Zack Snyder has been living in the world of Rebel Moon for the better part of 20 years. According to his recollections, he first pitched it to one of his college professors as “The Dirty Dozen in space,” which the teacher thought was a very cool launch point. The idea only grew in Snyder’s mind over the years, especially as he experimented with other forms of world-building through some of his greatest films, be it Watchmen and 300, or the movies in his DC Extended Universe. Zack’s wife and producing partner Deborah Snyder confirms that Rebel Moon was pitched to Lucasfilm as a potential Star Wars movie, though that happened before 20th Century Fox was purchased by Walt Disney Studios, and their plan for Star Wars was implemented.
Debbie Snyder told us:
It all is seeped – I think all the details, and the Easter eggs – we created three different languages for the film. We have all this iconology … that's all wholly original. So I think it's super exciting to not owe anything to anything. And also, it's a little bit more, I think, heavy lifting we need to do to show the world what this is. Because it is original IP, and there's so very little original IP out there. But I think that's what the challenge and the excitement was for us.
The end result is the two-part Rebel Moon, which will begin screening on Netflix on December 22, followed by the conclusion on April 19. And in an effort to start educating audiences on the amount of world building that has gone into Rebel Moon, Zack and Debbie Snyder invited CinemaBlend to the Los Angeles set, where we learned all about the different planets, ships, creatures, and characters the writer-directed created out of whole cloth for the benefit of this story.
The film’s first trailer suggested some of the storylines, and the epic scale of the sci-fi production. It introduces Kora (Sofia Boutella), a one-time soldier for the evil Imperium who has escaped to the farmind planet of Veldt, and agrees to defend it when the Imperium comes calling.
When breaking down Rebel Moon, and the plans he has for the two-part journey, Snyder told us:
It's a pretty straightforward ‘good versus evil, few against many’ kind of concept. It’s a huge underdog movie. Because really, the villagers shouldn't… they don't have a chance, really. And it's only through, say, the genius of Titus, Djimon’s character, and the tenacious villagers and some trickery, and then Kora just being insane that you end up with a victory.
Over the course of our day-long visit to the Rebel Moon set, we learned great detail about the story, the planets, the rich history of the wicked Imperium, the practical sets built in Santa Clarita, California… on which the Snyders perfected the art of growing wheat (a crucial element of the narrative). And we learned key information about the major players in Zack Snyder’s Rebel Moon, starting with:
Kora (Sofia Boutella)
Deborah Synder, a producer on the film, refers to Kora as “the center of the film.” She’s the main character that we will follow, first on Veldt but then on her journey through this expansive world as she grapples with her past in the Imperium, and her possible future. As Zack told us:
She's proficient with any kind of weapon. She’s fast, deadly, really just has been trained since her childhood to fight, and is really good at it.
Zack Snyder confirms that Sofia Boutella was hired first, and the rest of the cast assembled around her. He was particularly impressed with her natural physicality, something that stems from the years she spent as a professional dancer. But that stage life, according to the Algerian actress, doesn’t compare to the work she put in for Rebel Moon. Said Boutella, during an interview on the set:
This is the hardest project that I'm doing since when I was dancing on tour. Or the closest, in terms of intensity and length and, I suppose, pace. Minus, we had to travel all the time. But the physical aspect and the pace is the closest.
Debbie also referred to the emotional character arc that Kora goes through, in addition to the physical demands. And in the character’s backstory, as written by Snyder, Boutella found plenty of material that connected deeply to her own past experiences. As she explained to us:
I was born in Algeria and I never… Kora is found on another planet that's not her home. She was abducted. I was not abducted. But my roots are not necessarily where I live, and not where I grew up, and not where I was born. And I can relate to that. There's a sense of freedom to that aspect, but also a sense of, like, home is everywhere. But not specifically somewhere. That was very relatable for me. And then, not to be dramatic, but there was a civil war growing up in my country. And not that it was as dangerous as an actual war, but I grew up in that environment, and it's lodged somewhere in me. And I felt that, ‘Okay, I think I can do that.’
Kora will lead the heroes against the oppressive Imperium, though Snyder says that a lot of the hero’s journey in Rebel Moon will be “a lot of trying to make amends, and set things right.”
Admiral Noble (Ed Skrein)
Noble is the heavy hand of the Imperium, personified. As the story begins, the Imperium have arrived on Veldt prepared to colonize… and leave nothing behind in their wake. He’s the bad guy of the movie. As Snyder puts it:
He's really just gone off the rails a little bit with his morality. He's on this campaign to squish out the resistance. … It's also very clear (in this movie) with the morality (of) who's good and who's bad. We don't do a lot of like, ‘Oh, The Imperium, they're just misunderstood. As far as they're concerned, they're the good guys!’ It’s not really like that.
