Why Wheat? This is a question that somehow very heavily relates to the story ofRebel Moon Part 2: The Scargiver. Director and slow motion enthusiastZack Snyderisknown for his elaborate action epics. However, in his newest film, a different type of scene stands out among the rest. 20 minutes into the movie, our ragtag group of heroes on the moon Veldt start assisting the village’s wheat harvest. Although it is interrupted by a few other short scenes,for the bulk of the next 10 minutes of the movie, audiences are given a strangely long montage of wheat being reaped, stored, and processed.Not much happens during the scene, and it almost feels pointless beyond being a simple way to show the village coming together in a community.
If the audience zones out just enough during this gratuitous grain sequence, they might even start asking questions that begin to make the movie feel a little infuriating. Questions like, “Why do The Imperium, the bad guys, even need wheat from this specific village?” “Why do they even need wheat at all?” “Why does this scene take so long?“This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to questions, and the answers to most of them are more complicated than one might think.
It would be a delight to see Snyder make a film that is 100% action with zero dialogue. Sadly, this is an impossibility and audiences must deal with the fact that there is a growing trend of logical inconsistencies within his films.From Darkseid forgetting where the anti-life equation isin his cut ofJustice Leagueto the glut of loose plot threads inArmy of the Dead, Snyder has seemingly given up on consistency when it comes to writing.The strange importance of wheat inRebel Moonis his weirdest inconsistency yet.
To fully understand how odd this plot hole is, it helps to look at this gluten filled plot device from a logistics perspective. Not only does a galactic empire with spaceships that can create wormholes require wheat from backwater villages to survive space travel, it also so happens that the village they need wheat from is seemingly the only village on the entire moon which has any farming at all. These are not just assumptions, but rather, the movie explicitly shows these facts. The antagonist, Atticus Noble (Ed Skrein), is dissuaded from firing on the village not because their soldiers are still in the village, but because the villagers shield their location with bags of flour.
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Somehow, The Imperium is incapable of growing or stockpiling food to the point that they treat bags of flour as more valuable than their own men. This could be commentary on totalitarianism’s lack of regard for human life, but this still doesn’t explain how an empire that has the technology for laser swords anda sentient robot voiced byAnthony Hopkinscould somehow not have self-sufficient farming. Audiences will likely never be given a reasonable explanation behind why this galaxy still requires agrarian settlements to grow all their food. to understand how a movie’s entire plot can hinge on space farming being more primitive than modern day farming, one simply needs to remember where Snyder is (likely) getting his inspiration from.
Zack Snyder’s ‘Rebel Moon’ Shares Many Similarities With Akira Kurosawa’s ‘Seven Samurai’
It should be impossible to harbor any ill will towardsAkira Kurosawa’s masterpiece samurai epic, but the film is likely to blame forRebel Moon’s incongruous logic. Years before the films were greenlit by Netflix,Snyder spoke openlyabout how he had been reworking a rejectedSeven Samurai-inspiredStar Warsscript.Seven Samuraiseems to still be a clear inspiration for Snyder’s newest IP,as the classic story of a group of warriors banding togetherto stop a tyrannical raid on a village’s crops is exactly whatRebel Moon’smain plot line contains. There is a lot of set up to a more conventional science fiction conflict for the sequels, but right now the first two films areas indebted to Kurosawa asA Bug’s Life.
This also explains the film’s pacing and structure, as much ofSeven Samuraiis spent on character backstory as the village prepares for a climactic battle.Rebel Mooncan be seen as a sort of soft remake ofSeven Samuraiin a sci-fi setting. Whether this remake is a successful one or not is up for debate, but it is faithful to the spirit of the story to a fault.It’s less of a plot hole and more the feudal era nature of the story clashing with its futuristic setting. Still, at the very least, this explains why wheat is so important to the story ofRebel Moon. Perhaps the filmmakers wanted to makeSeven Samurai, but didn’t feel like changing all that much.
Rebel Moon - Part Two: The Scargiver
Rebel Moon — Part Two: The Scargiver continues the epic saga of Kora and the surviving warriors as they prepare to sacrifice everything, fighting alongside the brave people of Veldt, to defend a once peaceful village, a newfound homeland for those who have lost their own in the fight against the Motherworld. On the eve of their battle the warriors must face the truths of their own pasts, each revealing why they fight. As the full force of the Realm bears down on the burgeoning rebellion, unbreakable bonds are forged, heroes emerge, and legends are made.
Rebel Moon Part 2: The Scargiveris available to stream on Netflix in the U.S.
