The Rebel Moon: A Child of Fire

Movie review

The Critical Drinker is one of my favorite reviewers, so when his review of “The Rebel Moon: A Child of Fire” was so negative, it made me stop and think. And I think the difference is mainly summed up in the title of the review: “We all hoped The Rebel Moon: A Child of Fire would become the new Star Wars.” He and I had vastly different expectations.

When my husband and I try to pick something to watch at home, we mainly look for something entertaining that isn’t too “woke.” Frankly, that means we mostly avoid recent movies (especially in the 2020s!), sci-fi or fantasy, unless we have referrals. In the absence of referrals, we compare critic ratings to audience ratings. For Rebel Moon, the audience rating was about twice the critic rating, which meant it might at least be worth checking out. Anything with a high rating by the critics is usually a no-go.

When it started out, I thought the main protagonist, Kora, was going to be a girl boss, who’d diss or beat up a man for daring to be interested in her, and of course, win every fight because she’s just that awesome.

But it didn’t turn out that way. Gunnar, a young man from the village, suggests she come in and join the rest of the villagers at their gathering. And she doesn’t take it as an insult. Gunnar and also her male mentor, Hagen, both encourage her to make her relationship with her current lover, Den, more permanent. And he’s not a troglodyte. He’s actually, dare I say it, a nice guy. Okay, so what’s Kora’s problem? Well, there is one, and it’s her past.

So now, I’m actually interested. You see, I wasn’t hoping for a new Star Wars. I was just looking for something that didn’t suck. And from my point of view… it didn’t.

Yeah, I have trouble believing she could actually win some of the fights that she gets into. But it wasn’t enough to throw me out of the story. And she did still have to work for it. And the backstory explained, to my satisfaction, how she got so good.

I enjoyed the “gathering of the allies” section. The Tarak character actually made me think of Conan. The others were, similarly, stock characters. But I still cared about them, maybe just because they weren’t evil and didn’t seem to be there to beat me over the head with The Message. The non-white characters weren’t there to be superior to the white characters, the women weren’t there to show how much better they were than men. They were just… characters.

Okay, The Drinker is right: the characters weren’t all that deep, but I could root for them. And the evil character was really evil. And I haven’t watched anything Star Wars since the three prequel movies. I gave up and never watched the sequel movies, or anything else in the Star Wars franchise. So for me, it was good enough. I wasn’t disappointed. The good guys won. And we’ll watch the next one.