A robot sits along a riverbank and washes his face.
The action serves an obvious utility.
Still, it is in howZack Snyderstages the machines cleansing ritual that sticks with me.
And when she puts literal flowers in his hair (gears?
), the toaster with legs blushes.
No, really, lights implanted in his face turn red.
Does he feel embarrassment?
That cool water in his hand, just as he claims to know what warmth is?
The appeal of Zack Snyders films is that the director is a master at crafting exactly such evocative images.
Youre encouraged to infer meaning and depth within every composition and atop each exceedingly stylized camera setup.
Its eye-catching, but to the uninitiated it comes across as more bemusing or hokey than illuminating.
That changes on the day the Imperium arrives.
Together theyll return to the Space Norsemen as magnificent heroes, ready to fight the might of the Imperium.
But any sense of emotional or healthy connection between grown-ups, romantic or otherwise, is absent.
It is an unrelentingly bleak cosmos that mistakes a lack of humor for a lack of life.
At one point, a character muses that their newest idyllic location is a good place to die.
None of them seem to spare a moments thought on what it might be like to really live.
Its a derivative work that is full of despair.
Whatever shortcomings are inherent in the screenplays collection of cliches, the actual world-building onscreen is dense.
Rebel Moonhas a soul and a personality imbued by the hands of its creator.
Everyone else, however, should look for the escape pod now.
Rating:
2 out of 5
