‘Rebel Moon — Part One: A Child of Fire’ review: ‘Star Wars’ ripoff

Like the Death Star obliterating planets, Zack Snyder is out to topple countless innocent genres.

He already turned the DC Comics films into a black hole of misery with the gloomy “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” and “Justice League.” 

And now the diabolical director is zapping the enjoyment out of outer space, too, in “Rebel Moon — Part One: Child of Fire” on Netflix. 

While that winding, buzzword-filled title sounds like a cheap-o parody of a science-fiction epic, this is about as unfunny and unadventurous a movie as you could possibly imagine.

What “Rebel Moon” really amounts to is “Zack Snyder Strikes Back.”

Our Tatooine rip-off is an orange-hued world called Veldt where a group of uptight grain farmers push around dirt all day long and then gather in a meeting house to speak like they’re Moses from the Old Testament. They sleep in what resemble 1800s Irish peat houses that are incongruously souped up with electric sliding doors and fluorescent lights. 

Actually, the overall look of “Rebel Moon” is a grab-bag of mismatched time periods and multicultural visual references in a desperate attempt to be clever. However, because they so vastly overdo it, none of these places are believable even in the context of spaceships, reptillian aliens and villains named Balisarius (Fra Fee). 

When the benevolent King of the Motherworld is slain and the totalitarian Regent (pretty much the Emperor from “Star Wars”) takes the reins, he sends a store-brand evil admiral named Atticus (Ed Skrein) and his jarhead henchmen to plunder and conquer. 

The thugs demand Veldt hand over most of their precious grain supply, killing several citizens after they refuse. So, secret local badass Kora (Sofia Boutella) embarks on a mission with soft-spoken farmer Gunnar (Michiel Huisman) to recruit a crew of warriors to help the town.

Setting realistic goals, they choose to save several square miles rather than the whole universe.

Meanwhile, Kora, a Lara Croft-style femme fatale whose mysterious past has made her a low-key killing machine, moans she’ll never meet the right guy.

“I was taught that love is a weakness, and I don’t know how that will ever change,” Kora says. “To love and be loved — I don’t know if I’m capable of either.”

Well, what I know is that when a character makes a cement-truck comment like that, they’ll probably tie the knot at the end of Part 2. The rescued townsfolk can throw some of that grain at the happy couple.

But first Gunnar and Kora need to go off and audition fighters. 

Their search is an “Oceans 11”-style montage of various quirky mercenaries, who are all incredibly dull in their own unique way.

Spinning-and-kicking Nemesis (Bae Doona) gets in an unpleasant bout with a half-woman-half-spider who is stealing another planet’s children. A once-powerful general named Titus (Djimon Hounsou) has slid into drunkenness. Tarzan-y Tarak (Staz Nair) gets his “Avatar” moment when he tames a wild flying horse and successfully rides it off a rocky cliff. Kai (Charlie Hunnam) is Han Solo.

We don’t find out that much about any of these people, nor do we want to. The middle of “Rebel Moon” is a failed speed dating exercise in which a second meet-up is not in the cards.

But that is mostly what Part One is — a recruitment exercise. “The Fellowship of the Moon.”

With a second chapter on the way, perhaps the clashing finale can be forgiven for being not so grand. One person dramatically sacrifices their life, and we shrug because we’ve only just met them a few minutes ago. Another double-crosses the group, and we shrug because we’ve only just met them a few minutes ago.

Maybe Part Two will turn it all around. But its title “Scargiver” makes me miss those Skywalkers even more.