This week marks the arrival of the second instalment in Zack Snyder’s Rebel Moon universe, with Part Two – The Scargiver releasing just four months after Part One – A Child of Fire. This film will continue a Snyder cut tradition, as the director prepares to release two extended director’s cuts of his sci-fi epics in addition to the initial versions seen on Netflix.
Snyder’s penchant for a director’s cut has been clear ever since he was given the freedom to complete Zack Snyder’s Justice League and he has since been vocal about his hopes to release extended versions of his other movies, like Sucker Punch. When it comes to Rebel Moon, however, a director’s cut was always part of the plan.
“The R-rated version was sort of my original thesis for what the movie could be,” Snyder told Entertainment Weekly in an interview, adding that Netflix allowed him to ideate a version that would appeal to a broader PG-13 audience in addition to his original vision.
Speaking to Snyder in New York on Zoom, Gizmodo Australia got the rundown on how the director prepared his alternate cuts of Rebel Moon.
“There were elements in a few of the scenes that we knew would be very difficult to get to PG-13. So we were like, ok, this sequence is better to be in the R-rated version of the movie, let’s just send it over there. Because otherwise we’re gonna water it down, and neither will be great,” Snyder said.
Snyder said that knowing there was going to be two different cuts from the outset actually streamlined the filming process of Rebel Moon as it allowed them to prepare the coverage they needed for both iterations.
“There was a bunch of scenes that we were able to identify and slide over even before shooting, just in the writing we knew. So that was actually super efficient in the way we were able to photograph them,” he explained. “We did film it all as if it was an R-rated movie and then we knew there was a few lines that people would have to do twice. You know if they were saying ‘fuck’, or something like that, we could say, ‘ok, in the next take do it without the swear word.’”
It was revealed last year that Snyder remains friends with his long-time collaborator, The Dark Knight director Christopher Nolan, and that he even received a sneak peek of a cut of Oppenheimer before its release last July. Snyder said he has plans to return the favour and share his Rebel Moon cuts with the Oscar-winner in due course.
“When the director’s cuts are done, I’m going to take those over and have [Christopher Nolan] check those out,” Snyder said.
While the director’s cuts are two pieces of content in the definite future for Rebel Moon, that hasn’t stopped Snyder from looking ahead. His original sci-fi world oozes with ideas that can’t fit into merely two feature films and the director has been vocal about his hopes to expand the Rebel Moon universe across different mediums. But as for how he would continue the immediate story if given the chance, Snyder was unsure what format it could take.
“[It might be] a third film or, maybe, we do two films together again, I don’t even know,” he admitted.
Rebel Moon’s director’s cuts are coming in the near future, whilst Part Two: The Scargiver releases on Netflix this Friday.
Image: Netflix/Cray Enos