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
Watch Now
Stream On

Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
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
More From This Movie

31 Critic Reviews

tbd User Reviews

Details & Credits|Trailers

Current Movie Releases
By MetascoreBy User Score
1 77 Project Hail Mary
2 75 Send Help
3 73 Hoppers
4 72 The Sheep Detectives
5 63 Normal
SEE ALL
Essential Links
New on Amazon Prime Video
New on Netflix
Coming Soon to DVD/Blu-ray
SEE ALL