Why Zack Snyder's Rebel Moon Has 'Lightsabers' Despite Not Being A Star Wars Film

"Rebel Moon | Behind the Scenes | Netflix" showcases the abundance of "Star War" parallels scattered throughout Zack Snyder's newest sci-fi epic adventure, including desert alien landscapes, futuristic laser weapons, and a small farming homestead not unlike the one that Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) once lived on. On top of that, exclusive "Rebel Moon'' images acquired by Empire show the cyborg Nemesis (Doona Bae) wielding a pair of glowing red swords that seem like lightsabers in all but name.

The reason why so much of "Rebel Moon" feels like it was pulled straight out of "Star Wars" lore is because Snyder originally pitched the film as being set in the "Star Wars" universe more than 10 years ago, shortly after Lucasfilm was acquired by Disney in 2012. And one of the many parallels to the beloved space opera franchise that's hard to miss is its unique spin on the classic lightsaber.

Zack Snyder acknowledged that his original "Star Wars" pitch was always going to be a tough pill to swallow — since he wanted to create a brand-new cast of characters and present a more mature "Star Wars" story than we'd ever seen before. "I was like, 'I don't want any of your characters. I don't want to do anything with any known characters,'" Synder told Empire. "And originally I was like, 'It should be rated R!' That was almost a non-starter." After the idea was shot down by Lucasfilm, however, Snyder spent the next decade reworking the idea and developing his own mature sci-fi epic.

In a 2021 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Snyder said that he had spent "two or three years" fleshing out the universe of "Rebel Moon," hoping that the film could eventually blossom into a massive franchise of its own. So while the original story for "Rebel Moon" might have been pitched as a "Star Wars" property, it's clear that Snyder has gone to great lengths to make the film into something entirely original, one that takes inspiration from "Star Wars" but that allows him to fully realize the vision that Lucasfilm and Disney shot down.

Despite Zack Snyder's insistence that "Rebel Moon" uses "Star Wars" as inspiration only, some viewers will probably wonder how the director was able to get away with all the parallels in the first place, particularly the "lightsabers." But as long as these weapons aren't actually called "lightsabers,” it's perfectly legal to include them in the story.

While Lucasfilm owns the rights to the word "lightsaber" and the sounds that lightsabers make, the concept of energy swords is actually within the public domain. Indeed, we've seen unique energy swords pop up across countless projects since "Star Wars" first popularized the concept, including the ones in "Halo" and the Pixel Katana in "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World."

So "Rebel Moon" is likely in the clear as far as copyright is concerned. However, knowing that it began as a "Star Wars" story makes it hard to see these red swords as anything other than lightsabers – since that is probably what they were in Snyder's original pitch.