The Big Picture
Zack Snyder’s original sci-fi film Rebel Moon is set to take Netflix viewers to the far reaches of the galaxy this holiday season. Part One of the film introduces a peaceful farming colony on a rural moon, which is upended by a tyrannical ruling force. Snyder shares that he is excited for audiences to experience the journey of Kora, the film’s protagonist, and the epic war movie vibes in both Part One and Part Two of Rebel Moon.
Zack Snyder’s transition to original filmmaking from dominating the world of DC is taking Netflix viewers to the furthest reaches of the galaxy this holiday season with Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire. Originally pitched as a more mature addition to George Lucas’ Star Wars universe, Rebel Moon evolved into a two-part sci-fi space opera with a talented cast including Oscar-winner Anthony Hopkins, Sofia Boutella, Ed Skrein, and many more.
Part One introduces audiences to a peaceful farming colony on a rural moon where a mysterious stranger, Kora (Boutella), crash-landed and acclimated herself. Unfortunately, the quiet life of Veldt is upended when the tyrannical Regent Balisarius (Fra Fee) and his merciless Admiral Noble (Skrein) discover the moon’s people have sold their crops to Motherworld rebels. During an interview with Collider’s Steve Weintraub, Snyder shares why Kora’s journey to marshal revolutionaries against the Motherworld is so vital to the action-packed sequel, Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver.
Check out the interview in the video above or the transcript below to find out which scenes were most challenging to film, why Rebel Moon made Snyder nervous, what nod to Star Wars fans should be on the lookout for, and his response to getting the opportunity to direct fans at this year’s CCXP.
Rebel Moon
When a peaceful settlement on the edge of a distant moon finds itself threatened by the armies of a tyrannical ruling force, a mysterious stranger living among its villagers becomes their best hope for survival.
Release Date December 22, 2023
Director Zack Snyder
Studio Netflix
So, I don’t know if you know this, but do you remember the video I shot of you when we spoke in Brazil for a while?
SNYDER: Yeah, where I was talking to the guys.
Zack Snyder Responds to Directing Fans at CCXP
First of all, it went everywhere, I don’t know if you’re aware, but the thing that was just really cool was that every single person who talked about it or retweeted, even some of them who were like, “I’m not the biggest Zack Snyder fan but man, this is fucking awesome…” things like that. I’ve never seen so many people so positive about something. Can you touch on that because it went everywhere?
SNYDER: I didn’t know that. You mentioned it to me on the day but we’ve been so spun out on this tour I never really had a chance to reflect on it, except to say that it’s weird. In the scenario I was presented with this thing of, “Oh, we have this set-up where we can put these guys in this movie, in the trailer, and would you direct them?” I don’t know what that means exactly, but you help them not look crazy, you know? [Laughs] And so I was like, “Yeah, absolutely. Happily.” I think that it’s fun. By the way, it’s no different than doing a normal shot in a movie in some ways once you can kind of shut Comic-Con off that’s behind you and just be with the person that’s there. They’re doing their best and I was doing my best, so yeah, it was fun for me. I’ll be honest, I don’t mind.
I should also say that there were a lot of people who also said, “This is why Zack is the GOAT.” I’ve just never seen so many people so positive about something.
SNYDER: Well, it was cool. By the way, I’ve never been in a scenario where it’s sort of a perfect storm of like, “Okay, here’s the camera, we have this cool background, we have this idea to put the people in, I’m there, so I guess we’re just gonna make a shot?” It’s cool. I’ve never had an experience like that before. I don’t know that we could have manufactured it knowingly, you know what I mean? It kind of happens. Those things kind of happen. I don’t wanna sound jaded, but I think those things just happen. If you have all the alchemy correctly, that can happen.
Sure. Also, no director of your stature has ever done something like that at Comic-Con, but let’s move on to Rebel Moon. In Rebel Moon – Part One and Rebel Moon – Part Two, what is one thing in each film that you cannot wait for people to see?
SNYDER: In Rebel Moon 1, I think that the thing I’m most excited for is people to get caught up to the fact that by the time they’re on the journey with Kora to track these guys down and bring them back to the village, when we’re in that mode of searching for the guys that will fight with them, it’s cool to wake up and be like, “Oh shoot, we’re in that kind of a movie. We’re really in it. We’re gonna get these guys. We’re really setting up for a war movie here.” And the cool thing is that there’s a slight misdirect there.
But the thing that I’m also super excited about in [Part Two] is also the moment when you realize that you are in that movie you thought you were headed for. I think that’s what I’m excited about is this sort of culmination. It’s a two-book set. You need book two, which is fine. You should know that. It’s the first episode. You need Part Two to know where we go. I love that the investment that you make in [Part One] pays dividends in [Part Two] pretty heavily.
Don’t Miss Zack Snyder’s ‘Star Wars’ Nod in ‘Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire’
I know that originally this was an original Star Wars idea, and obviously it became Rebel Moon, but you do have a nod to Star Wars at the very beginning of Rebel Moon – Part One. Is that an intentional nod to Star Wars? How did that opening shot happen? How did you decide to do it?
SNYDER: We needed a transition down to the planet and it just felt like this tilt down to the planet felt like the easy way to do it. There is a little bit of irony in that it feels like the tilt-down is in space, but then when it lands it’s actually on the ground, so I thought that was kind of a slight curveball for the classic planet reveal that we’re used to. But I dig the language and I dig how everyone knows what it is. It’s kind of comforting in a weird way because you feel like, “Okay, I see where we’re going. I get this vocabulary.” I feel like you have to walk people into that stuff, you can’t just slap them. You have to give them a little bit of familiar ground to stand on at first and then you can kind of go nuts.
Obviously you’ve done a lot of cool shit in your career, but when was the last time — and it might have been on this movie — but when was the last time that, the night before you were filming something, you felt genuinely nervous, like, “How are exactly we gonna do this?”
SNYDER: No, that happened a lot on this movie. Being the cinematographer and the director on a movie like this, either one of those jobs is nerve-wracking on its own, but there were plenty of days. It’s funny, in Part Two we harvest the crops and it’s kind of like a Days of Heaven sequence in the middle of the movie and that was all weather-dependent, and then we had to have these great sunsets, and all this stuff we were hoping for, and we were worried that we wouldn’t get it. Thank god we had a lot of great moments in the harvesting sequences, but that stuff I was really nervous about because we’ve grown this wheat for months, and it was golden and perfect, and we were just marching into this giant wheat field to chop it down with all of our actors who were learning how to scythe and all that. So I didn’t know how good they would be at it and they were great, and it was amazing. So yeah, plenty of times I was nervous.
Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire premieres on Netflix on December 21.