Rebel Moon Trailer Breakdown: A War Amongst The Stars

A not-so-long time ago, in a Burbank studio, Zack Snyder pitched a "Star Wars" movie.

The year was 2012. Disney had just bought Lucasfilm, which gave the company the keys to George Lucas' blockbuster franchise. It was the earliest of days. Lucasfilm leader Kathleen Kennedy was taking meetings with every successful director in Hollywood, which led to a sit-down with Snyder. Snyder was at a critical juncture in his career: after delivering three relatively well-reviewed entertainments in "Dawn of the Dead," "300" and "Watchmen," the filmmaker had stumbled with "Sucker Punch," a wholly original action-fantasy about a group of young women who weaponize their imagination to break free of a mental institution.

Snyder was about to get off the ropes with "Man of Steel," but he sensed a world-building opportunity at Disney. His pitch was to take the "Star Wars" series back to its Akira Kurosawa roots with, as he recently told Vanity Fair, an epic "defending the village space movie." Lucasfilm ultimately passed, but Snyder didn't stop dreaming.

His dream is now a $166 million reality called "Rebel Moon." Made for Netflix, the initial installment of the two-part saga will beam into living rooms on December 22, 2023. Judging from the just-released three-minute, 42-second teaser trailer, it's a space opera that combines the chosen-one premise of "Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope" with the bloody palace intrigue of "Game of Thrones." It's also, like "Sucker Punch," a whole-cloth creation. There's no pre-existing IP to ease viewers into the world. It is *gasp* an original movie!

For those daunted by such a prospect, not to worry. Snyder has discussed the narrative in broad terms, which makes what could've been a bewildering teaser somewhat explicable.

"Do you know the story of the Princess Issa?" asks Anthony Hopkins at the outset of the teaser. Probably not! Fortunately, Hopkins, who voices a mechanical knight named Jimmy, is in a storytelling mood. Over a series of shots flaunting a variety of boxy spacecrafts, magic hour vistas, and Terrence Malick-esque wheat-brushing (with hands both human and mechanical), the viewer learns that Issa was foretold to be "The Redeemer," a force of "peace and compassion" who would bring an end to interplanetary hostilities (i.e. the war against the tyrannical ruler of the Mother World, which goes unmentioned in the teaser because that's more detail than even a nearly four-minute teaser can bear).

The Redeemer is soon revealed to be a grown-up Sofia Boutella, now known as Kora, who raises an alarm as enemy spaceships tear through the agrarian expanse of a moon called Veldt. What do they want? That's what a bearded Corey Stoll would like to know. Boutella replies "Everything." She means the moon's resources, but what they really want is her.

Turns out Princess Issa has two nicknames, and it's the one she earned later in life that's a bit of a problem for her. Ed Skrein's Admiral Atticus Noble, the second-in-command to Mother World's imperious Regent Balisarius (Fra Fee), reveals that he's found The Scargiver, which kicks off a flashback to Issa's past as a foot soldier for her home planet's nazi-looking military. She was also romantically involved with Noble, and, if that shot of his nearly lifeless body in the snow is any indication, might've left him for dead. The pieces are starting to fit together: at some point, Issa, who used to be a remarkably skilled killer, had a crisis of conscience and fled the Mother World for Veldt. Indeed, that shot of her planting a flag atop a burning structure suggests she played a pivotal role in the planet's victory. So one might say The Redeemer might be looking for a measure of redemption.

Also worth noting that, given the film's "Star Wars" connection, "Scargiver" sounds a lot like "Starkiller," which was initially Luke Skywalker's surname.

Now that the teaser has vaguely established Issa's hero's journey, it's time to introduce the viewer to the supporting cast. First up is Bae Doona, who is probably best known for her portrayal of badass archer Park Nam-joo in Bong Joon-ho's "The Host." Here's where things get awfully derivative. Bae plays Nemesis, a cyborg swordswoman who is seen battling an arachnid warrior named Harmada (Jena Malone), though, according to the plot summary, these two will eventually become allies as Kora recruits her seven samurai or magnificent seven or whatever to combat the forces of the Mother World.