Kai (Charlie Hunnam)
Kai, played by Charlie Hunnam, remains a bit of a mystery, even after our extensive day on set. You see bits and pieces of him in the trailer, and he appears to be on Kora’s side in the battle. According to Snyder, he let this much slip:
Kai is kind of a bounty hunter. He’s quite good to have around. A problem solver. And he has a ship!
That ship will be used by Kora and Kai to trave laround to different planets – including Providence, with its Japanese Samurai influences, and Daggus, a tech-based Blade Runner type of atmosphere – to recruit what Hunnam referred to as “the baddest men and women in the galaxy to help fight this fight.” We’re excited to see this uncompromising figure in action.
Jimmy (Anthony Hopkins)
Sometimes, and maybe this is because of Star Wars, we’re trained to view robots and droids in science-fiction movies as comic relief. C-3PO and his neurosis, or K-2SO from Rogue One and his overzealous affection for rule following. This is not the case with the Jimmys. Snyder said that these combat robots are some of his favorite characters in the movie. But when I asked the director if Jimmy served as comic relief in Rebel Moon, he made it abundantly clear:
No, no, no. Jimmy is heart-attack serious. He's the most human character, it think. He is not comic relief. Do we have comic relief? (laughs) I think there's a little bit of … there's some funny stuff in the movie. I think it's funny. (But Jimmy’s) a combat robot.
You are going to see Jimmy wearing antlers on his head. This occurs after Jimmy finds a dead deer in the forests on Veldt. And he turns those antlers into his crown. Why? We’ll find out when Rebel Moon finally arrives.
Titus (Djimon Hounsou)
Titus is a general who used to be part of the king's regime in the Imperium. He was trained as a gladiator, and is an proficient fighter with an amazing military mind. However, once the King died, and Regent Balisarius took over, Titus realized that he no longer could fight for this new regime, because their brutality and viciousness contradicted everything he had been raised to believe.
As Snyder explained to us:
Kora and Titus were both from the Mother World. Titus is from a conquered planet that was … I had this idea for Djimon’s character, that (he) had come from a planet that had been colonized by the Mother World a generation before he was born. And that in the tradition of the colonizer, the best and the brightest are brought back to the Mother World to study or to, in his case, to do military service. But he's an import. He's from a conquered nation and he's here to be indoctrinated into that way of thinking. And it's only back on his home – or when he's visiting or when he was growing up – did his nanny or his grandmother teach him about his own culture before the Imperium, before the Mother World invaded. And that's how he knows about his world.
Speaking of his character, Djimon Hounsou described Titus as having “a compassionate heart,” which complicates matters because that emotion is in direct contrast to what his entire career has led to. We’ll see how that plays out when he helps the warriors of Veldt defend their planet against the Imperium.
Regent Balisarius (Fra Fee)
If Noble is the Darth Vader of Rebel Moon then Balisarius would be the Emperor, pulling strings from a distance but really being the driving force behind the conquests of the Imperium. He followed along with the ways of the old regime. But now that he’s in charge, things are about to get way more heinous in the galaxy.
Snyder told us:
The Mother World is just acquiring, and they have been for some time. The old king is much more a straight up imperialist, but like, in the tradition. Where I feel like The Regent Balisarius, he's much more like a dictator. He'd be happy to raze a planet just for its natural resources rather than like, ‘Oh, we should land and see what the people are like. And maybe some of them could fight for us. Maybe we could assimilate their culture into ours.’ … The modern Imperium is much more aggressive.
Something tells us that Balisarius is going to end up being a major problem for the resistance forces in Rebel Moon. And if his presence isn’t so dominant in the first chapter of this saga, Rebel Moon: A Child of Fire, then his impact might be felt in the follow up story, Rebel Moon: The Scargiver. Though the two-part story wasn’t confirmed on the Rebel Moon set, Snyder definitely was setting up that scope when he told us:
It is a movie that even in this concept would beg for a follow up, regardless of whether you made one, only because the Empire is gigantic. The Imperium is ridiculously huge. You blow up one ship, and they're not going to be happy about it. You know, it's not like you are like, ‘They'll never come back now. Yay!’ (laughs). The way we designed it is that, that they kind of are on the offensive at the end. You know, they have to kind of bring the fight to them because otherwise they can't wait.
We will have plenty more from the set of Rebel Moon as we lead up the release of Rebel Moon: A Child of Fire on December 22 – on Netflix (and hopefully in theaters for a limited run).
