Summary
- "Rebel Moon is a sci-fi epic by Zack Snyder and promises to be one of Netflix's biggest movies ever."
- "The movie is split into two parts, with the first part releasing in December 2023 and the second part in April 2024."
- "The set visit revealed extensive artwork, prop designs, and behind-the-scenes details about the universe, characters, and plot of Rebel Moon."
Screen Rant visited the set of Zack Snyder’s sci-fi epic, Rebel Moon in October 2022, and here’s everything we learned about the development, production, characters, and more. Rebel Moon is the start of Snyder’s second new universe at Netflix, following Army of the Dead, and it promises to be one of the biggest movies Netflix has ever made.
Rebel Moon is arriving in two parts, part one: Rebel Moon: A Child of Fire, releases December 22nd, 2023, and part two, Rebel Moon: The Scargiver, releases April 19, 2024. Both movies were shot back-to-back, and Screen Rant’s visit to the set encomed a massive amount of behind-the-scenes material covering both movies. While much of the discussions were focused on the first installment, there’s also a lot to learn about Rebel Moon: The Scargiver and the future of the Rebel Moon franchise, which is just getting started.
A Behind-The-Scenes Look at Rebel Moon’s Design and Development
The first stop on the Rebel Moon set visit was the Art Design Room where we spoke with production designer Stefan Duchant about the movie’s visual development. The walls of the art room were lined with concept art for over a dozen different planets, a plethora of cultures, a variety of different characters, multiple time periods, and scale models of a few different sets and ships.
Zack Snyder is known for his extensive use of storyboards, meticulously drawing every single shot prior to shooting and referencing the storyboards on set instead of the script while working with cast and crew, but he did even more drawing for Rebel Moon. According to Duchant, Snyder drew thousands of images for Rebel Moon, and most of the concept artists developed designs that originated from sketches drawn by Snyder. “he’ll do the first sketch. He’ll say ‘something like this’ and then we keep that… And then we’ll start riffing on it. So it’s almost like he’s laying down the track and we’re jazz musicians...”
Snyder originally had the idea for the story that would become Rebel Moon while he was in film school: “It started I think in college I had said something to my professor about like “what about Dirty Dozen in space? Or like an ensemble movie like Seven Samurai in space?
He continued working on it over the years, pitching the story to various companies in different formats: “we did try and sell it as a video game and as a movie at Warner Brothers a couple of times.” Deborah Snyder also shined some light on the brief time it was considered as a Star Wars project: “he met with Star Wars before the sale and they even ILM pitched him some art and I always was like, I feel like doing something original is better and more in your wheelhouse, but he's such a huge fan that I think it was interesting to him and it never worked out…”
While Star Wars is clearly an influence, it’s not the primary inspiration for Rebel Moon, and throughout the art and other parts of the set we saw numerous elements that resembled other properties than just Star Wars such as Dune, Battlestar Galactica, Blade Runner, Alien, Gears of War, Conan the Barbarian, and various other high-fantasy and anime inspirations in addition to the core inspiration of Seven Samurai.
The fantastical sci-fi fantasy universe bears an intensely retro-futuristic aesthetic Duchant says revolves around the philosophical dichotomy between brutalism and harmony. The farming community of Veldt has a heavy Japanese influence consistent with the movie’s Seven Samurai inspiration while the Imperium is more inspired by a blend of various Nazi and Soviet aesthetics, particularly in the officers' uniforms, while the interior of the Imperium dreadnought, for example, isn’t designed for creature comforts but is strictly utilitarian.
The design of props and costumes sheds a lot of light on how this dichotomy is realized in the physical realities of the world depicted on screen. Prop Master Brad Elliot explained how this impacts Imperium designs: “Zack is really heavy on age es. He likes everything to show its age and to be as old and lived in as possible…s that aren't painted the same as the other ones. As if it's gone through something, we've had to replace those parts over time. So things show repair and wear quite a bit." While Costume Designer Stephanie Porter said the costumes and props of the farming community of Veldt actually improve with age: “We repair it, and the repairs make it more beautiful and stronger than it was before.”
The ship designs in Rebel Moon lean more into a naval aesthetic closer to a submarine than a space shuttle, with the Dreadnoughts' bridge resembling a Soviet-era submarine featuring flat metal s and full of lights and physical buttons complete with a descending periscope. Duchant says a lot of designs are inspired by 80s-era anime such as Transformers or Mobile Suit Gundam (sans the actual giant robots) where vehicles like tanks and ships are often chunkier with rounded edges. Ships designs also targeted simplicity. Duchant recalls drawing Star Wars ships as a child and says "Zack and I talked about...making sure that the shapes were simple enough that a 10-year-old can go, this is pretty cool, and start drawing in their notebook."
