It seemed that with Netflix, auteur Zach Snyder had finally found his true calling and artistic avenue. Its distribution model meant that he could bisect his space opera epic Rebel Moon into an extended, two-part saga without sacrificing any of the meat of the story or going through the whole production process 3 years down the line like any old sequel. It meant that no shot was left unturned and silly discussions about optimal story length to entice audiences to buy into a - shock, horror, gasp - longer film were moot. Intermissions? Cut content? Bah. The canvas was his to paint. Indeed, this narrative freedom is markedly obvious in one of The Scargiver's early scenes where the heroes have returned to the quaint village of Veldt, and, in a classic 'the night before' sequence, proceed to unload exposition about their motivations for challenging the Motherworld. I say scene, but this is in reality a series of summaries about each of their backstories that occupies a good ten minutes, a ten minutes in which you ponder why Snyder didn't include this in Part One. Here's where us common folk won't recognise the genius of his storytelling dexterity; why waste time with tavern stories when you can use an entire second film as an extended flashback for all the characterisation you didn't do in the first? Laser swords and guns first, motives later.
Earlier on, in a similarly egregious moment, the band of ragtag heroes are heralded by the village they are to become saviours too, all before the actual deed of the final battle, quite literally presented with each of their character archetypes and attributes as if they were the latest players in a D&D campaign. Why not at least move this heartwarming sequence to the end of the film after they are victorious? It matters little because they all become a generic smear of fantasy tropes with little to differentiate them from one another. Remember that A Child of Fire was a movie that sought to subvert the appeal of Doona Bae's slick dual wielding sabres with the futility of revenge in a sobering monologue, only to then use the same desire of vengeance to recruit Djimon Hounsou's tortured general twenty minutes later. Of course she falls in line here, because having a true pacifist would mean her absence from the movie altogether, and we can't have that.
Let's not mind the fact that these villagers missed all their heroics in the first film and have only known them for a few days, so they're only closely acquainted with their grain harvesting skills (which are, to be fair, quite impressive). Snyder's always been, for what it's worth, praised for his visual finesse, and in what is so perfectly poised as a parody (but isn't), he spends ten minutes highlighting the heavenly harvest, or what seems to be an eternity when taking into account his liberal use of slow motion and exquisite close-ups of wheat trembling in golden sunlight. This is the director who mastered the aesthetic of cool via speed ramping in 300 almost two decades ago and has since refused to further innovate. He seeks the coolest shot because it's cool, so he'll shoot underwater from the perspective of a barrel of water because it looks cool, he'll have Jimmy make a dramatically late entrance and pose because it looks cool, and he'll have the edgy string quartet accompaniment of the Brutus-esque royal coup be literally just sitting in the background playing diegetically and reacting live to the action because...why? It's badass, that's why.
Snyder's Watchmen ranks as one of the worst examples of adapted media because he fundamentally misunderstood (or perhaps deliberately ignored) the inherent fascistic act of being a superhero and wielding god-like powers to enact your own brand of justice, seeking to instead visually elevate them like every one of his protagonists, speed ramping action shots to exalt their divine physiques. There's even a shocking shot of Staz Nair with a shirt on, which must clearly violate the Taylor Lautner clause in his contract. Now, you could level that critique against Nolan's Batman - one can't forget the penultimate scene of The Dark Knight where legitimate concerns about Bale's spyware are casually handwaved away in the name of justice - but Snyder doesn't even rise to that level of intricacy. He whacks actions figures against each other. Explosions and laser missiles are more for decoration and less for logical effect. Camp isn't even remotely in his vocabulary, so Rebel Moon's plot is humourless and self-serious, and every grimy close-up of the ragtag misfits and rebel commoners (salt of the earth types, people of the land, you know) merely remind us that this story has been told a hundred times before, and much better at that. But even Marvel have managed to, on some occasions, lift themselves out of this dreary, CGI palette of browns and greys. The Scargiver is ugly and incomprehensible.
