Zack Snyder Reveals His Rebel Moon Inspirations, Talks About Director's Cuts, Easter Eggs, And More

Ever since the premiere of "Star Wars" in 1977, movie studios, fans, and filmmakers alike have breathlessly wondered what and when the "next Star Wars" might be. To be sure, there have been many contenders for that title during the last 46 years, with some films that have matched (or surpassed) the financial success of "Star Wars," others that have made a huge impact on pop culture, still others that have spawned long-running franchises, and so on.

One aspect of "Star Wars" that's been particularly hard to replicate, however, is the way it began its own expansive fictional universe that's allowed it to remain popular to this day. While efforts like "The Lord of the Rings" films and the Marvel Cinematic Universe have certainly matched this, both of those were explicitly based on pre-existing material. Netflix has even attempted to establish its own original "Star Wars" killer before, at least in blowhard writer Max Landis' mind.

Enter Zack Snyder. The half beloved, half controversial filmmaker has been making expansive, world-building genre films ever since "300," and his time working with DC boosted his experience in establishing original takes on serialized characters, earning him a legion of passionate fans. Armed with that experience, Snyder's new project for Netflix is the ambitious, multi-film saga, "Rebel Moon." While some details of the movie have been revealed, it's an intriguingly original mystery, especially in this age of pre-packaged IP. 

Last week, a handful of other journalists and I were invited to a secret location in the Hollywood hills to take an early look at the "Rebel Moon" trailer and as hear Snyder and his collaborators talk about their efforts and goals in bringing this new potential "Star Wars" usurper to life.

The comparisons between "Rebel Moon" and "Star Wars" aren't idle ones, as the two films were actually linked upon inception. As producer (and Zack Snyder's wife) Deborah Snyder explained at the event:

"Once, it was a Star Wars film, and I never wanted it to be. I remember, I said to Zack, 'I just feel like your hands are going to be tied so much in what that IP is,' even though it kind of lived outside of it. So I was kind of happy when that fell apart, because I always felt like it was better. We learned so much with all our years working with the superheroes and creating those worlds, and to do something now that's wholly original — we got to do a little bit of that in the world of zombies, and with Las Vegas, but to do something that is fantastical, we say it's a science fantasy more than science fiction, and to take all those skills that Zack has been honing, and to do something in this space, just seemed really exciting."

Producer Eric Newman echoed Deborah's sentiments in terms of "Rebel Moon" moving away from "Star Wars," and mentioned how Snyder's inspirations for the movie ranged from Kurosawa to an animated adaptation of an infamous sci-fi/fantasy magazine:

"I remember [Zack] calling me at some point, and this has got to be 15 years ago, saying, 'I'm thinking of doing Seven Jedi, in the Star Wars universe.' And I was like, 'Oh, that's a cool idea.' [...] Then, a few years later, he calls me and goes, 'You know, I think it could be a television show.' I'm like, 'Yes, let's do this! F*** 'Star Wars!' Let's do this as a TV show.' And one of the movies that we talked a lot about way back when, from the beginning, I think we probably bonded over it, was 'Heavy Metal,' which I know most of you know. It was an R-rated science fantasy thing that kind of blew our minds, and you're going to see that there are a lot of influences, and a lot of that has made its way into this film."

Fantasy and sci-fi have long been welcome bedfellows, with the majority of escapist sci-fi hewing closer to fantasy tropes than not. "Rebel Moon" not only looks to carry on that tradition, but embrace it in a bigger way than usual. While discussing the conception of one of the robot characters in the film, Snyder explained how he wanted to fuse fantasy and sci-fi, using that character as a focal point:

"I'm constantly being inspired by [John Boorman's] 'Excalibur' and by, I love this courtly love concept, that you could have this pure dedication to an ideal that is not necessarily grounded in fact or reality, but that your take on it is so religious. And that your world perspective on that is you come from this sort of hugely moral high ground, but that when you actually dissect the 'why' of it, there's nothing really there. And I think that his story is sort of discovering, in a lot of ways, his own humanity, the 'why' of his existence."

