take place, while in the background a spaceship with an unmistakably phallic shape passes through a portal of equally unmistakable vaginal form. And so far so good, except this isn't "Spaceballs 3 - The Quest for Spaceballs 2", but rather "Rebel Moon", which is not a Mel Brooks film either, but by Zack Snyder.
Now, I don't have any particular prejudices against this director: in the end, he's a guy who managed to make it and who, at least at the beginning of his career, nailed a series of films that we all appreciated as kids, beyond their actual cinematic value; all things that would normally be enough to make me find him at least likable. It's just a pity that, over the past few years, he himself has started to get a bit too full of himself, bolstered by a following of fans not so numerous, but rather loud, and thus from a director with a decent visual personality, but with evident limitations, he has become a sort of tortured and somewhat megalomaniac artist whose magnificent cinematic vision of practically every one of his works is constantly thwarted by mysterious powers that be. In his partial defense, it can be said that his work with DC Comics characters has indeed been repeatedly hampered by a rather confused management of them by Warner Bros., which owns the rights, and has suffered from the studio's scrambling to compete with the narrative universe established by Marvel Studios, so this "Rebel Moon," shot exclusively for Netflix, could have been a great opportunity for him to prove that he could come up with a respectable original work, free from any external constraints or intrusions. I candidly admit that I haven't seen Snyder's previous films shot for the same platform, "Army of the Dead" and "Army of Thieves", so I might have missed films capable of drastically changing my mind about him, but the fact remains that "Rebel Moon" is a heavy flop on all fronts, and this time there are no excuses that hold water.
This is a space opera that wants to tell the fate of an entire universe through the rebellion of a small group of fighters against the ruthless empire of the Mother World, which subdues planets and solar systems with laser blasts fired from a gigantic combat spaceship; even if the plot already sounds dangerously familiar, which could be overlooked (after all, by the director's own admission, the project was initially conceived as a minor offshoot of the "Star Wars" franchise), everything else is astonishing due to its derivativeness and how it's held together by spit: it seems that, in the throes of a frenzy to create a vast and varied world, good old Zack literally took everything he liked from other literary and visual works and crammed it in by force, forgetting, however, that to do good world-building you also need a minimum of credibility and coherence. And instead, no, here we have references bordering on plagiarism to "Blade Runner," "Star Wars," "Matrix," and even "The Lord of the Rings" thrown together just because, characters with almost nonexistent characterization, and, above all, a handling of timing and dialogue that makes one's arms drop: "Rebel Moon" seems like one of those films that treats its viewers like perfect idiots to whom it offers chilling and didactic exchanges, rigorously accompanied by equally explanatory flashbacks that want to give depth to the narrative but only break its already mediocre rhythm. It doesn't help, then, the editing, which in the hands of a competent person could have patched up the script's defects, but here too things go very badly: the action scenes would even be well-choreographed (not bad, particularly the fight with the spider woman), but they are blatantly cut to show as little blood as possible (because that will only be seen in the Director's Cut(!) to be released soon) and therefore give a bad sense of incompleteness, and the dialogue scenes are even worse. All this translates into a hasty sequence of events with no narrative weight, so much so that one arrives at the climax without there being a real reason, with the added insult that the final battle feels like a skirmish between neighborhood bullies rather than the epic conclusion of an interstellar journey. Bad also the cinematography, which is inexplicably out of focus for much of the film, and in general, the entire aesthetic setup, which in theory should have been the director's flagship, enjoys little care, besides seeming fake to the point of irritation. And then there's his true fetish since his debut: slow motion, scattered randomly practically everywhere, to the point of being emptied of all meaning and becoming a source of hearty involuntary laughter.
It's unfortunate for the cast, which includes some pretty significant names (above all, Anthony Hopkins, who voices the only vaguely interesting character in the whole film) and gives it their all, but given the poor material at hand, can do very little, and in the end even for Snyder himself, who must believe a lot in this project. However, the problem is that maybe he believes in it a bit too much, having already shot a sequel, which will likely only be seen by his die-hard fans or by those studying cinema and looking for a handy guidebook on everything not to do when directing a science fiction film. Also because, personally, I see no further reasons to want to see the second part of what was supposed to be the epitome of a director's career, but which, in fact, doesn't go beyond the quality of a mediocre fan-fiction.
It's also unfortunate because in a sea of sagas, sequels, remakes, reboots, and adaptations of already existing literary material, this could have been the right opportunity to launch an original and attractive subject on a widespread platform, but it was exploited in the worst possible way when it should have been much better considered from the start. Starting with the choice of the director.
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