In the end, The Scargiver's biggest sin is that it is flat out boring. What little intrigue Part One's premise conjured with its seldom original worldbuilding (and even that in question pending a lawsuit from the company contracted to create a tabletop RPG for the franchise and who claim their pitch bible was hijacked) dissipates here in an ending so deflating it beggars belief, minimising the prior battles' significance by revealing that the royal Princess Issa is actually alive ("So, the village of Veldt learned to function as a society. And eventually, the princess was rescued by... oh, let's say, Titus."), that they must rescue her, and that the story can continue being randomly generated for at least two more instalments. Oh, and it turns out that Netflix is not the optimal model for Snyder after all, announcing shortly after release that he has an R-rated vision in mind. Maybe one day he might gaslight his way towards a fresh Tomatometer rating for this series. If you can continue pretending that a few dozen sacks of grain are actually valuable to an evil empire that can warp through space and resurrect corpses, you may be able to persevere until The Scargiver's credits roll. But hope for Part Three lies in a galaxy far, far away. Wait no, that's a bit too obvious.
Earlier on, in a similarly egregious moment, the band of ragtag heroes are heralded by the village they are to become saviours too, all before the actual deed of the final battle, quite literally presented with each of their character archetypes and attributes as if they were the latest players in a D&D campaign. Why not at least move this heartwarming sequence to the end of the film after they are victorious? It matters little because they all become a generic smear of fantasy tropes with little to differentiate them from one another. Remember that A Child of Fire was a movie that sought to subvert the appeal of Doona Bae's slick dual wielding sabres with the futility of revenge in a sobering monologue, only to then use the same desire of vengeance to recruit Djimon Hounsou's tortured general twenty minutes later. Of course she falls in line here, because having a true pacifist would mean her absence from the movie altogether, and we can't have that.
Let's not mind the fact that these villagers missed all their heroics in the first film and have only known them for a few days, so they're only closely acquainted with their grain harvesting skills (which are, to be fair, quite impressive). Snyder's always been, for what it's worth, praised for his visual finesse, and in what is so perfectly poised as a parody (but isn't), he spends ten minutes highlighting the heavenly harvest, or what seems to be an eternity when taking into account his liberal use of slow motion and exquisite close-ups of wheat trembling in golden sunlight. This is the director who mastered the aesthetic of cool via speed ramping in 300 almost two decades ago and has since refused to further innovate. He seeks the coolest shot because it's cool, so he'll shoot underwater from the perspective of a barrel of water because it looks cool, he'll have Jimmy make a dramatically late entrance and pose because it looks cool, and he'll have the edgy string quartet accompaniment of the Brutus-esque royal coup be literally just sitting in the background playing diegetically and reacting live to the action because...why? It's badass, that's why.
Snyder's Watchmen ranks as one of the worst examples of adapted media because he fundamentally misunderstood (or perhaps deliberately ignored) the inherent fascistic act of being a superhero and wielding god-like powers to enact your own brand of justice, seeking to instead visually elevate them like every one of his protagonists, speed ramping action shots to exalt their divine physiques. There's even a shocking shot of Staz Nair with a shirt on, which must clearly violate the Taylor Lautner clause in his contract. Now, you could level that critique against Nolan's Batman - one can't forget the penultimate scene of The Dark Knight where legitimate concerns about Bale's spyware are casually handwaved away in the name of justice - but Snyder doesn't even rise to that level of intricacy. He whacks actions figures against each other. Explosions and laser missiles are more for decoration and less for logical effect. Camp isn't even remotely in his vocabulary, so Rebel Moon's plot is humourless and self-serious, and every grimy close-up of the ragtag misfits and rebel commoners (salt of the earth types, people of the land, you know) merely remind us that this story has been told a hundred times before, and much better at that. But even Marvel have managed to, on some occasions, lift themselves out of this dreary, CGI palette of browns and greys. The Scargiver is ugly and incomprehensible.
In the end, The Scargiver's biggest sin is that it is flat out boring. What little intrigue Part One's premise conjured with its seldom original worldbuilding (and even that in question pending a lawsuit from the company contracted to create a tabletop RPG for the franchise and who claim their pitch bible was hijacked) dissipates here in an ending so deflating it beggars belief, minimising the prior battles' significance by revealing that the royal Princess Issa is actually alive ("So, the village of Veldt learned to function as a society. And eventually, the princess was rescued by... oh, let's say, Titus."), that they must rescue her, and that the story can continue being randomly generated for at least two more instalments. Oh, and it turns out that Netflix is not the optimal model for Snyder after all, announcing shortly after release that he has an R-rated vision in mind. Maybe one day he might gaslight his way towards a fresh Tomatometer rating for this series. If you can continue pretending that a few dozen sacks of grain are actually valuable to an evil empire that can warp through space and resurrect corpses, you may be able to persevere until The Scargiver's credits roll. But hope for Part Three lies in a galaxy far, far away. Wait no, that's a bit too obvious.
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