| Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver | |
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 Release poster | |
| Directed by | Zack Snyder |
| Screenplay by |
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| Story by | Zack Snyder |
| Produced by |
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| Starring | |
| Cinematography | Zack Snyder |
| Edited by | Dody Dorn |
| Music by | Tom Holkenborg |
Production companies |
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| Distributed by | Netflix |
Release dates |
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Running time |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $166 million (shared withPart One: A Child of Fire)[2][a] |
Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver is a 2024 Americanepicspace opera film directed byZack Snyder from a screenplay he co-wrote withKurt Johnstad andShay Hatten. Adirect sequel toRebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire (2023), the film takes place on the moon of Veldt where Kora and the crew of warriors ventures to help the farmers to defend and fight for their home against the Motherworld.Sofia Boutella,Djimon Hounsou,Ed Skrein,Michiel Huisman,Doona Bae,Ray Fisher,Staz Nair,Fra Fee, Elise Duffy,Charlotte Maggi,Stuart Martin,Cary Elwes, andAnthony Hopkins reprise their roles from the first film.
A week after it began alimited theatrical run in the U.S.,Netflix releasedRebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver on April 19, 2024. Like its predecessor, the film received generally negative reviews from critics. AnR-rateddirector's cut, titledRebel Moon – Chapter Two: Curse of Forgiveness, was released on August 2, 2024.[3][4] Like the previous installment, the director's cut received mixed reviews, but it was generally considered to be an improvement over the original.
Kora and her allies—Gunnar, Tarak, Nemesis, Titus and Milius—return to her and Gunnar's village on Veldt, believing that Atticus Noble, whom she had killed, is dead and that her group had prevented the Imperium's return to the village to claim its surplus grain supply,[b] but Aris, working as a double agent for the village and the Imperium, informs them that the Imperium is set to arrive in five days. The fighters join the villagers to harvest the grain supply in three days, intending to use the flour as leverage to deter the Imperium from bombing the village; over the remaining two days, Titus intends to train the villagers to fight.
Kora and Gunnar become lovers, and she admits that Balisarius compelled her involvement in his assassination of the Motherworld's royal family, with Kora herself shooting its princess Issa. Balisarius had then attempted to frame her for the coup, but she had instead fled to Veldt in an Imperium dropship to hide from the law.
Over two days, the group trains the handful of villagers in combat, preparing a plan involving digging trenches and tunnels in the fields, planting explosives, and preparing Kora's dropship. The group's members also reveal their pasts to each other, but Kora declines to share her involvement in the royal family's assassination. When Noble arrives with his dreadnought, his forces scan the village, identifying where the women and children, protected by Nemesis and Aris, are hiding, and send troops to capture them to force Kora out. Noble promises to spare the villagers if Kora surrenders, to which she complies, but Gunnar, unwilling to let Kora surrender, triggers the ambush and flees with her. Titus and Tarak lead the village in successfully repelling the first wave, though Nemesis is killed defending the women and children.
The large contingent of the heavily armored and mechanized second wave of Imperium troops pushes the few remaining defenders back, destroying much of the village, but Kora and Gunnar use her dropship and stolen Imperium uniforms to infiltrate Noble's dreadnought, with Kora laying explosives on its power source. Jimmy arrives to help the villagers and their allies in pushing back the assault, and the explosives detonate, bringing down the dreadnought. Gunnar is fatally wounded, and Noble overpowers Kora in a duel before being wounded by Gunnar and then killed by Kora. Kora and Gunnar flee the dreadnought, and Devra Bloodaxe and her rebel forces arrive in ships to destroy the remaining Imperium troops on Veldt as Gunnar dies.
In the aftermath, the village mourns the dead, and Kora admits her past, which Titus reveals he already knew. He also reveals that Issa is alive, and the group declares their intentions to find her and to fight against Balisarius, the Motherworld and the Imperium.
