Rebel Moon Writer Addresses Film’s Negative Reviews

Dating back to his earliest projects, director Zack Snyder’s films have long been divisive among audiences and critics, with his latest effort, Rebel Moon: Part One – A Child of Fire, continuing that trend. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes calculates the movie as having 24% positive reviews, putting it slightly ahead of his Sucker Punch (which is tallied at 22% positive), but that number is a far cry from his Dawn of the Dead‘s 76% or his Army of the Dead‘s 67%. Co-writer Kurt Johnstad recently weighed in on the film’s critiques, promising that audiences and critics alike will have an emotional reaction to the experience and that the effectiveness of that journey will resonate more strongly with some viewers than others.

“I don’t read the reviews, I never have. Critics have a job to do. We live in a democracy. Everybody gets to vote,” Johnstad recalled to Variety. “If people watch the film, they’ll have an experience, and they will either enjoy it or they won’t. It’s flavors of ice cream. In my career of 20 years doing this, reviews have never equated to performance. A movie will either perform or it won’t. People will either love it and be connected to it, and I think what this movie has is an emotional drive and a core and characters that are vulnerable. And of course, there’s sequence and action and visual — it’s a magnificent-looking film. But I think that at the core of it, it’s got emotion. There’s an emotional engine and a currency that runs through the film that I think works, so I’d invite people to check it out.”

Streaming now on Netflix, the film is resonating significantly more with fans on the platform, as it has an audience score of 65% positive, though compared to Zack Snyder’s Justice League at 93% positive or 300‘s 89% positive, Rebel Moon is landing a bit lower for Snyder.

Among all of the reviews, whether they are positive or negative, some consistent themes are that the film’s strengths are in its visuals and in its action sequences, yet it struggles by both being too derivative of other sci-fi works and that it feels like it doesn’t offer a substantial enough storyline, even knowing it’s only half of the story.

It’s entirely possible that, by the time Rebel Moon: Part Two – The Scargiver arrives next year, the complete storyline being told will recontextualize this first film and elevate how it is viewed by audiences.

Rebel Moon: Part One – A Child of Fire is now streaming on Netflix.

What do you think of the writer’s remarks? Let us know in the comments!