Producer Wesley Coller added to that observation the ways in which the visual design elements of "Rebel Moon" further develop the characters, their backstory, and the larger mythology of the film — especially the costumes:

"I think that to the point of our sets and within story, those mythological moments, they do matter. They carry actual weight and you'll see them ... represented. The story I mentioned before about the creation of our universe, that story's told in the symbol on Jimmy's chest plate. All those things that, as you unpack the movie, they all exist and they all have legitimate weight in the arc of the world we're building, but also the story we're telling."

Of course, Snyder and his team know that building a galaxy, let alone a world, requires a good deal of grounding and not just visual-effects-driven fantasy. Newman went on to mention how "the challenge to any movie, and particularly a movie that takes place off-world, is authenticity." The production team described how nearly every facet of the film, from casting to the actual planting of "ten football fields of wheat," as Deborah Snyder said, went into establishing the veracity of "Rebel Moon." The production created such a realistic environment, in fact, that the extras allegedly pitched Snyder on keeping the sets up and having patrons book tours and stayovers within it, similar to how the set of Robert Altman's "Popeye" is still a major tourist attraction in Malta.

The Snyders, Newman, and Coller spoke a good deal about other aspects of the world-building of "Rebel Moon," everything from Doona Bae's costume being influenced by traditional South Korean wardrobes to Staz Nair's character's fictional language being tailored to his preexisting ability to speak Indian and Russian. In fact, as Deborah Snyder revealed, they had their linguist create four different languages as well as a language for the Mother World, an "ancient language that we created [which] is embedded in the costumes."

If all of this sounds like a huge amount of creative material for several movies, let alone two, it won't surprise you that, as /Film was the first to report, Snyder already has extended cuts planned for release later on ("I can't help myself," he cheekily remarked). According to Snyder, it was Netflix who initially suggested making extended cuts "part of the plan" from the get-go, something he was ecstatic about:

"I was like, 'That's cool. That makes it a lot easier than this.' Because it's one of those things that I guess I was always inspired by movies like 'Brazil,' or there's a great history of director's cuts that are just cool. When I was in film school, I just always thought that was cool, that there was this other movie that you could discover. So for me, when you make a movie, you have a lot of voices in your own creative mind telling you what would be narratively just the strongest solution. And then you have this other tug on you — I do, anyway — that is like, 'Well, what if there's rabbit holes that are really amazing to go down and just kind of learn about different aspects of the characters?'"

Deborah Snyder also weighed in on the multiple cuts, particularly regarding the way the initial cuts of the films will be a family friendlier PG-13 as opposed to the extended cuts' R-rated content:

"I think both are really exciting and they give us a chance to have my kids see one of them, which they're very excited about, and also gives the hardcore fans a place to go. So it's really fun."

Snyder seems incredibly cognizant when it comes to his reputation as a filmmaker excited by expanse, knowing that his rabid fanbase is eager to consume as much as he can feed them. As he put it:

"I think it's been the experience of my relationship to the fans of the movies that I've made is that they've always seen [the director's cuts] as like, 'Okay, what's that? What am I going to learn in there, in those eggs that come at Easter time? What will be those [references]?'"

At a small reception after the Q&A, Snyder informally spoke with me and several others, touching upon topics regarding his gung-ho camera operating while acting as his own cinematographer and his predilection toward mythological and religious imagery.

Most curious was his mention of an Easter egg relating to "Army of the Dead" hidden in a scene in "Rebel Moon," one which not only dives deep into the lore of "Army," but hints at a potential Zack Snyder multiverse. This means that, should "Rebel Moon" take off in a fashion as big as "Star Wars" did, we may not be looking at further installments set just in the movie's world, but the entirety of Snyder's original filmography could become fair game for future stories. Whatever happens, it seems "Rebel Moon" is only just the beginning.

"Rebel Moon" premieres on Netflix on December 22, 2023.