The rustic retro-futuristic look doesn’t mean it’s all grounded, though. Some of the art, creature design, and sets revealed glimpses of fantastical creatures, other-worldly fauna, advanced medical technology, and trans-dimensional beings.
In addition to the art and design of the various characters, worlds, and cultures, a team of linguists also created multiple functional written and spoken languages which are prominently used on in-universe signage and even integrated into costume designs.
Rebel Moon Universe Backstory and Plot Synopsis
Throughout the course of our visit to the Rebel Moon set and interactions with the cast and filmmakers, we gleaned pieces of the plot and larger mythology of the universe. The Rebel Moon mythos is already charted out far beyond the events of the first two movies. Snyder has the history of the Imperium chronicled back in time several millennia, even including their universe creation mythology, some of which will be featured or referenced in flashbacks.
Hundreds of years before the events of the movie there was a renaissance at the height of the Imperium. Art and culture were at their peak, but the Imperium has been in a state of disrepair since then, especially after the death of the “Slain King” four years prior to the events of Rebel Moon: A Child of Fire. According to producer Deborah Snyder: “after the royal family's death…they didn't try and advance…they were war machines. So that's, everything was very practical…it's just not taken care of like it was when the king was alive. All of that kind of gets lost, that appreciation of the art of everything.”
While the Slain King was an Imperial colonizer, the Imperium got even more brutal and oppressive under the reign of his replacement, Regent Balisarius according to Zack Snyder: “the old king is much more a straight-up imperialist but like in the tradition you know where I feel like the Regent Balsarius he's much more like a dictator like, you know, he'd be happy to raze a planet just for its natural resources rather than like ‘oh we should land and see what the people are like and maybe some of them can fight for us’ and you know like ‘maybe we could assimilate their culture into ours’ where it was a much more sort of 18th-century imperialism…that was aggressive, and now it's worse.”
After the assassination of the royal family, Kora (Sofia Boutella), the movie’s heroine with a mysterious past, goes into hiding on the farming colony of Veldt for four years. Unfortunately, she can't escape the Imperium forever, as they eventually land on Veldt demanding the farmers hand over their next harvest to feed Imperium soldiers. Kora leads the farming colony in a rebellion and sets out to gather a group of warriors capable of defending the farming colony. Rebel Moon's plot takes clear inspiration from the Seven Samurai story structure, but the larger universe also finds lots of inspiration from the rise and fall of the Roman Empire and other real-world histories and cultures.
What We Learned About Rebel Moon’s Cast and Characters
Rebel Moon starts in the farming community of Veldt featuring a number of characters including Corey Stoll as Den, Ingvar Sigurdsson as Hagen, Michiel Huisman as Gunnar, and more. Sofia Boutella’s Kora is the newest addition to the village, and while she’s adapting to rural life, she has a mysterious past she's keeping from them.
The Imperium is full of soldiers such as the Hawkshaws (which loosely resemble a more alien version the Uruk Hai designs from the Lord of the Rings movies), mystical Imperium priests, or the elite Kryptean super-soldiers, which prop-master Brad Elliot described as super dangerous because “whether they're jacked up on drugs or whether they just have training or they're really good because they've survived, we don't know exactly.”
When it comes to the main Imperium bad guys, most of the attention is devoted to Ed Skrein’s iral Nobel, who is a sophisticated but lethal attack dog of the Imperium hell-bent on capturing Kora after she lends aid to the Veldt farmers. The Imperium is run by Regent Balisarius, played by Fra Fee, although he may not get much attention until Rebel Moon: The Scargiver rolls around in April 2024.
After the Imperium lands on Veldt demanding their next harvest, Kora sets out with Gunnar to assemble a team of warriors to defend the village, leading her to team up with the robot Jimmy (voiced by Anthony Hopkins), the exiled Imperium General Titus (Djimon Honsou), the rogue smuggler Kai (Charlie Hunnam), the sword-wielding Nemesis (Doona Bae), the warrior Tarak (Staz Nair), and the rebel fighter Darrian Bloodaxe (Ray Fisher). Along with Darrian Bloodaxe come his sister, Devra (Cleopatra Coleman), and Milius (E. Duffy).
There’s also a number of side characters and creatures throughout, including a cameo from Snyder regular Jena Malone (Sucker Punch, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice) as a giant spider-woman named Harmada.
