Netflix is releasing Zack Snyder’s new director’s cut — is it worth it?

Stop me if you’ve heard this one: It might be worth checking out the latest Zack Snyder director’s cut.

I can’t say this from experience with that latest #SnyderCut — the new cuts of Rebel Moon, which go live on Netflix Aug. 2. But I can say it from experience with Snyder, and from watching the original versions of Rebel Moon parts 1 and 2. Even with all the fandom to-do over Snyder’s various director’s cuts, every one of them so far has improved on the original cut of the movie in some drastic way. And what I can say confidently at this juncture is that Rebel Moon has been designed by Snyder for this exact moment.

Snyder loves big themes and big emotions. Look no further than the opening minutes of Man of Steel, where he renders a cold Krypton as grand and epic, complete with a pumped-up (and protracted) action sequence that proves Superman is not nearly as cool as his dad. And for Rebel Moon, Snyder wanted to top himself. He’s been cooking up Rebel Moon’s “sort of Dirty Dozen, Seven Samurai in space concept” for more than 30 years. He even tried to get Kathleen Kennedy and George Lucas on board to make it as a Star Wars movie, set somewhere just before A New Hope — and those origins show through. Rebel Moon is the dream he would never let die, even when he was just directing commercials and dreaming of helming a space saga.

So it’s no surprise that he wanted to make this thing his way — and luckily, Netflix obliged him.

“You really get to see a lot. It’s just more painted-in all the way. The director’s [cut] is a settle-in deep dive, which I have notoriously done throughout my career,” Snyder told Netflix’s Tudum. “I don’t know how I got into this director’s cut thing, but what I will say about it is that, for me, the director’s cuts have always been something I had to fight for in the past and nobody wanted it. It was this bastard child that I was always trying to put together because they felt like there was a deeper version. And with Netflix, we shot scenes just for the director’s cut. So in that way, it’s really a revelation.”

Is this some kind of stunt, releasing a movie once and then saying the “real” version is still to come? Maybe! Though with all the versions available on Netflix and no extra price of admission for the new cuts, I’m inclined to believe this is just Snyder’s version of a “one for them, one for me” policy. Per a Vanity Fair first look at Rebel Moon in June 2023, it seems Netflix’s data-based standards were the ultimate guiding force in how to initially release Rebel Moon:

Rebel Moon was shaping up to be approximately three hours long—which worried Netflix film chairman Scott Stuber. “Stuber was like, ‘On the service, under-two-hour movies really do better for some reason,’ even though you’ll binge-watch a series of eight episodes,” [Snyder’s spouse and longtime producer] Deborah Snyder says. “Zack said, ‘If you ask me to make this less than two hours, I’m going to lose all the character. You won’t care about these people. It’s a character story about how people can change, and redemption, and what are you willing to fight for…’ So he said, ‘What if I give you two movies?’”

Unfortunately for Netflix and their algorithm, the initially released cuts of Rebel Moon parts 1 and 2 — subtitled A Child of Fire and The Scargiver, respectively — prove Snyder right. Even with his stylistic flourishes, it does feel blanched. It’s hard to say whether the absence of characters or stories is felt across the two films: As with most Snyder productions, there is a lot happening at any given point.

But it certainly feels like something has been lost. Intriguing nuggets of a plotline wander away as the story meanders through the process of getting a gang of rebels together to fight an evil empire. The fight scenes end up feeling discrete from each other, rather than like culminations of a single larger showdown. The shift between genres, from space adventure to war movie, feels like a car lurching as it fails to shift gears. Its tone is hushed, monotonous, even when there’s just so much happening.

This is what the new director’s cuts could solve for. It’s easy to see how with protracted runtimes (each of the two director’s cuts reportedly clocks in around three hours), more of these stories could get their due. Snyder’s luxurious world feels roomy in Rebel Moon, but without the precision of his focus, it’s also a bit too drafty, highlighting his dour side just as often as it indulges the sweetness of his style. As with the Snyder Cut of Justice League, the longer versions of Rebel Moon could make way for stunted stories to suddenly crystallize into completed arcs, with the usual depth of emotion and thought that comes from Snyder exploring power struggles against the might of gods.

Image: Netflix

As much as Snyder has a reputation for bombast, his stories tend to live and die by their heart, unearthing the human connections that ground even the most grandiose fighters. The efforts are there in A Child of Fire and Scargiver, stabs at the weight of the redemption cycle. But in PG-13 form — limiting both expressions of violent cruelty (war) and passionate commitment (sex) that the story hinges around — it’s listless. The forthcoming cuts, Chalice of Blood and Curse of Forgiveness, aren’t restrained by quaint MPAA rules (just check out that red band trailer!), which should hopefully let Snyder display a finer spectrum of emotion.

Are A Child of Fire and The Scargiver worth your time? No, and it’s sort of bewildering to know that Snyder never really intended them to feel like the full picture. But that plot, at least, gives us Chalice of Blood and Curse of Forgiveness, movies with titles much more immediately wicked and evocative than their forebears. Perhaps they can truly match the scale Snyder has always envisioned for the adventure at the heart of Rebel Moon.

These movies will be long, and they might very well be just as trite as the original-release versions of the movie. But with room to breathe, there’s no way they’ll be as airless — and given Snyder’s resume, it’s exciting to see what he can cook up when he gets his cut just right. But if the new versions just include 45 more minutes of Charlie Hunnam’s confounding Scottish accent — well, that’s all right too.

The Zack Snyder director’s cut movies Rebel Moon: Chalice of Blood and Rebel Moon: Curse of Forgiveness both debut on Netflix on Aug. 2.