Zack Snyder’s ‘Rebel Moon’ – New Images Reveal a Unique Universe
The first photos are here – dive into the universe of Zack Snyder’s Rebel Moon.
Zack Snyder and Netflix announced the ambitious project back in 2021 – one that he hopes to expand into a franchise. The director is aiming for Rebel Moon to be a grand, romantic sci-fi epic with plenty of action and adventure. It has a bit of a Seven Samurai / Magnificent Seven in space feel to it. Sounds a lot like Snyder is making his version of Star Wars, which makes sense. Rebel Moon was initially a pitch Snyder gave to Lucasfilm. It was rejected, and like Lucas before him, Snyder decided to build his own universe instead of shelving the story.
The Rebels
Rebel Moon focuses on a tyrant’s invasion of a peaceful colony on the edge of the galaxy – a regent named Balisarius has deployed his army to take over and subjugate the people. The colony sends a Kora, young woman with a mysterious past, to recruit deadly warriors from nearby planets in order to fight back and reclaim their home. Kora has a short amount of time to build her team and come up with a plan before one of Balisarius’ enforcers comes to collect the colony’s harvest.
“The advantage that they would have is, they could set a trap for the Imperium. A lot of times, if you’re fighting in a guerrilla war, you don’t know where the bad guys are going to be. But in this case, you know in nine weeks they’re going to be right there. So they could set a pretty insane trap for them. Of course, it all goes sideways. But that’s the initial plan.”
Zack Snyder, Vanity Fair
Kora is joined by a farmer from the colony – Gunnar (Michiel Huisman) – and they set off to find the fighters with the right skills for the mission. They employ mercenary starship pilot named Kai (Charlie Hunnam) to transport them.
The first on their list is strategist General Titus, played by Djimon Hounsou.
“She finally tracks him down at this coliseum on a sort of gladiator planet, where he’s drunk and sad and doesn’t want anything to do with anybody. She’s trying to convince him to join up. There’s events that happened to him in the past that made him have to leave the Imperium and actually become an enemy of the Mother World. That scarred him.”
– Zack Snyder, Vanity Fair
Titus is joined by Frazetta-inspired brawler Tarak (Staz Nair); partially mechanical swordmaster Nemesis (Doona Bae); the Bloodaxes, aka rebel siblings Darrian and Devra (Ray Fisher, Cleopatra Coleman); and Milius (E. Duffy), a survivor of the Imperium’s cruelty.
Also on the team: an ethereal spider-being played by Jena Malone and a centuries-old robot knight known as a Jimmy that’s voiced by Anthony Hopkins.
The Mother World
The sector is overseen by the Regent Balisarius (Fra Fee). The regent uses volatile enforcer Admiral Noble (Ed Skrein) to keep the colonies in check. He travels the galaxy in a Dreadnaught battleship that houses 8,000 soldiers and carries dropships. As well as an arsenal that can destroy a planet.
“With this character, I pointedly chose to leave humanity out of it completely for the first time. I’m not occupied with gaining your empathy. It will be interesting to see what the audience’s reactions are to it. Noble has chosen to exist outside of what he sees as the limitations of morality.”
Ed Skrein, Vanity Fair
And masked scribes that represent the religious order of the Mother Planet. They keep information – but instead of paper or hard drives, they use people.
“Your DNA stores information. You are put in stasis if you’re a page, and your body just becomes like a hard drive. The Scribes have the ability to transfer what they see. That’s how history is recorded by the Mother World. You can plug into those things later, and you experience the history as a memory. But the Scribes, of course, are manipulated by politics, and they write down only what they’re supposed to.”
– Zack Snyder, Vanity Fair
Based on all of this, Snyder has done a lot of work to create a new lore and look for this story. Hopefully, it’s enough to make it feel like its own thing and not another Seven Samurai adaptation.
Rebel Moon drops on Netflix on December 22nd.
