I need to preface this with a few things about Rebel Moon that I've learnt. Firstly Part 1 and Part 2 shared a budget, which explains a lot of the things that I brought up in my review of Part 1 in which I thought "Yeah this seems low budget". Secondly Zach Snyder is releasing "Snyder Cuts" of both Part 1 and Part 2 that will be an hour longer each and "be totally different films" which is just complete horseshit honestly given how off pace and plotless they both feel as they are now. I dont want to have to wait for my film to be patched to watch them Zach, stop it.

Now onto the film.

Rebel Moon - Part Two: The Scargiver is definitely better than Part One. I would say this is an "Okay" movie honestly and while it misses the mark on a lot of things still i'd at least call this one watchable versus Part One which I really could never tell anyone to watch even just as a "bad movie". The film still suffers from an almost complete lack of plot but does give us some small threads of it which at least try to give us some context to what one google review commenter I saw describe as "an epic space opera universe" in what I can only assume was done under the influence of narcotics.

The plot is still thin and Part Two picks up immediately after Part One ended, which really means the film never stood a chance to tell a story. Part Two emphasises that issue by having Sir Anthony Hopkins summarise the entire plot of Part One in two sentences in voice over when the film starts, just in case you missed something.

We see the Discount Space Avengers arrive at the small village from the fist film and they start to plan to have a big battle after a number of mixed ideas about what's actually going on, which helps break the fourth wall a bit because I also didn't really understand still why anyone was doing what they're doing. Why is the Empire raiding its own farms for grain? Why does it centre around this tiny village on one planet in particular? The film answers none of these so im not sure still.

Act One of the film is a mixture of a half an hour long sequence of them harvesting wheat which was actually quite good in a way I cant quite explain. I think it appealed to my souls desire to return to agrarianism maybe. The twist however is that the other part of Act One is a sequence of flashbacks for all of our heroes to show their tragic backstories and this hit me like a truck as I started to realise the actual lore of the universe of Rebel Moon.

In the flashbacks we see well told tragic stories, legitimately good CGI sequences and well designed costumes and set pieces in short bursts overlaid with plenty of context in an almost complete departure from the rest of the film. What I realised from this is that the universe of Rebel Moon now exists in a post-plot world and that they have actually reached The End of History, leading us into the general chaos and conflict that we see unfolding before us now. Sated that it took me only one and a half films to realise this I entered into Act Two with a spring in my step as I now understood the story.

Act Two is where I realised I actually liked this film. The entire act is just one pitched battle in the village and its actually pretty good as far as battle scenes go. Each of the heroes get their own scene in which to shine and we go through tragedy and celebration in waves that make it hard to actually dislike what you're watching even if its a bit basic. The battles themselves are decently well choreographed and the special effects of the explosions are very good, additionally they seem to have fixed the weird janky laser bean effects from Part One and they're mostly looking okay now.

Act 3 sees the end stages of the battle as well as a Hero v Villain 1v1 showdown on a big ship which is okay enough but nothing special, they could have probably done more with this but it wasn't *bad* per se. By the time the film ends its not overstayed its welcome really but again it didn't have much to say for itself and the plot still seems quite thin. Apparently there was a magic princess who was murdered but she didn't actually die and that's a big plot point now? Honestly between this and the mixed motives over the huge "we need grain" plot point its getting boring trying to think about what this film is actually about.

The film takes place pretty much exclusively at the small village interspersed with scenes on the big battleship so theres much less of an issue of them jumping around to different planets in a confusing manner and it means the location shooting has a chance to shine. Its a pretty village but boring and safe as far as "settings for an epic space opera" would go. The ship scenes are less interesting visually because the corridors of the ship basically look like what an old WW2 navy ship interior looks like but with more computers.

Speaking of the visuals as I said earlier the special effects are markedly improved from Part One and there are some very cool explosion effects which I will give them points for. Unfortunately however Part Two does not let what is clearly a talented costume and makeup department shine at all in this one as we have a complete and utter lack of freaks. Not even one. Part One showed us an array of alien people with interesting, horrifying and creepy practical effect makeup and costume design and yet in Part Two we only see normal humans. Where are my freaks Zach? I want my god damn freaks.

On the flip side of this Part Two dosnt make a return to weird sex scenes of the first one and aside from two people in love sleeping with each other in a normal way theres nothing else in it. I assume they ran out of rapes and tentacle sex scenes that Zach could justify putting in to the film, either that or they're in the Extended Cut that's coming (which is R-rated apparently so lets just pray they're not).

The film did have several standout moments for me which made a big difference over Part One which had zero. Namely that Jimmy The Robot (genuinely the real name of the character) played by Sir Anthony Hopkins turns up Ex Machina in a battle scene and just batters the fuck out of loads of people in a scene that actually got me a tiny bit excited almost. We also have a Chekov's rocket launcher which I thought would annoy me but didn't and was played off well enough.

The real star of the show however left me floored. During the 1v1 final fight in Act 3 a man actually charges up a backhand slap that he delivers during the fight, something that nothing could have prepared me for and honestly was my favourite part of the whole movie.

Part Two was definitely a step up from Part One and i'd say this one is actually worth a watch if you have absolutely nothing else that you could be doing with your time and because nothing happens in the first film and Sir Anthony Hopkins kindly explains this in voice over at the start of this one you dont need to have watched Part One to put this one on.

However if Zach Snyder really wants this franchise to live up to his claims of it being an "epic space opera" it has a very long way to go in terms of writing, plot and scale.

Give me my freaks back Zach.