‘Rebel Moon 2’ Is Zack Snyder’s Most Human Movie — Thanks To Sofia Boutella

Zack Snyder’s Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver premiered on Netflix over the weekend to relatively little fanfare. Sure, it ousted Anna to take the top spot in the Netflix Top 10 thanks to the loyalty of the Snyder faithful, but the muted reception to the first of Snyder’s two-part sci-fi epic, plus the constant assurance that a director’s cut and/or cuts are on their way (will the two parts also be cut into a single film, considering that they have no particular structure as stand-alone installments?), has helped guarantee that The Scargiver will not exactly be a 300-level cultural event. In terms of online buzz, it’s not even Zack Snyder’s Justice League.

But both Rebel Moon movies have something that none of Snyder’s other films can boast. Something better than 300 Spartans or a thousand Batmans. (Or, at least, something less discoursed to death.) What they have is a leading role for dancer-turned-actress Sofia Boutella. She is, in fact, the titular Scargiver. (She may also be the titular Child of Fire. I have seen the first movie twice and I’m still not sure.) She’s also known as Kora, a humble farmer on the quiet moon of Veldt; she’s also also known as Arthelais, her name from a dark past as a soldier for the status-quo-upholding “Imperium” forces (a major secret of her Imperium life is illustrated in Scargiver). The first movie, in the style of The Magnificent Seven, features Kora recruiting warriors to help her adopted home defend itself against the encroaching Imperium forces. The second movie, in the style of that hour from Matrix Revolutions where Zion is breached and automatic weapons fire constantly, is about that battle.

If that sounds like two things that should definitely be one movie, well, yes, you’re right. It makes way more sense to include the set-up, character development, and climax all in a single movie. But distending Rebel Moon also gives it the time and space to get a little weirder and more whimsical with its world-building than a normal, sane movie would – and gives a ton of screentime to Boutella, who has worked her way from playing gimmicky henchmen (in the first Kingsman movie) to scene-stealing supporting characters (like Jaylah, the alien warrior from Star Trek Beyond) to villainesses (like her role in the ill-fated 2017 Mummy). She was the lead in Gaspar Noé’s bonkers dance-horror movie Climax, but Snyder is the first big-canvas filmmaker to entrust her with such a major undertaking.

On paper, it’s not necessarily her best role. Kora may have two to four different names, but she’s not exactly a richly imagined character. She was a badass whose loyalty to the Imperium was her downfall – essentially, she was involved with a coup and wound up as its scapegoat before escaping and going on the run as the galaxy’s most-wanted criminal – and then became a badass who refuses to back down from a juster cause, in part out of guilt over her past actions. She must sport a cool haircut (in the first movie) and a pretty unflattering one (in the second). She does not crack a lot of jokes, or show off her personal tastes; her eventual love for humble farmer Gunnar (Michael Huisman) feels more like a concession than a release of passion.

But the Rebel Moon movies are action pictures, and that’s especially true of The Scargiver, which gives much of its running time over to an extended battle sequence. Kora spends most of this conflict sneaking onto an Imperium ship, planting a bomb, and fighting her way out, and while the movie doesn’t showcase martial-arts style choreography, Boutella’s physicality puts this material squarely on her shoulders. Much of the settings for Rebel Moon were almost certainly green-screened or otherwise augmented, but the way that Boutella barrels through the spaceship makes it feel vastly more real; even when it turns even cartoonier, as the ship falls through the air and sends the people in it careening down the now-sloping floors, Boutella’s physicality anchors the scene in some form of reality.

Boutella has been bringing this kind of credibility to movies for a decade at this point, drawing on her dance experience to give even small or gimmicky characters a specific point of view. The aesthetic of the James Bond riff Kingsman isn’t exactly From Russia with Love, and yet consider how Boutella makes her scenes of cartoonishly athletic knife-legged prowess look shockingly close to something resembling believable (at least compared to something like Argylle, where none of the characters have knife-legs yet none of them look like they’re actually doing anything, either, possibly because Boutella only cameos in that one). Notice how her Gazelle seems ineffably more sympathetic, even in out-of-context clips.

And the 2017 version of The Mummy may not be as beloved as the 1999 version, but it’s worth watching just for the acrobatic glee that Boutella brings to the role of an undead princess whose humanity ebbs and flows (mostly ebbs) as she sucks the souls from her victims.

Boutella’s gift – and maybe her curse – is her ability to complement a lot of hacky blockbuster-action moves, to make them look actually cool again, even sometimes bring them a little bit of soul. Snyder is often derided, fairly enough, for his love of slow motion and speed-ramping, where the action toggles between different speeds in a single shot. (His overuse of whatever techniques are occupying his director brain is one of the most frustrating things about him; see also the near parodic levels of shallow/selective focus he’s used on his three Netflix movies so far.) Boutella, however, is the perfect performer for these flourishes: Her natural grace makes a show-offy technique look just plain sensible. Of course you’d want to look more carefully at how she bends and twirls through imminent danger!

The Scargiver often feels like Snyder’s most human movie, and that’s not because he has a particularly soft touch with his characters or a more sensitive, contemplative staging of his trademark mayhem. It’s mostly because Kora, for all of her prowess, never looks like a shimmering digital avatar. She moves like a person, not part of a series of god-depicting tableaux. The new Rebel Moon brings its story to an endpoint, but also very much sets up more installments of this series that nobody seems to love. While it would be great to see Boutella in something more ambitious or character-driven – her Star Trek character would have been a great regular addition to that movie series had it continued – it would be satisfying to see Kora on another mission. There’s a weird relief in not being all that invested in the actual story of Rebel Moon. I’m in it to watch Sofia Boutella in motion.

Jesse Hassenger (@rockmarooned) is a writer living in Brooklyn. He’s a regular contributor to The A.V. Club, Polygon, and The Week, among others. He podcasts at www.sportsalcohol.com, too.