Borrowing from Kurosawa is a time-honored tradition, but equipping Nemesis with a pair of molten-metal swords that look a heckuva lot like lightsabers feels like theft. Yes, they swish about with a vapor trail, but they are unmistakably lightsabers. There's not a chance this weaponry would've made it to the screen without Disney promising to forgo litigation, but for a film eager to become the next "Star Wars," it would seem optimal to not explicitly ape "Star Wars."

Heroes breaking a wild horse is an obligatory bit of character-building business in Westerns, and it's been ported over to adventure films as recently as James Cameron's "Avatar," in which Jake Sully inspires the Na'vi by taming a mountain banshee. That's a spectacular, crowd-pleasing moment, and Snyder is evidently a fan because he restages the sequence almost shot-for-shot in the "Rebel Moon" teaser.

The only difference here is that Staz Nair, best known for playing the Dothraki warrior Qhono in "Game of Thrones," is hopping astride a winged creature called a Bennu. Taken in tandem with the lightsaber theft, this is disappointingly indicative of a lack of imagination on Snyder's part. "Sucker Punch" wasn't a completely successful movie, but it managed to pay homage to a variety of films and genres without ever directly stealing from them. These shots are total bummers and the nadir of an otherwise impressive teaser.

No band, and no song, can get the blood pumping like Jane's Addiction's "Three Days." The Perry Farrell-fronted Los Angeles rock collective peaked in 1990 with their LP "Ritual de lo Habitual," and the piece de resistance on that album was the epically propulsive "Three Days."

Here's a case of brilliant borrowing. Having dispensed with as much backstory as he can get across in a truncated time frame, Snyder, a commercial and music-video veteran who knows how to sell a product, juices his teaser with a snippet from the percussion-heavy finale of the tune. The cue powers the viewer past the uninspired imagery and drives the teaser into the home stretch, which, warts and all, closes the deal. This may be a "Star Wars" clone, but it's a clone by a guy who understands the primal power of Jane's Addiction, which, for moviegoers of a certain age, is reassuring.

When has Djimon Hounsou ever been a detriment to a motion picture? The answer is never, and while he has worked steadily over the last 30 years (yes, he's been around that long), there is, aside from his fiery portrayal of Joseph Cinqué in "Amistad," a sense that he has been denied the spotlight he richly deserves.

Perhaps General Titus, the former leader of the Imperium recruited by Kora to battle his former allies, will be the rousing, stand-out role that puts Hounsou over the top. He closes out the teaser with an invigorating exhortation. "The time has come for all that you love. Protect each other and show them no mercy." According to the Vanity Fair primer on "Rebel Moon," Titus is every bit as guilt-ridden as Kora. He's drowning his disgrace in booze, but somewhere in this man is a dormant righteousness. When it's reawakened, he is the last person anyone wants to meet on the battlefield. No one does this kind of role better than Hounsou.

The teaser concludes with the promise of "Rebel Moon Part 2: The Scargiver" on April 19, 2024. Bonus points for no "The Rise of...," "Return of..." or "Revenge of..." titling. The first entry is called "A Child of Fire," which suggests that this saga will be told in flashback-laden fashion, but it would be nice to see Snyder use this loaded teaser to throw audiences off the scent and tell a strictly chronological tale.

Because a story this sweeping should unfold patiently. Let viewers sink into the story and get to know the characters as they muddle through their lives. Skipping back and forth on the timeline neutralizes suspense, and feels like television. Films, especially one that's going to play out over two chapters (and, if it's successful, spawn future adventures and spinoffs), need space. They need to breathe. Snyder understands this. "Rebel Moon" might wind up being off-brand "Star Wars," but that doesn't mean it has to be total hackwork.