“BETTER, BUT STILL DISAPPOINTING”
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW:
PART ONE of REBEL MOON was full of strangely unseemly moments. REBEL MOON – PART TWO: THE SCARGIVER isn’t as graphic as the first movie. For example, the shootings, stabbings and combat mostly occur in quick, typical space-movie fashion. However, there’s just so much of it it’s hard to distinguish anyone involved and make the movie exciting. However, the special effects are pretty well done. REBEL MOON – PART TWO has some morally uplifting heroic moments, but there’s one reference to pagan gods, strong action violence, brief foul language, and other immoral content.
CONTENT:
Overall a strong heroic, moral worldview of the heroes risking their lives to save the town and its crop, and the good guys are trying to redeem themselves from past bad actions, but there’s a reference to pagan gods;
Eight obscenities (including one “f” word and one “s” word), but no profanities;
Strong action violence includes many shootings, stabbings, slicings with light sabers mostly in rapid fashion and not shot graphically, woman dies after having her neck snapped quickly, man killed by a sword before it’s implied he’s beheaded, man kills several evil troops with an ax, numerous scenes of hand to hand combat and spaceships attacking a town, as well as a huge killer robot that shoots up the town in battle;
A man and woman are seen under the sheets talking after they have offscreen sex, the man revealing his bare chest, and woman lying with exposed shoulders and above the breasts;
Men are shirtless in several scenes, in non-sexual context, man is seen with his chest exposed, lying in bed with a woman after offscreen sex, she is implied to be nude under the sheets, but only her bare shoulders and chest above the breast are seen;
Brief alcohol use;
No smoking or drugs, and;
A light revenge theme.
MORE DETAIL:
REBEL MOON – PART TWO: THE SCARGIVER on Netflix is a continuation of Director Zach Snyder’s REBEL MOON – PART ONE: A CHILD OF FIRE. It tells a story about a small group of rebels trying to defend an advanced agricultural society on an isolated moon against the military forces who’ve been sent by the galactic emperor to plunder the moon’s whole grain crop. REBEL MOON – PART TWO: THE SCARGIVER is a moral attempt to create a bold sci-fi saga along the lines of the sprawling STAR WARS movie empire, but PART TWO fails to capture the joyous, exciting spirit of that series of movies due to being filled with unmemorable, one-note characters, an uninvolving plot, strong action violence, brief foul language, and other light immorality.
The REBEL MOON movies center on a young woman named Kora (Sofia Boutella), a nomad living quietly in a peaceful town on a moon called Veldt. Veldt is part of the Motherworld galactic empire, whose king and queen were assassinated, leaving the evil emperor Belisarius in charge. The new Emperor has sent an evil admiral, Atticus Noble (Ed Skrein), to pillage all the moons in the Empire.
Kora teamed up with a colonel named Titus and his forces to fight back when Atticus murdered the town’s leader and announced he would return in 10 weeks to seize almost their entire year’s crop of grain. She rounded up a team of other characters who were interchangeably boring and they all faced repetitive, highly violent battles on the way to a final showdown with Atticus where he appeared to die. However, Atticus was revived via electrical shocks, along with his determination to gain revenge and still seize the town’s crops.
Part Two begins with Kora, nicknamed the Scargiver by Atticus for a huge scar she gave him in the first movie’s fighting, and the townspeople discovering Admiral Noble’s alive and is still coming in just five days. Colonel Titus orders the townspeople to gather their crops and store them in numerous spots so they can use the grain as both a shield against being killed and as a bartering tool.
The first hour of the movie mostly consists of these preparations, including the townspeople working together in slow motion. There’s also some battle training where the people learn how to shoot everything from arrows to giant laser guns. Kora reveals to her fellow fighter and boyfriend, Gunnar, that she began her nomadic life after being forced to kill the young princess of the Motherworld, at the same time as the king was stabbed through the heart and the queen leaped to her death in a suicide. The rest of Kora’s team fill out the first half by sharing their tragic pasts within a series of uninspired flashbacks with wooden narration.
When Atticus arrives in the second half with an enormous mothership and countless smaller fighter ships, the screen is filled with plenty of action but not much in the way of plot or dialogue.
Can Kora, her team and the townspeople save the day and defeat Atticus and his minions? And what surprise plot twist sets up the story for a Part Three?
PART ONE was full of strangely unseemly moments, with the bad guys threatening to kidnap and rape women daily, a homosexual alien that verbally tried to force himself on a man, and the people of Veldt being told to honor their pagan gods by drinking to excess and having promiscuous sex with each other. The action violence was also more graphic than usual for this kind of movie.
REBEL MOON – PART TWO, however, isn’t as graphic as the first movie, with the shootings, stabbings and other combat mostly shown in quick and typical space-movie fashion. There’s just so much of it that it’s hard to distinguish anyone involved and make the movie truly exciting, despite the fact that the CGI effects are pretty well done.
Unlike the first movie, THE SCARGIVER only mentions the pagan gods once and is free of the weird and unnecessary sex-related dialogue listed above. Thus, it’s a slight improvement on PART ONE by still being uncompelling but not offensive this time around.
On the positive side, REBEL MOON – PART TWO a strong moral worldview with heroic moments. For example, a young boy risks his life to save one of the female heroines from being killed. Also, there’s a nice scene where the townspeople thank Kora and her team of heroes for coming to save them by honoring them with special tapestries. Finally, the movie’s heroes are all trying to redeem themselves form past bad behavior.
REBEL MOON – PART TWO: THE SCARGIVER has brief foul language, including one “f” word. Also, one scene shows an unmarried couple in bed talking under sheets after offscreen sex. PART TWO also has lots of strong action violence and one reference to pagan gods. So, MOVIEHGUIDE® advises strong or extreme caution.