Rebel Moon Part 1: A Child of Fire
Netflix | Release Date: December 15, 2023 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
31
METASCORE
Generally unfavorable reviews based on 40 Critic Reviews
Positive:
1
Mixed:
21
Negative:
18
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
80
Film ThreatMichael Talbot-HaynesDec 24, 2023
Instead of establishing and repeating the same flavor, we are presented with a sci-fi-tasting menu of increasing complexity. Read full review
60
Total FilmNeil SmithDec 15, 2023
Snyder’s passion project risks becoming subsumed by its own self-importance, but delivers bombastic mayhem and grandiose visuals by the bucket-load. Read full review
60
VarietyOwen GleibermanDec 15, 2023
“Rebel Moon,” while eminently watchable, is a movie built so entirely out of spare parts that it may, in the end, be for Snyder cultists only. Read full review
59
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Barry HertzDec 22, 2023
So highly imitative as to strip the word “derivative” of any meaning, Rebel Moon is fan-fiction writ large, as if Snyder believes he’s outsmarting everyone from George Lucas and George R.R. Martin to the estates of Frank Herbert and H.R. Giger. Read full review
50
Original-CinChris KnightDec 19, 2023
Rebel Moon isn’t a terrible movie, but it pales in every comparison to the Star Wars universe. Read full review
50
ColliderErick MassotoDec 18, 2023
For a film that originally was thought of as a subversion of the Star Wars franchise, Rebel Moon - Part One: A Child of Fire feels pretty similar to an installment of it. Read full review
50
Screen RantRachel LaBonteDec 15, 2023
With Rebel Moon, Snyder is positively bursting with exciting ideas, but they lack compelling characters and a solid plot to hold them up. Read full review
45
The Daily BeastNick SchagerDec 15, 2023
This misbegotten attempt at creating a new out-of-this-world Snyderverse is merely a knockoff dressed up in its director’s stylistic signatures. Read full review
44
TheWrapWilliam BibbianiDec 15, 2023
It is simply what it is, and that is a hugely expensive but uninspired “Star Wars” knockoff with some thrilling action sequences, and some truly ugly moments that taint the entire thing. Read full review
40
The Observer (UK)Wendy IdeDec 24, 2023
Sofia Boutella shows action-star potential as Kora, a mysterious outsider who has found peace living with the farming commune, but she deserves a better vehicle than this chop-shopped jalopy. Read full review
40
ScreenCrushMatt SingerDec 21, 2023
Rebel Moon is the kind of movie that seems overwrought and underbaked all at once. So much care has been given to the style and the design of every little element of the sets, the costumes, and the props; yet so little concern has been given to populating all those background elements with fleshed-out human beings with lives that feel like they exist beyond the edges of Snyder’s immaculately composed frames. Read full review
40
The Irish TimesDonald ClarkeDec 21, 2023
If you want to avoid cliche and overworked influence you have come to the wrong place. Read full review
40
CNNBrian LowryDec 21, 2023
“Rebel Moon” might look big and splashy, even on a TV screen, but in terms of working as drama, it’s less a rebel yell than a low-key rebel grunt. Read full review
40
Rolling StoneDavid FearDec 18, 2023
It’s essentially the Snyder Cut of every science fiction and fantasy touchstone of the past 100 years — a jam-packed, ransacked greatest-hits reel posing as a saga. Read full review
40
EmpireSophie ButcherDec 15, 2023
Despite some cool action sequences and interesting aliens, the first Rebel Moon instalment is a disjointed ride through an under-realised universe. Read full review
40
BBCNicholas BarberDec 15, 2023
Nothing exciting happens. There are no challenges to meet, no obstacles to overcome, no Death Stars to destroy. Read full review
40
Los Angeles TimesMark OlsenDec 15, 2023
Boutella often has an otherworldly screen presence that makes her perfectly suited for this kind of material, but the fussiness of all that is happening around Kora means that the character and performance never get a chance to breathe and blossom, or to fully come to life. Read full review
40
Screen DailyTim GriersonDec 15, 2023
Unfortunately, there is not much ingenuity or inspiration to Snyder’s vision. Read full review
40
The Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneyDec 15, 2023
Action scenes are serviceable enough but rarely exciting, pumped up with Snyder’s usual tool kit of speed-ramping and slo-mo. But there’s a grimy aesthetic to the movie that becomes ugly and tiresome (the director took on the DP role himself), and the episodic plotting seldom builds enough steam to stop you thinking about other things. Read full review
40
The TelegraphRobbie CollinDec 15, 2023