Many characters were also influenced by the actors who play them. For example, Costume Designer Stephanie Porter detailed how Doona Bae’s costume was influenced by traditional Korean shapes such as her Korean sword fighting pants and traditional gat hat, Djimon Honsou’s costume included major inspiration from Senegalize juju wrestling, and Staz Nair’s costume came from jewelry designed by his fiancé. One of the Bloodaxe rebels, Milius, is nonbinary just like E. Duffy, the actor that portrays them. Staz Nair’s character, Tarak, even speaks a language influenced by his mixed Indian and Russian background, similar to how the Amazonian accent in Wonder Woman was derived from Gal Gadot’s accent.
Sofia Boutella and Ed Skrein were the only actors filming on set during our visit, but we spoke to both of them about their characters. When asked what drew her to the role of Kora, Boutella said “I want to work with [Zack]. But on top of that, I think that -- I think there was a lot of stuff that I could relate to for myself. I was born in Algeria, and…Kora is found on another planet that's not her home…my roots are not necessarily where I live and not where I grew up and not where I was born. And I can relate to that...And then not to be dramatic, but there was a civil war growing up in my country. And not that it was as dangerous as, an actual war, but I grew up in that environment. And it's lodged somewhere in me, and I felt that, oh, yeah, I think I can do that.”
As for Ed Skrein, he was a big fan of the script and how "Zack's sick in the head like me," but also raved about the opportunity to dig into a villain like Noble: "When we meet Noble, we meet a man with an incredible amount of military power, might, and an arsenal behind him. We meet a man with a fleet, a commander of the king's gaze, and a fleets of soldiers. We meet a man with a pistol on his hip, and we meet a man who chooses to use his tongue as his weapon. A man who chooses to give people enough rope to let them hang themselves. And then sometimes there's a small, very sharp burst of violence, but most of the time it's a performative, eloquent, almost thespian, verbal, intellectual violence. So that's how we meet Noble.”
Skrein also told us “when people say, ‘Oh, what are you working on?’ I say, ‘It's like Star Wars, but with violence, sex and swearing’…Noble is the type of character that…when I read the script…It's a dream role for me…”
Rebel Moon’s Weapons and Technology Explained
During our visit to the set we spoke with Prop Master Brad Elliot who gave us an extensive review of the weapons and technology in Rebel Moon. Weapons and technology are very retrofuturistic. During the presentation, props were displayed in three basic categories: Imperium, Rebels, and Veldt farmers. While there’s far more groups and factions in the Rebel Moon universe, that was the basic separation for most of the props we saw. Imperium technology is denoted by its more brutalist and utilitarian design and shows signs of deterioration and patchwork repairs, the rebels' technology is mostly stolen and repurposed Imperium technology, and Veldt technology is more hand-made, naturalistic, and aesthetically pleasing.
Sci-fi weapons in other properties typically operate by shooting some sort of energy or laser, but Rebel Moon’s gun projectiles are a little different. Guns are loaded with tank-like magazines containing pressurized plasma. When fired, the guns shoot a blast of what prop master Brad Elliot described as a “lava cork.” Elliot says “it’s molten, it's heavy, and it's about the size of a cork. So if it hit you, it would knock you over, but the hole that it would create would cauterize.” On Veldt, the weapons operate on a similar technology, but operate a little differently and generally fire a larger chunk of plasma Elliot referred to as a “lava puck.”
In general, the weapons in Rebel Moon are big, especially in the case of Ray Fisher’s Darrian Bloodaxe. Elliot says Bloodeaxe is “a really big dude, so this was almost a joke about like, How big can I make a gun? and have Zack still say yes…normally I'll do like a one that's obviously too small, one that's obviously too big, and then three in the middle, and we'll do like a cardboard cutout just to get scale…He's really leaned into the ridiculously large every time.”
One of the most interesting bits of Imperial technology shown on set is what Elliot called the “Beatlejuice chair,” which got its name “because Zack kind of had this idea that it reminded him of a little bit of a couch that was walking around from Beetlejuice.” Despite the humorous name, the chair is a horrific torture device. Elliot says “Their hands are locked down, their chests are locked down, their heads are restrained. And when you want to make somebody docile for transportation, you take one of these devices and you cock it, and you put it into the back of the chair, right at their upper vertebrae. And smack. And now you sever their spine. So they're not going to be in trouble anymore. So this is one of the main tools of the Imperium to sort of catch and transport people.”
Sticking with the retrofuturistic approach to technology, Rebel Moon doesn’t have convenient radio communicators that can transmit conversations around the galaxy at any time from any location. In order to transmit a radio signal from the ground, they need to set up a comm array, which is a giant radio unit with a big antenna the prop team designed from an umbrella.
