It may not be saying much, but Rebel Moon Part 2 is probably a better movie than part 1. But I kind of liked part 1 for the derivative but excitable big space opera that it was. Both films do what they say they will do… big explosions, ray guns, zip, zap, zowie. They are good enough while not being boring.

Part Two has our mash-up of vaguely defined space heroes back on the titular rebel moon, ready to defend it from Xur and the Ko-Dan Armada (<checks notes> or something like that). The villain from the first film who had the bad habit of not dying is still not dead and is ready to bring the hurt to the little moon. They still want that grain, yo!

The first hour of this movie is an attempt to A) give a modicum of character growth to these heroes and B) give us that all important speed ramping slow-mo grain harvesting we have long demanded of our sci-fi but rarely get. We all know what we came for and it’s clearly proper scything techniques. I’m surprised I need to point this out.

After about thirty minutes of harvesting, we get some moments between the villagers and the heroes. This includes on-the-nose exposition dumps for each hero… corny, tin-eared dialog that makes you respect the subtly of George Lucas. And the sick, sad thing about each of these character backstories is they all come down to “Evil Galactic Empire did something evil… something something revenge!”

Zack Snyder has a number of qualities as a film maker but screenwriting is not one of them.

But this is all a great big whatever in this stylized zap-gun fest. We came for the zip, zap, zowie and the final hour is just that: a big battle between the town and the space Nazis. It’s a surprisingly small scale finale… and one that could have been handled easier with a nuke or asteroid drop (but wheat shields save the day… I knew all that harvesting would pay off).

And, yeah, the explosions and space ships and ray guns… it’s all good enough. It’d be great if we really cared about the characters as much as the slow-mo drama tells us we should… but it’s good enough in a world of worse visual noise movies. There’s a certain flow to the action that suggests Snyder might even known what he’s doing sometimes.

And, yes, he uses a lot of slow-mo which people have been complaining about forever. And it made me think… we always complain about either shaky cam, over-dited action or slow-mo. And if I had to take an incoherent mess of edits and rapid camera shakes over some speed ramping that shows me exactly what the characters are doing (and makes them look cool), I’d rather take the slow motion. At least its coherent.

Yes, I’d prefer a middle ground…

Anyhow, Rebel Moon Part 2 is still a middle-of-the-road / good enough movie… and its better than part 1. Both films are still a wasted opportunity to have done something original, but given the hand we were dealt, it’s good enough. I suppose.

Score: 78