Netflix Sci-Fi Epic Franchise Needs Shorter Movies

When fans demanded the release of a Justice League Snyder cut, it wasn’t born of a random desire to extend the runtime of a film that the visionary director had already completed and delivered. As you likely already know, Snyder stepped down from helming the original 2017 iteration of Justice League due to a family tragedy, leaving the reigns to Marvel’s Joss Whedon.

In the case of both Rebel Moon movies, Zack Snyder was already given full artistic and creative control to begin with, so their original formats should already be considered the Snyder cuts.

In fact, Snyder only struck a deal with Netflix to develop Rebel Moon Part One: A Child of Fire and Part Two: The Scargiver after his original plans to make a Star Wars film fell through with Disney.

This means that the existing Rebel Moon films, long as they are, offered Zack Snyder some of the most creative freedom of his entire career. With these films, he was already given access to a massive sandbox of creativity with the Star Wars universe, only to then have the restrictions of the Star Wars canon entirely eliminated.

Despite this incredible opportunity, both installments of the Rebel Moon franchise were deeply underwhelming, resulting in certified rotten critic scores of 22 percent and 17 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, respectively.

Chief among the complaints from those who streamed the Netflix originals was the fact that both movies were obscenely over-indulgent, poorly paced, and way, way too long for their own good. Many critics have argued that both films could have been truncated into a single, concise, 2 and a half hour movie, rather than spend entire acts showing farmers milling their fields and collecting grains.

So, unless Snyder’s upcoming cut is designed to actually make both Rebel Moon installments shorter, I can confidently say that very few viewers will have any interest in watching them. That feels highly unlikely, however, as Snyder has a tendency to drag things out with over-explained plot lines and an extremely liberal use of slow motion.

After all, when Zack Snyder’s Justice League finally released in 2021, the filmmaker had more than doubled the original film’s runtime, for a director’s cut that runs for a staggering 4 hours and 2 minutes.

Zack Snyder does have a dedicated fan base of viewers who championed his artistic vision of the now-defunct DCEU for years, even as professional critics tore films like Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice to shreds.

Still, these super-fans were significantly less vocal in support of the Rebel Moon movies as they aired, suggesting that even Snyder’s core followers find few redeeming qualities in the space epics.