This first half of Snyder’s diptych (the second is due in the spring) is more of a loosely doodled mood board than a functioning film – a series of pulpy tableaux that mostly sound fun in isolation, but become numbingly dull when run side by side. Read full review
40
SlashfilmJeremy MathaiDec 15, 2023
Ultimately, "Rebel Moon" resembles little more than a grab-bag collection of world-building influences, mythology, and epic storytelling that we've seen done better many times before. Read full review
40
IGNHanna FlintDec 15, 2023
Despite a great ensemble cast, Zack Snyder's space opera is let down by a derivative patchwork script, mediocre action sequences and a superficial story that fails to live up to its expansive promise. Read full review
38
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperDec 20, 2023
Unless this is a parody of “Star Wars,” it looks like we’re in for a long and ponderous, CGI-dominated slog filled with stock characters, slow-mo battle sequences and interminable flashbacks designed to give clarity to a murky and convoluted story. Spoiler alert: It’s not a parody. We should be so lucky. Read full review
35
Paste MagazineBrianna ZiglerJan 2, 2024
By the time the credits rolled, I realized I don’t think I’d ever watched a movie this long that still felt so brief and bewilderingly abridged; where so much happened and yet nothing happened at all. Read full review
33
ConsequenceClint WorthingtonDec 20, 2023
In its current shape, Rebel Moon isn’t just boring; it feels hopelessly compromised. Read full review
33
The PlaylistRodrigo PerezDec 18, 2023
“Rebel Moon” is nearly unwatchable and one of the most stunning misfires of this scale in quite some time. Read full review
30
New York Magazine (Vulture)Bilge EbiriDec 22, 2023
Crumbling under the weight of its own visionary grandiosity, Zack Snyder’s Rebel Moon is a series of amazing-looking sets and costumes and effects looking for a story, characters, emotion — really, anything that might raise the pulse. Read full review
30
The New York TimesJeannette CatsoulisDec 21, 2023
Boutella is a pleasingly game and lithesome heroine, but the movie around her feels curiously indifferent, a crammed, compressed delivery system for its maker’s dorm-room dreams. Read full review
25
New York PostJohnny OleksinskiJan 2, 2024
While that winding, buzzword-filled title sounds like a cheap-o parody of a science-fiction epic, this is about as unfunny and unadventurous a movie as you could possibly imagine. Read full review
25
Movie NationRoger MooreDec 22, 2023
All these petty crimes against originality wouldn’t matter a whit if Snyder & Co. mashed it all up into something fun or at least more distracting. Read full review
25
Slant MagazineJake ColeDec 21, 2023
The relative grace of A Child of Fire’s action direction only underscores how disjointed and generic the rest of the film is. Read full review
25
Washington PostLucas TrevorDec 20, 2023
Moon has lots of setup but no resolution, treading water for most of its overlong running time. Read full review
25
ObserverDylan RothDec 19, 2023
Not only is Rebel Moon — Part One: A Child of Fire a pale imitation of the George Lucas and Akira Kurosawa films that inspired it, but it’s a structurally unsound mess that fails to inspire any excitement for its planned second half, let alone the trilogy that’s supposed to follow. It’s a blunder of Hobbit proportions. Read full review
25
San Francisco ChronicleBob StraussDec 18, 2023
While many of the film’s action sequences are in slow motion, it’s the story’s narrative (credited to Snyder, Shay Hatten and Kurt Johnstad) that really crawls. Read full review
25
RogerEbert.comSimon AbramsDec 15, 2023
“Rebel Moon” often looks more like an animated pitch for a movie than an actual movie with human characters, urgent drama, emotional stakes, and so forth. Read full review
20
The GuardianCharles BramescoDec 15, 2023
Going mad with power should be at the very least fun, exhilarating in the indulgence of an artist’s most outlandish whims. Instead, Snyder’s would-be magnum opus is merely boring. Read full review
20
The IndependentClarisse LoughreyDec 15, 2023
It’s a film populated by some of the Justice League Snyder Cut filmmaker’s worst impulses: a mess of imagery, some of it attempting to shock, congregated largely around the idea of what might look good in a trailer. Read full review
17
PolygonKyle WilsonDec 15, 2023
A Child of Fire is not only a bore, it’s a shoddy-looking one. Read full review
16
The A.V. ClubLauren J. CoatesDec 21, 2023
While Snyder may do his best to invent a dark, gripping universe to engross viewers, Rebel Moon is a limp, soulless regurgitation of tropes stolen from much more formidable films. Read full review
16
IndieWireDavid EhrlichDec 15, 2023
It’s hard to be even morbidly curious, let alone excited, about any future iterations or installments of a franchise so determined to remix a million things you’ve seen before into one thing you’ll wish you’d never seen at all. Read full review
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