...and when I say this I mean really bad movies not just something that got mixed reviews and has a small yet rabid fanbase. I'm talking about movies that are basically universally panned by both the general public and the professional critics. When even the critics that are obviously bought by the industry are hesitant to say anything good about a film or series, you know that it is pure trash.
The thing that gets me confused is that when this powerful combination of shit comes together all in one film that cost nearly $100 million to make, and nobody goes to see it in theaters and it doesn't end up with a great many views on streaming platforms, what on earth is the inspiration behind greenlighting, let alone making, a sequel?
I give to you the Rebel Moon saga, a movie, now series of movies, whose mere existence defies all logic and reasoning.
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There are a lot of reasons to dislike the first release in this series, and even more reasons to dislike the 2nd installment. I watched this only out of morbid curiosity in terms of how something that was so categorically horrible in its first installment would have the gall to spend another near $100 million on a sequel that nobody was going to watch.
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The film(s) center around the vengeance arc of "Kora" and the usual plot-point of her simply wanting to live out a peaceful life despite her jaded past yet the "Empire" or whatever the fuck they are called in this heap of trash just happens to invade her hidden farming planet to abuse and steal from the simpleton villagers. She of course steps up and becomes a one-(wo)man army and then sets about assembling a crew of other such heroes and heroines to take on the baddies who just as you would expect, have absolutely superior numbers, finances, and technology but just cant seem to muster having intelligence or military tactics that actually make some sort of sense.
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They did everything they could to try to invoke some sort of reaction out of the general public by drawing on parallels from Star Wars and using Nazi-esque imagery to portray that baddies and they even installed a Darth Vader type of character in "Atticus," who is woefully underpowered whenever facing off against anyone who wouldn't be considered a "red shirt" on Star Trek.
I'll go ahead a spoil a bit of the plot because there is no good reason to watch either of these films unless you just want to count the amount of cringe moments (there's a lot of them!). Atticus is killed at the end of the first film but just like they did in the absolutely awful reboots of Star Wars, "somehow, he returns!" This ability to revive him is explained in some level of detail in the 2nd movie but when it happens it is just another head-shaking, eye-rolling, absurd addition to the story because the overall plot calls for it. Just like when they made Palpatine the main baddie in the most recent Star Wars films it invokes a response of "WHY???" With infinite numbers of new characters to introduce we have to bring back one that wasn't well-received the first time around? What the actual hell is wrong with these people making these things?
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The story was bad in the first edition, the story in the 2nd one is somehow even worse while simultaniously being a reiteration of the 1st story. Poor farmer-types who are outgunned and outmanned have to train up the peasantry in a very short period of time and of course this is more than enough to win against the largest military operation in the galaxy or universe or something - I honestly don't know which it is nor do I care because the plot is so nonsensical that it doesn't matter even a little bit.
The movies are absolute garbage and have almost no redeeming qualities. They are also a diversity-fest the likes of which are slowly dying a well-deserved death but it seems there are some studios out there that are clinging onto that cliffside with a few really strong fingertips.
But what the real story here is in my mind is how in the sheer hell do things that did so poorly in their first release, get green-lighted for a 2nd, extremely expensive sequel? Nobody liked the first one and it couldn't have done very much at the box office or for Netflix, so why bother? It's not going to be profitable so to me it seems akin to Blackberry releasing crappy phone after phone, losing money on them all, yet still produce the next generation of phones in exactly the same crappy manner. I don't believe they are attempting to improve the product when it comes to these films, I think they are releasing them knowing full well that they are terrible. The conspiracy theorist in me wants to suggest that this is money-laundering and it very well could be. That is the only real answer that I can come up with since basically no one has good things to say about this other than "some of the CGI was good."
I recall a couple of films that I was quite excited about in the past because I had read the books and was really big fans of them. They were called Eragon and Ender's Game. I loved both of these stories but the movies were absolute shite. I was one of the people that was trying harder than most to find a reason to like the films because I wanted two of my favorite fiction books to become the massive cinematic franchises that I believe they could be if they were in the correct hands. In the end though, even I and many other fans of the books had to admit that the movies were dumpster-fires and the public, and eventually the people who made the films admitted the same thing. Both of these films were originally planned to have multiple sequels and there was talk about building a "franchise universe" around both of them. However, this never happened because the first launch film of both franchises simply were NOT GOOD and everyone could see that. Therefore, the follow-up films weren't even considered and were scrapped.
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not even Harrison Ford and Ben Kingsley could salvage this cinematic turd
This to me is how an industry works. It doesn't really matter what the industry is but if the public don't want your product, why on earth would you make more of it? I suppose a rebranding could be attempted and the people behind a film's creation could go in a different direction hoping for redemption. It doesn't happen often but sometimes this can really work out. Look at The Road Warrior for example. Did you even know that this was the 2nd film in the Mad Max empire? Most people don't and have never seen the first one and you don't need to either! It isn't a bad film by any means but it wasn't great either because of a very low budget. The 2nd film being made is the only reason why anyone knows about Mad Max and the sole reason why it has become one of the largest grossing IP's of all time.
But in the situation of Rebel Moon they went with the exact same formula that got 1/5 reviews in the first film, only this time the amount of them has actually increased. Rebel Moon 2 currently sits at a lower rating than the first, rather despised film was at.
We are at a point in time where the studios that make this crap have used every tactic that they could to make excuses for something flopping including blaming the fans themselves for a film's failure but that doesn't and never has worked.
I am genuinely interested in why a studio would make something to the tune of 80-100 million dollars that they have already proven, literally with the first installment of exactly the same thing, isn't going to work? If it isn't money laundering I honestly have no idea what it could possibly otherwise be. Rebel Moon 1 and 2 are available on Netflix but for the love of everything holy do literally anything else with your time.