Review of Rebel Moon - Part One: A Child of Fire

I SHOULD have loved this movie, I am an avid Sci-Fi fan and love watching properties from Starwars, Star Trek, Star Gate, Dune, Serenity, etc. And their spin-offs. This movie clearly wants to be those... but it is just a disjointed mess.

• Zero character development - Characters are just thrown at you without any reasoning or explanation. We have no idea who anyone is, why they do what they do, etc. We are just expected to accept that these people exist and are willing to join together in the fight. It literally is "let's go get this guy" then they after a couple minutes of "look how cool this person is" we are expected to just accept them into the story.

• Slipshod world building - As with the character development, the "world" where this occurs just unfolds in a way that is confusing. Things are just thrown at you and you have to accept them. In the end, it was "this group is BAD" and "this group is GOOD", without any nuance or background.

• Cliche'd imagery - Half way through, we started playing the game, "where did they steal that from." the whole movie is a mashup of scenes and concepts taken from other Sci-Fi and Fantasy movies. We'd shout out, "that's from Harry Potter!" and "they took that from Firefly!" pretty much every since scene in the entire movie.

• Pointless story - The whole story just is a strung together set of scenes that don't seem to have a point. The final climax was unsatisfying, made worse because the poor character and world development meant we didn't really care who lived or died. Then, the whole thing ended with a huge cliche.

The movie was billed as "an adult Starwars," instead, it feels more like fan fiction. We didn't turn it off, it was just (barely) entertaining enough to keep watching. And, I will likely watch the second movie. But, this was just one long missed opportunity.