By JJ Ledewitz, Staff Writer
Have you ever heard of the movie Rebel Moon?
I assume you haven’t. Maybe you’ve seen it but know it by another name: Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire. Probably not. What about its sequel, Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver? No? Maybe you recognize the extended cuts of the movies, Rebel Moon – Chapter One: Chalice of Blood and Rebel Moon – Chapter Two: Curse of Forgiveness?
If I told you that these two films had a prequel comic book, a big-budget narrative podcast, as well as a role-playing video game, an animated short, a tabletop board game, a graphic novel, an animated series, and at least two more films in development – all announced in the last two years – you’d probably assume Rebel Moon is some kind of mind-blowing cinematic masterpiece that somehow slipped under the mainstream radar.
Sorry to disappoint, but it’s not.
Rebel Moon is an epic space-opera movie, seemingly greenlit off of the assumption that it would begin a lucrative franchise. It premiered on Netflix in December 2023 and received a 22% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. However, the sequel had already been filmed with a release just four months later. Meanwhile, the prequel comic book, the podcast and everything else were already in production. So, what did Netflix do?
They pretended that everything was fine. The second movie was released, received even worse reviews, the podcast dropped, seemingly no one cared and the video game is coming out soon. And I don’t care.
In recent years, the studios making these movies want everything to be its own franchise, and if it’s already a franchise, then the “universe” must be expanded for no reason. The three Lord of the Rings films were great, but are a lackluster prequel TV series, an animated film, and two more big-budget films really necessary?
The issue is not with the idea of a franchise but with the blatant greed driving producers in recent years. Nowadays, when a writer pitches a movie or show in these franchises, do they begin with explaining the characters, their motives and the plot that surrounds them? Or do they first explain how this movie or show can create the most action figures, or that the show has certain characters whose entire existence is for sixteen potential spin-offs, so that the company will see real value?
Of course, these are franchises created by corporations, so money is always a priority. Their intentions are still – “We can capitalize off of what made us so much money” – but at least the sequels and prequels of the last century told original stories, with plot being the primary focus. It’s not like that anymore. In recent years, producers see how much money they make and think it’s the world of the film – and only the world – that produced profits, completely ignoring the story, the characters, and what made the film so good. With small franchises, they just make the same movie over and over and over again, with each movie being the same as the one before it, but worse – until they can begin the overload of spin-offs and the “from-the-world-of” slop. It’s either “expanding the world” or “creating exact replicas,” there’s no in-between.
While this does give clarity to why the corporations feel the need to expand every franchise they can get their hands on, it doesn’t answer the question of “Why does Rebel Moon get its own universe?” This can be answered by looking at Rebel Moon’s history. The film, which was written and directed by Zack Snyder, was originally pitched to Lucasfilm as a Star Wars film. After being rejected, and after years of pitching it elsewhere, Netflix picked it up. At one point, it probably had the potential to connect to an existing franchise, and therefore, Netflix seemed to think that the film was dripping in franchise material –because that’s their priority.
If these franchise films told interesting stories with complex characters, this article wouldn’t exist. But because these corporations think that everything franchise-related will print them money, they seem to be putting originality in the back seat. With AI on the rise and the world in constant turmoil, originality is needed to tell the stories that haven’t yet been told. By all means, make another superhero movie, or sci-fi space show– but make it different. Make it unique. Make it stand out.
Do something new.