| Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver | |
| Director: | Zack Snyder |
| Story: | Zack Snyder |
| Music: | Tom Holkenborg |
| Cinematography: | Zack Snyder |
| Editing: | Dody Dorn |
| Distributor: | Netflix |
| Runtime: |
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| Country: | United States |
| Language: | English |
| Budget: | $166 million (shared with Part One: A Child of Fire)[2] |
Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver is a 2024 American epic space opera film directed by Zack Snyder from a screenplay he co-wrote with Kurt Johnstad and Shay Hatten. A direct sequel to Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire (2023), the film takes place on the moon of Veldt where Kora and the crew of warriors ventures to help the farmers to defend and fight for their home against the Motherworld. Sofia Boutella, Djimon Hounsou, Ed Skrein, Michiel Huisman, Doona Bae, Ray Fisher, Staz Nair, Fra Fee, Elise Duffy, Charlotte Maggi, Stuart Martin, Cary Elwes, and Anthony Hopkins reprise their roles from the first film.
A week after it began a limited theatrical run in the U.S., Netflix released Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver on April 19, 2024. Like its predecessor, the film received generally negative reviews from critics. An R-rated director's cut, titled Rebel Moon – Chapter Two: Curse of Forgiveness, was released on August 2, 2024.[3] [4] Like the previous installment, the director's cut received mixed reviews, but was generally considered to be an improvement.
Kora and her allies—Gunnar, Tarak, Nemesis, Titus and Milius—return to her and Gunnar's village on Veldt, believing that Atticus Noble, whom she had killed, is dead and that her group had prevented the Imperium's return to the village to claim its surplus grain supply, but Aris, working as a double agent for the village and the Imperium, informs them that the Imperium is set to arrive in five days. The fighters join the villagers to harvest the grain supply in three days, intending to use the flour as leverage to deter the Imperium from bombing the village; over the remaining two days, Titus intends to train the villagers to fight.
Kora and Gunnar become lovers, and she admits that Balisarius compelled her involvement in his assassination of the Motherworld's royal family, with Kora herself shooting its princess Issa. Balisarius had then attempted to frame her for the coup, but she had instead fled to Veldt in an Imperium dropship to hide from the law.
Over two days, the group trains the handful of villagers in combat, preparing a plan involving digging trenches and tunnels in the fields, planting explosives, and preparing Kora's dropship. The group's members also reveal their pasts to each other, but Kora declines to share her involvement in the royal family's assassination. When Noble arrives with his dreadnought, his forces scan the village, identifying where the women and children, protected by Nemesis and Aris, are hiding, and send troops to capture them to force Kora out. Noble promises to spare the villagers if Kora surrenders, to which she complies, but Gunnar, unwilling to let Kora surrender, triggers the ambush and flees with her. Titus and Tarak lead the village in successfully repelling the first wave, though Nemesis is killed defending the women and children.
The large contingent of the heavily armored and mechanized second wave of Imperium troops pushes the few remaining defenders back, destroying much of the village, but Kora and Gunnar use her dropship and stolen Imperium uniforms to infiltrate Noble's dreadnought, with Kora laying explosives on its power source. Jimmy arrives to help the villagers and their allies in pushing back the assault, and the explosives detonate, bringing down the dreadnought. Gunnar is fatally wounded, and Noble overpowers Kora in a duel before being killed by Gunnar. Kora and Gunnar flee the dreadnought, and Devra Bloodaxe and her rebel subordinates arrive in ships to destroy the remaining Imperium troops on Veldt as Gunnar dies.
In the aftermath, the village mourns the dead, and Kora admits her past, which Titus reveals he already knew. He also reveals that Issa is alive, and the group declares their intentions to find her and to fight against Balisarius, the Motherworld and the Imperium.
Rebel Moon is inspired by the works of Akira Kurosawa, the Star Wars films and Heavy Metal magazines.[5] Johnstad and Snyder first started talking about creating the film in 1997.[6] The project began development as a Star Wars film that Snyder had pitched to Lucasfilm, shortly after the sale of Lucasfilm to The Walt Disney Company in 2012. This pitch was to be a more mature take on the Star Wars universe.[7]
Part Two received over $16.6 million in tax credits from the state of California for spending over $83 million on production in the state.[8]
The titles for the two parts were revealed to be Part One: A Child of Fire and Part Two: The Scargiver, according to teaser trailers released at Gamescom in August 2023.[9] [10] In March 2024, the official trailer was released.[11]
Composer Tom Holkenborg returns to compose the score for Part Two: The Scargiver, who served as composer for Part One: A Child of Fire. In March 2024, it was announced that a track list named "Songs of the Rebellion" would be released, based on the characters from the Rebel Moon universe. It features several artists, including Jessie Reyez, Tokischa, Tainy, Aespa, Tokimonsta, Black Coffee, and Kordhell. It was released on April 5, 2024.[12]
Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver was released in select theaters in the United States for a week on April 12, 2024, and was released by Netflix on April 19, 2024.[13]
A novelization based on the director's cut of the film written by V. Castro was published by Titan Books on June 4, 2024.[14]
Simon Abrams of RogerEbert.com gave the film one out of four stars, saying that it "feels as anemic and negligible as the non-sexual scenes in a floppy, overproduced porno".[15] Bob Strauss of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote that the majority of the film "is not that much better than the derivative, sludgy first installment", but felt that the battle sequences of the final 45 minutes were enough to raise his overall assessment to two-and-a-half out of four stars.[16] [17] [18] David Ehrlich of IndieWire called the film a "catastrophic bore of a film".[19]
Like Part One, the reception of the director's cut was mixed. Reviewing the director's cut, Chase Hutchinson of Collider said it "lacks anything approaching depth or well-constructed action, failing to offer anything worth revisiting despite adding another nearly two hours".[20]
Conversely, Zosha Millman of Polygon considered the director's cut an improvement. Reviewing both films' director's cuts together, Millman said, "Ultimately Chalice of Blood ends with a stronger promise for future installments than Curse of Forgiveness delivers, but even with lengthy runtimes and ample side quests, it never feels like Snyder is biting off more than he can chew here."[21]
After premiering April 19 on Netflix, the film garnered 21.4 million views in three days, making it the most viewed English-language film on the service from April 15 to 21;[22] it was the third consecutive Netflix number one for Snyder, starting with Army of the Dead and continuing Rebel Moons first part.[22] However, it would score 44.2 million viewership hours,[23] marking a significant decline from the first part;[24] part one was reported to have had 54.1 million viewership hours in its first three days.[25] The film stayed in first place with 18.8M views in its first full week of availability, which still counted as its own second week in first place, following its debut weekend. While mentioned, it was discovered that Variety had shown the film to be at the top spot of its streaming charts with over 741M minutes viewed compared to others.[26] The week after that, the film slipped to third place with 6M views, as the film also earned an overall worldwide total of 46.2M views.[27] [28]
In April 2024, co-writer Kurt Johnstad announced that though original plans were for a trilogy of movies, the franchise will eventually consist of a total of six films; explaining that the stories for each original installment have been expanded into two parts. The writer stated that the treatments are completed for the third and fourth movie and Snyder is currently writing the third film.[29] On the same day, Snyder stated that the total number of films in the series will either be four or six, depending on whether or not the second and third entries of the trilogy each get split into a two-part movie as well.[30]