Rebel Moon, Netflix’s new space opera, does not hide its affiliation with several films, including Star Wars. And there’s a good reason for that.
That’s it, Rebel Moon is available on Netflix. After several months of intense promotion on the part of the American giant, Zack Snyder’s space opera hopes to explode viewing scores around the world. It must be said that the streaming platform is betting a lot on this new franchise for which it has paid no less than 116 million dollars. But before hoping to become a new lucrative SF saga, Rebel Moon could have become something entirely different.
Our opinion on Rebel Moon!
In an interview given to Empire last July, the director made a funny revelation: “My film is The Seven Samurai in the space. And I wanted to make one Star Wars originally. I knew that George Lucas was also very inspired by Kurosawa’s films.”
But then why didn’t this happen? “The takeover of Lucasfilm by Disney had just taken place” [en 2012 ndlr]. There was a shooting window, but ultimately, I didn’t want Star Wars characters. I wanted to do this on my own. And most importantly, I wanted it to be R-Rated [interdit aux moins de 17 ans]. So it wasn’t playable.”
For almost 10 years, and in parallel with the filming of his films, Snyder and his wife finally developed the script for what was originally to be a spin-off of the third opus: “I knew it was going to be difficult to place my film in the Star Wars galaxy. And the more I got involved in it, the more I realized that I didn’t want to do that.”
Rebel Moon nonetheless remains a “cheap” Star Wars since it tells the story of rebels who attack a totalitarian and bellicose government. The opening sequence could very well have appeared in Lucas’ interstellar saga.
It is ultimately towards Netflix that Snyder will turn. The director had previously worked with them on the remake Army of the Dead (as well as the spin-off Army of Thieves) and is currently working on other projects. Thanks to the streaming platform, the director of Man of Steel will be able to do what he aimed for with Rebel Moon: offer an R-Rated version, in a director’s cut of more than 3 hours, which will be available later in the year.
A Rebel Moon 2 (expected on April 19) and a Rebel Moon 3 are already in the pipeline. So we haven’t heard the last of Kora (Sofia Boutella) and her army of rebels.