Putting “Part One” in a film’s title merely forewarns audiences that they’re about to see an insufficient affair– a misdirected choice that pestered Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows– Part 1 The Golden Saga: Breaking Dawn– Part 1 The Hunger Games: Mockingjay– Part 1and Objective: Impossible– Dead Reckoning Part OneZack Snyder falls under the exact same trap with the exceedingly punctuated Rebel Moon– Part One: A Child of Firethe first chapter of a two-film sci-fi legend (in theaters Dec. 15; on Netflix Dec. 21) whose absence of creativity is just matched by its humorlessness. Cribbing so freely from Star Wars that George Lucas is worthy of large royalties, this misbegotten effort at developing a brand-new out-of-this-world Snyderverse is simply a knockoff dressed up in its director’s stylistic signatures, and all the more dismal for not even appropriately concluding its painfully shallow tale.
While Lucas’ Episode One was notoriously motivated by Akira Kurosawa’s The Hidden FortressSnyder rather simulates Lucas in addition to the Japanese master’s 7 Samurai (and its children, The Magnificent Seven and A Bug’s Life.