Zack Snyder spent years quietly hyping up his director’s cut of Justice League and activating the #ReleasetheSnyderCut hive before Warner Bros., in need of content for its grand HBO Max experiment, threw him a few million to complete the job. The four-hour-long finished product was… definitely better than the 2017 theatrical version! This lent the director some credence that the Snyder Way should, in the future, be THE way. So maybe there’s hope for Snyder’s two big August 2024 releases: Chapter One: Chalice of Blood and Chapter Two: Curse of Forgiveness — the expanded, uncut versions of his two Rebel Moon films.
Netflix announced on Tuesday that, starting Aug. 2, any willing participants would be able to “delve further into the mythology and madness of Zack Snyder’s epic sci-fi saga in the viciously sexier, bloodier world of Rebel Moon” when the two director’s cuts simultaneously arrive to the platform. The new edits were always part of the plan; while Netflix still demanded two PG-13 movies from the filmmaker, Snyder negotiated two R-rated versions that would premiere at a later date — four movies for the price of two! During the release of the original first movie, Rebel Moon: Part One — A Child of Fire, Snyder told Polygon that the changes weren’t just about blood and guts. “It’s almost like the story takes place in a slightly different dimension than this movie that’s about to come out,” he said.
The new titles illustrate that level of dramatic shift. You see, the first movies were parts and the new movies are chapters. Chalice of Blood ain’t your grandpappy’s A Child of Fire, ya dig?
The notable difference between Snyder’s iterations on Justice League and his Rebel Moon saga is that the latter is all him. Whereas Snyder undid and expanded on the work of his cut-to-bits Justice League, a movie partially directed by Joss Whedon, everything Rebel Moon is the vision of Zack Snyder. He dreamt of a Star Wars movie, he stole from his own scrapped ideas to illustrate his new universe, and he even acted as both cinematographer and director to put the purest version of his ideas on screen. But the two PG-13 movies he delivered were completely uninspiring and drab, among the limpest work of his career. Can more Rebel Moon really save Rebel Moon?
We’ll know by the end of the summer. Rebel Moon — Chapter One: Chalice of Blood and Rebel Moon – Chapter Two: Curse of Forgiveness arrive to Netflix on Aug. 2.
