The first named credit you see at the end of Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire is Zack Snyder, director.  Instantly, I said aloud, “I should have known!”  This is, of course, because I did not look up the person behind the film before watching it.  Probably the only reason I chose it is because it had been popping up in a few places, and when my current houseguests suggested, I agreed.  The clues were all there for knowing the person in the chair behind the camera: color scheme, check; slow-motion action, check; plenty of violence, check; and well-muscled characters, check.  It is also awful, which, outside of 300 (2006), is something I have come to expect from a Snyder production.  What makes this even more remarkable is the fact that they plan not only a sequel to Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire, but also a prequel.  It will be interesting to see if that last one gets made.  In the meantime, we have this first installment to analyze.

Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire starts by giving some sort of political backstory to what is about to unfold.  I quickly lost track of it.  There is something about a dead king, lots of wars, revolutions, and whatever.  The confusing narrative leads us to Kora (Sofia Boutella) on Veldt, which I guess is supposed to be the eponymous planet.  Unlike what you just heard about, she is leading a peaceful existence as a farmer, where we find her plowing a field.  One of her fellow villagers, Gunnar (Michiel Huisman), comes to call her to a feast they are having in honor of the return of Den (Stuart Martin).  He is a hunter and has come back with some rare meat, and there is revelry to be had.  Yet, Kora feels she cannot fully take part in it, feeling ill at ease.  Her past is slowly revealed throughout the rest of the film, but I will take care of it now.  She used to be named Arthelais, and a high-ranking soldier in the Imperium, the galaxy conquering military of the Motherworld.  She had been taken from her home by General Balisarius (Fra Fee) after he had destroyed it and killed her parents, raising her to be his own daughter.  This included her martial training, something at which she excelled, rising to the position of bodyguard to the magical Princess Issa (Stella Grace Fitzgerald).  Yet, when her and her father, the King (Cary Elwes), are assassinated, Kora fled to Veldt.  There, she is found in a crashed ship by Hagen (Ingvar Sigurdsson), who lives in the aforementioned village.  Despite Kora’s feelings, everything is going well until one day an Imperium warship appears in the sky above the planet.  Soon, they are sending down dropships, carrying with them Atticus Noble (Ed Skrein), who is General Balisarius’ right-hand man.  Kora lurks in the shadows as Atticus confers with the village’s leader, Sindri (Corey Stoll).  Atticus demands that Sindri give over his people’s crops, but Sindri claims that they do not have enough even for themselves.  Gunnar, who had been preaching that they give in to the Imperium, speaks up and says otherwise.  To his horror, Atticus makes an example of Sindri by killing the leader.  Atticus next increases his food requisition, leaving behind a garrison to enforce his demands.  Kora is about to flee to another locale, even with a pep talk from Hagen to fight, but what stops her is witnessing Sam (Charlotte Maggi) about to be sexually assaulted by the garrison.  Instead of leaving, she decides to enter the soldiers’ quarters and kill them all.  With the death of the Motherworld’s men, the course of rebellion is set.  The problem is that they are simple farmers with no military experience.  Thus, Kora, along with Gunnar, are sent to find the fighters they will require to have a chance of defending their village.  The one that Kora most wants to recruit is the legendary General Titus (Djimon Hounsou), but finding the disgraced leader is difficult.  Because of Gunnar’s business deals, he brings them to a large settlement called Providence where they believe they are people who will take them to General Titus.  The person they find is Kai (Charlie Hunnam), a pilot who agrees to transport them off world to General Titus’ last known location.  However, before they rach that destination, they make several stops along the way.  It is meant to round out the cast because they bring on other warriors, but it gets hard to follow.  Anyway, the first one, Tarak (Staz Nair), is the important one.  After they witness him tame a creature and join their crew, Kora asks Kai to find others on their way to General Titus.  Once they get to the former commander and convince him to join their cause, they lastly visit the Bloodaxe rebels, led by Darrian (Ray Fisher) and Devra Bloodaxe (Cleopatra Coleman), in the hopes of rounding out their growing force.  Darrian is eager to fight, but Devra takes half their warriors, believing that to go against the Imperium would be foolhardy.  Speaking of foolhardy, this last stop with Kai proves to be a trap, with the pilot stringing them along the entire time in order to collect the fee on each of these wanted criminals, for he is actually a bounty hunter.  Atticus arrives to arrest the prisoners, but Gunnar manages to kill Kai and free them, leading to a battle on the docking platform.  Predictably, it comes down to Atticus with Kora, and equally unsurprising, Kora triumphs.  What is left of the group of fighters she has assembled return to Veldt.  Meanwhile, Atticus’ broken body is found, and telepathically he is brought into General Balisarius’ presences, who is none too pleased with his underling.  He then instructs Atticus to kill everybody but to bring Kora back alive to him.  The end.

The parallels you can draw between Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire and any number of other science fiction and/or fantasy titles are numerous and obvious.  At one point while watching it, I kept referring to Kai as Han Solo (Harrison Ford) from the Star Wars franchise.  A set of fantasy stories that also fits well here is The Lord of the Rings.  In Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire, its use of spaceships and bounty hunters, for example, give it the feel of the former.  With the latter, it comes in the form of the fallen kings and magic.  Despite just mentioning magic, which is an anathema to Catholicism, it is on this last category that I shall focus.  Indeed, the way Princess Issa is spoken of reminds me of much of what is said about Jesus during this Christmas season.  There are prophecies about her birth, and she is imbued with powers to restore life and peace.  Then again, Snyder is hardly the first person to inject a character patterned after the Messiah into their stories.  This is something that Western culture has been doing since the dawn of Christianity.  Sometimes it works well.  Others, like here, it is confusing and does not come off as clearly as the filmmakers might hope.  I do appreciate, though, the initial attempts by the villagers to be peacemakers.  A great line used by those who favor a more peaceful solution is that their work is how they fight.  They are soon convinced otherwise by Atticus’ outrageous demands, but for a little while it seems like a notion that could work.  One can find this sentiment in Matthew 5:9, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the children of God.”  It speaks to a child-like reliance on God, which is a pathway to holiness.  Unfortunately for our movie, they are forced to give up this pretense when they receive Atticus’ ridiculous demands.

To be honest, I had trouble staying awake in the middle of Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire.  I rallied at the end, though, and at no point did I actually fall asleep.  It is just that it gets repetitive as Kora and company travel about collecting people with a vendetta against the Motherworld.  As such, I would say this one in eminently skippable.