Yes, you could write about 17 massive problems with this film, or 99 reasons I will never get these two hours of my life back.

HOWEVER: I want to focus on three actual storytelling lessons.

For educational purposes and such.

But hey, we will still make fun of this stinker.

HOLE NUMBER ONE: Our rebel heroine

Zack Snyder wants this to be Star Wars, so let’s get into the structural trouble at the crumbling foundation of this passion project.

Luke Skywalker starts out as a farmer, an orphan. So does this character.

After that, nothing is the same.

Luke has a secret Jedi pedigree, but he isn’t secretly a master warrior. It takes him three freaking movies, and a ton of training from two different mentors, to improve and improve before he starts kicking butt. Luke has to suffer and sacrifice.

He nearly dies a zillion times and gets his hand lopped off by Vader in the second film. He would have failed and died in the third film, except Daddy Vader switches sides.

Luke also learns a number of cool skills, and it takes time for him to master them. Fighting with a lightsaber. Force pull or whatever. Force jumping. All kinds of force stuff. It works as storytelling. You buy into it.

REBEL MOON makes the opposite choice. Our heroine randomly takes out an entire squad of baddies. Afterward, we get a flashback explaining how she’s a super warrior. Uh, no.

Yes, it’s a cool fight scene. There’s simply no setup to this payoff.

Then she kills the bad guy in the first movie, her first try, only for him to get un-Palpatined in a Bantha tank or whatever.

No mentor, no practicing, no suffering, no losses, no growth. This heroine starts out as a badass and ends the movie as a badass. That makes for a flat, boring arc.

HOLE NUMBER TWO: Our lame villain

This movie is trying to be Star Wars, which features maybe the most iconic villain of all time, the towering and powerful Darth Vader.

And they go with a skinny man with a British accent, a thing for tentacle porn, and the worst haircut in the galaxy.

Darth Vader wielded a scary red lightsaber and force-choked generals who annoyed him.

This villain has a walking stick. OMGWTFBBQ.

HOLE NUMBER THREE: Seven million sidekicks

Yes, this movie copies Star Wars, but it’s also trying to copy Seven Samurai, so we have all kinds of extra characters taking up all kinds of screen time.

None of them are essential. Seriously.

What we needed was a mentor, an Obi-Wan figure, to help our heroine learn and grow. Because she’s already amazing, there’s no room for that.

Therefore we get random characters who add nothing. A farmer who follows her on the journey. A rebel leader who only shows up and dies in order for her to assume that role. Bare Chested Beastmaster, a rogue spaceship pilot, a samurai woman with glowing red These Are Not Lightsabers, and so forth.

All forgettable and unnecessary. The one you could argue for needing is Rogue Spaceship Pilot, who is not Hans Solo but more of a Lando because he betrays them to the Empire or whatever.

The only side character who resonated, and should not get ripped from the script, is the robot voiced by Anthony Hopkins–and this character gets built up in the beginning, abandoned, and cameo’d at the end.

Honestly, the easiest way to fix the structural problems is to strip away all the side characters.

Send a real farmer girl, with no skills, with Anthony Hopkins as her Robot Obi-wan.

Have him teach her to fight, and hide, and sabotage the bad guys. Have her suffer and lose and learn.

Give her and the robot interesting weapons and powers other than “she just kicks ass.”

BOTTOM LINE

Huge budget. All kinds of special effects and possibilities. It all goes to waste because the heroine, villain, and story don’t work. 0/10, spend the sequel money on SHIMMER LAKE PART 2: GIVE THIS TOWN A BATH.