While plenty of the technology is old and worn down, there’s still some more advanced concepts at play. On one of the sound stages was a massive green screen head, which Deborah Snyder said wouldn’t be a big story point, but involved advanced medical technology allowing people to be remade and healed. The giant head also seems to be related to trans-dimensional beings who play a role in a ship's ability to warp travel.
Since Star Wars is one of the most notable influences on Rebel Moon, there’s been a lot of curiosity over whether Zack Snyder will give his own spin on the lightsaber. Rebel Moon’s equivalent is very much a product of its own universe, but doesn’t completely re-invent the wheel, either. As described by Elliot, “you hit this button and this whole sword, all this metal starts to heat up to the point where if you're not wearing a glove, you're going to burn your hands.But it kind of gives us that sort of, you know, over a stronger super sharp sword where maybe if this was lit and I just put it down on the table it would go through. That was one of Zack’s things.”
Zack Snyder’s Production Process For Rebel Moon
Zack Snyder initially looked into using LED wall technology similar to The Volume, popularized by The Mandalorian, for Rebel Moon's production but ultimately chose against it. According to Producer Wesley Coller, the amount of up-front VFX work was too extensive and the size of the stage they’d need to build was too cost prohibitive. Instead, they engaged in what Production designer Stafan Duchant referred to as “literal worldbuilding” and built a hill and a river for the Veldt farm village along with 10 football fields of wheat near Santa Clarita, California. Producer Deborah Snyder even joked about Zack Snyder growing his own wheat at their home to keep track of the progress.
Rebel Moon production kicked off on the Santa Clarita set, which allowed them to cast the same group of actors for the entirety of the farming village. Deborah Snyder described the benefits of this decision: “Because we wanted it to be the same people, like not just have day players that were different all the time. So we really cast like -- And we did this cool thing at the very end of the movie where there's like this -- it's hard to explain and I'm not going to try to other than -- there's like this musical element at the final like there's a big funeral you can imagine because not everybody lives. I don't think that's a spoiler.”
For the various other-worldly planets and locales, Rebel Moon took over nearly every soundstage at Sunset Gower studios in Hollywood, which is where production was when Screen Rant visited the set. The production built massive sets full of green screen extensions on numerous stages. During our day on set, each stage was a different part of the Imperium Dreadnought called "The King's Gaze." First, we saw a room full of rows of giant furnaces where a big fight is supposed to take place, then we saw a docking bay with two Imperium drop-ship sets (one complete exterior and one for a fully functional interior), we saw a long Dreadnought hallway with two intersections and a mirror extension at the end, the Dreadnought bridge, and the interior of a Dreadnought turret.
Like many of Snyder’s previous projects, creature and makeup work is being handled by Fractured FX to create the movie’s many alien creatures and other makeup and prosthetic work, including age work for one character done entirely with makeup and prosthetics to age them from their 30s to their 50s. There are also plenty of alien designs, particularly in the scene at the Providence spaceport on Veldt, which is similar in concept to Mos Eisley in Star Wars, only Debbie Snyder says it’s “also kind of brothel-y, too.”
For scenes with a large number of aliens and creatures, Fractured FX employed a technique similar to what they did for the zombies in Snyder’s Army of the Dead. The aliens up front who draw more attention got the most makeup and prosthetics work done, while aliens in the background who would be visible in less detail or out of focus were often more simple masks and less complex make-up. Any eye blinking, pulsations, or other face movements are added digitally.
We didn’t get to learn much about Rebel Moon’s VFX process while on set, but Fractured FX and the props department specified that all props, prosthetics, and other elements were being lidar scanned so perfect digital replicas could be created for easier use in post-production.
Rebel Moon Dreadnought Hangar Bay Action Scene Description
During Screen Rant’s visit to the Rebel Moon set, we observed Zack Snyder working with stunt coordinator Freddy Bouciegues to shoot an elaborate stunt sequence on a giant tilting floor. The floor was at an approximately 45-degree angle ed by chains on one end and a giant brace underneath, which Snyder said would be adjusted for different takes to change the incline of the platform. The stage was dimly lit with and there were occasional flashing red diffused overhead lights to simulate an alarm system on the ship.
The set represented a battle in the hangar of the Imperium Dreadnought where the floor was tilting in a way Snyder compared to the Titanic. Some of the shots were done by a crane arm tracking the actors as they slid down the platform, but Snyder was also wearing knee pads so he could operate the camera as he got in on the action, sliding down the platform alongside the actors.