Rebel Moon is inspired by theworks ofAkira Kurosawa, theStar Wars films andHeavy Metal magazines.[5] Johnstad and Snyder first started talking about creating the film in 1997.[6] The project began development as aStar Wars film that Snyder hadpitched toLucasfilm, shortly after the sale of Lucasfilm toThe Walt Disney Company in 2012. This pitch was to be a more mature take on theStar Wars universe.[7]
Part Two received over $16.6 million intax credits from the state of California for spending over $83 million on production in the state.[8]
For the two-partRebel Moon, thebelow-the-line wages to California workers and payments to in-state vendors were $166 million.[2][9]
The titles for the two parts were revealed to bePart One: A Child of Fire andPart Two: The Scargiver, according to teaser trailers released atGamescom in August 2023.[10][11] In March 2024, the official trailer was released.[12]
ComposerTom Holkenborg returns to compose thescore forPart Two: The Scargiver, who served as composer forPart One: A Child of Fire. In March 2024, it was announced that a track list named "Songs of the Rebellion" would be released, based on the characters from theRebel Moon universe. It features several artists, includingJessie Reyez,Tokischa,Tainy,Aespa,Tokimonsta,Black Coffee, andKordhell. It was released on April 5, 2024.[13]
Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver was released in select theaters in the United States for a week on April 12, 2024, and was released by Netflix on April 19, 2024.[14]
Anovelization based on the director's cut of the film written by V. Castro was published byTitan Books on June 4, 2024.[15]
On thereview aggregator websiteRotten Tomatoes, 16% of 117 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 3.8/10. The website's consensus reads: "Less a course correction than a compounding of everything that tangled up its predecessor,The Scargiver is an uninvolving space opera full of flat notes."[16]Metacritic, which uses aweighted average, assigned the film a score of 35 out of 100, based on 28 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable" reviews.[17]
For the director’s cut, the reviews were significantly better – 67% of critics liked the film.[18]
Simon Abrams ofRogerEbert.com gave the film one out of four stars, saying that it "feels as anemic and negligible as the non-sexual scenes in a floppy, overproducedporno".[19] Bob Strauss of theSan Francisco Chronicle wrote that the majority of the film "is not that much better than the derivative, sludgy first installment", but felt that the battle sequences of the final 45 minutes were enough to raise his overall assessment to two-and-a-half out of four stars.[20][21][22] David Ehrlich ofIndieWire called the film a "catastrophic bore of a film".[23]
In a double review of the Director's Cuts forRebel Moon Part One andPart Two, David James fromWe Got This Covered wrote: "In an age of algorithmically generated sludge it's a miracle that Zack Snyder convinced Netflix to fund this kinky, gory and truly bizarre sci-fi epic. A cult classic in the making." James praised, among other things, the sex scenes, the violence, and the actors, while he criticized the musical score. He gave the movies four out of five stars.[24]
After premiering April 19 on Netflix, the film garnered 21.4 million views in three days, making it the most viewed English-language film on the service from April 15 to 21;[25] it was the third consecutive Netflix number one for Snyder, starting withArmy of the Dead and continuingRebel Moon's first part.[25] However, it would score 44.2 million viewership hours,[26] marking a significant decline from the first part;[27] part one was reported to have had 54.1 million viewership hours in its first three days.[28][27] The film stayed in first place with 18.8M views in its first full week of availability, which still counted as its own second week in first place, following its debut weekend.[29] The week after that, the film slipped to third place with 6M views, as the film also earned an overall worldwide total of 46.2M views.[30][31] According to Netflix's “What We Watched: A Netflix Engagement Report", the film generated 55.8 million views from April 19 to June 30, 2024,[32] 10 million views from July 1 to December 31, 2024,[33] and 5.8 million views from January 1 to June 30, 2025,[34] while the R-rated director's cut version of the film generated 8.3 million views from August 2 to December 31, 2024,[33] and 2 million views from January 1 to June 30, 2025.[34]
| Award | Date of ceremony | Category | Recipient(s) | Result | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Golden Raspberry Awards | February 28, 2025 | Worst Remake, Rip-off or Sequel | Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver | Nominated | [35] |
| Golden Reel Awards | February 23, 2025 | Outstanding Achievement in Sound Editing – Non-Theatrical Feature | Scott Hecker, Chuck Michael(supervising sound editors), Scott Hecker, Chuck Michael, Nick Interlandi, Bryan Jerden, Alexander Pugh, Andrew Vernon(sound effects designers), Greg ten Bosch, Brad Sokol(sound effects editor), Jessie Anne Spence(supervising dialogue/adr editor), Michael Hertlein, Arielle McGrail, Byron Wilson(dialogue/adr editors), Mark Pappas(supervising foley editor), Gary Hecker(supervising foley artist), Michael Broomberg, Mike Horton(foley artists) | Won | [36] |
In April 2024, co-writer Kurt Johnstad announced that though original plans were for a trilogy of movies, the franchise will eventually consist of a total of six films; explaining that the stories for each original installment have been expanded into two parts. The writer stated that the treatments are completed for the third and fourth movie and Snyder is currently writing the third film.[37] On the same day, Snyder stated that the total number of films in the series will either be four or six, depending on whether or not the second and third entries of the trilogy each get split into a two-part movie as well.[38] However in May 2025, Johnstad stated that the sequels were no longer moving forward.[39]
Today's trailer was revealed as part of Gamescom Opening Night Live in Germany.
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