Rebel Moon 2 Is Officially Zack Snyder's Worst Movie
The reviews for "Zack Snyder's "Rebel Moon -– Part Two: The Scargiver" have been tallied, and the recently released Netflix science fiction epic is officially the worst-reviewed movie of the filmmaker's career, according to Rotten Tomatoes.
The "Rebel Moon" sequel continues the adventures of Kora (Sofia Boutella) as she teams up with several rebels, including Titus (Djimon Hounsou), a former soldier, to take down the evil Imperium empire of the Motherworld. Snyder compared the ambitious nature of the sci-fi universe to his answer to "Star Wars," with the movie touching on similar themes of rebellion and the fight between good and evil. Unfortunately for the director, the franchise is off to a rocky start, with both "Rebel Moon: Part One – A Child of Fire" and its sequel getting largely negative reviews from critics.
At the time of this writing, the second installment sports a 16% critics score, with 77 reviews logged so far on the review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes. That is slightly worse than the 21% score for "Rebel Moon," which got some of the worst critic reviews of Snyder's career. Meanwhile, the audience score for the film is 53%, a similar bump down from the first film's 58% score. Rotten Tomatoes Critic Consensus was also unkind to the project, noting, "Less a course correction than a compounding of everything that tangled up its predecessor, The Scregiver is an uninvolving space opera full of flat notes."
How does Rebel Moon Part 2 compare to Zack Snyder's other films?
Zack Snyder's films have long had a unique relationship with Rotten Tomatoes. While films from early in his career like "Dawn of the Dead" (65% critics/77% audience), "300" (61%/71%), and "Watchmen" (65%/71%) performed solidity, there's generally been a pretty significant discrepancy between how reviewers and viewers have scored his movies. For example, "Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice" was torched by critics with a 29% score, but audiences seemed to enjoy it much more with a 63% rating. "Man of Steel" has a nearly 20% higher audience score, with 56% registering positive reviews, compared to a 75% audience score. Even his previously worst-reviewed film before either installment of the "Rebel Moon" franchise, "Sucker Punch," has a wide gap with its 22% critics score and 47% audience score.
Snyder's "Rebel Moon — Part Two: The Scargiver" getting an abysmal critics' score and a mixed-to-slightly-positive audience score starts a new and unfortunate trend for the franchise. According to Snyder, the universe's story is intended to span six films, but it remains to be seen if Netflix will continue to fund more chapters of "Rebel Moon" given its weak critical reception. For those hoping to see more of the world of "Rebel Moon," its future will likely depend on whether it posts strong streaming numbers and how well Zack Snyder's director's cuts — which are set to be three hours each — are received.