The scene featured a sword battle between Kora and Noble. Boutella and Skrein were using LED batons, suggesting they’ll be using superheated swords similar to Nemesis and the Krypteans. The scene was split into multiple segments, shot on the same stretch of slanting floor in a way Snyder compared to a giant typewriter, so each scene will be edited together for the impression of one long slide. Kora and Noble grapple, kick off each other as they slide down, and eventually clash swords and grunt during a close-up.
There were stunt actors dressed in the same costumes as Kora and Nobel with dots on their face so the actors’ digital likeness could be applied during post-production, although Deborah Snyder specifically praised Boutella for doing a large percentage of her own stunts: “it’s been crazy the amount, like, Sofia’s done, like, almost all, all the fights…It’s incredible, I’ve never seen anyone- and [she] does it so well. I think from all her dancing.”
How Zack Snyder’s Rebel Moon Will Look and Feel
Snyder shot every one of his movies on film before his last movie, Army of the Dead where he also took over responsibilities as the director of photography shot digitally for the first time, and he’s doing the same thing again for Rebel Moon, employing the 8K RED Digital Cinema V-Raptor XL. While Army of the Dead was shot almost entirely on a 50mm Canon “Dream Lens” with an ultra-shallow depth of field, giving every scene an especially soft focus (and even drawing some criticisms for being “too blurry”), Rebel Moon is shot with three custom Leica lenses Snyder constructed with the help of Zero Optik.
Snyder fell in love with these particular Leica lenses and wanted to use them for Rebel Moon, but the manufacturer doesn’t make an anamorphic version, so Snyder and Zero Optik constructed custom 35mm, 50mm, and 90mm versions, dubbing them “Summiscope.” While the lenses bring a little more versatility than the single Canon “Dream Lens” from Army of the Dead, they’re all still super fast lenses (meaning larger apertures and shallower depth of field), and the 90mm, in particular, could produce an even shallower depth of field when shooting wide open, so expect Snyder’s love of soft focus to continue.
Costumes are largely designed to enhance movement with lots of flowing fabric and loose straps, scarves, capes, and more, all designed to look pristine in Snyde’s signature slo-mo speed ramping and while there’s plenty of color in the set design and costumes, although that doesn’t mean it’ll all show up in the final product. For example, according to Costume Designer Stephanie Porter, the colors in the costumes for Bloodaxe and the Rebel fighters “were starting from like warning signs that you would see, you know, like the oranges and the bright yellows, but then it went to Sharon [Fauvel] and her team and they brought it back into the Zack comfort zone of colors.”
Tom Holkenborg, AKA “Junkie XL” will be composing the score for Rebel Moon. Holkenborg has collaborated with Zack Snyder since Man of Steel where he worked closely with Hans Zimmer, eventually taking the full reigns as composer for Zack Snyder’s Justice League. It’s not clear exactly what sound he’ll pursue with Rebel Moon, as Holkenborg’s sound is versatile, as seen by the differences between his pumping scores for movies like Mad Max: Fury Road or more esoteric, environmental sounds like in Army of the Dead.
Netflix and Zack Snyder Already Have Big Rebel Moon Shared Universe Plans
Rebel Moon already has two movies confirmed, but it’s going to get a lot bigger, with shared universe plans already in the works across multiple mediums. Debbie Snyder detailed just a few of the things they have in development: “we’re also planning, you know, we want to figure out what we’re doing like with like a big VR experience and what is it and what are the timing of all those things? And then our books, I always think about that. They have a pretty robust publishing program. You know, novelizations and graphic novels and some other stories in the universe that we could start building up where the world is.”
Snyder also mentioned additional Rebel Moon sequel potential, although it’s not clear yet how he’ll juggle directing responsibilities when he’s already committed to the Army of the Dead sequel, Planet of the Dead: “I was trying to figure out like the cadence and how we would go forward and like whether we're going to go to, you know, the Army of the Dead sequel and then come back and do another one of these movies if it's desired.” While juggling multiple universes may be difficult to schedule for Snyder, fans of his work should be thrilled as it means even more Snyder movies are on the way from Netflix.
The biggest takeaway from our visit to the Rebel Moon set was the sheer scope of the Rebel Moon universe. The initial movies are grand, operatic, sci-fi epics, but the amount of world-building Snyder and his collaborators have already established beyond the story and scope of Rebel Moon: A Child of Fire and Rebel Moon: The Scargiver promises one of the biggest and most interesting original IP franchises to arrive in some time, certainly beyond anything else produced by Netflix or any other streaming platform previously.
