Netflix's 'Rebel Moon Part 2: The Scargiver' Debuts With Snyder's ...

Rebel Moon

Netflix

Netflix has thrown so much money and advertising into Zack Snyder’s attempt to craft his own Star Wars universe, and the result is an absolute, utter critical disaster. We know that for sure now that the second film is out, Rebel Moon Part 2: The Scargiver, which as of right now is reviewing worse than Part 1, despite this being when the action was supposed to pick up after the assembling of the main “team” in the first film.

MORE FROM FORBES'Rebel Moon Part 2' Review: Zack Snyder's 'The Scargiver' Is Even Worse Than Part 1By Erik Kain

While this number keeps fluctuating, early reviews have Rebel Moon Part 2: The Scargiver somewhere between an 8% and 14% on Rotten Tomatoes. So far this is lower than the first film which had a 21% from 173 critics in the end, and a better, but not good, 57% audience score.

Rebel Moon

Rotten Tomatoes

Again, this is not just “critics hate Zack Snyder.” Compared to his overall filmography, these films are uniquely terrible. Here’s the grand list of his live-action projects that demonstrates that:

Dawn of the Dead – 76% critics, 77% audience score Zack Snyder’s Justice League – 72% critics, 93% audience Army of the Dead – 67% critics, 75% audience Watchmen – 65% critics, 71% audience 300 – 61% critics, 89% audience Man of Steel – 56% critics, 75% audience Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice – 29% critics, 63% audience Sucker Punch – 22% critics, 47% audience Rebel Moon Part 1: A Child of Fire – 21% critics, 57% audience Rebel Moon Part 2: The Scargiver - (8-14%) critics, N/A audience

As you can see, critics have actually rated half of Snyder’s movies positively, though with Rebel Moon Part 2 here, that will be 5/10. But if these scores stand, Part 2 will be his lowest rated feature ever. And the first film is his second lowest audience score ever behind only Sucker Punch, a film Snyder has himself said needs “fixing” with a director’s cut, so it’s not just that snooty critics take issue with these movies.

Things are complicated for Rebel Moon as Snyder has seemed to indicate that these two films are the “corporate” PG-13 cuts while his unleashed R-rated cuts coming out this summer are essentially different movies. This entire thing has been a marketing gimmick by him and Netflix but it seems pretty clear they should have just gone with his original take and not neutered it for…why, exactly? Why would they bother? It’s not like they need to be concerned about PG-13 versus R-rated ticket sales. Whatever the case it seems like it was a huge misstep (not that more gore and nudity would necessarily save these films).

Snyder also seems…a bit out of touch with reality when it comes to Rebel Moon, saying recently he believes that he needs four to six Rebel Moon movies to tell the story. After this, it’s not even clear Netflix will allow him a third film. If viewership is there it may not matter what review scores are, but the first film did not break into Netflix’s top 10 original movies list in the end.

After the R-rated cuts, this is probably it for Rebel Moon, which may be for the best.

Follow me on Twitter, Threads, YouTube, and Instagram.

Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.