We don’t need to waste any time theorizing about what Zack Snyder’s version of the cantina scene would be, because he’s already shown us. “Rebel Moon — Part One: A Child of Fire” features a spaceport bar scene ripped straight from George Lucas’ playbook, but with all the edgy layers that Snyder seems to adore. The stand-in for “Walrus Man” does indeed solicit farm boy Gunnar (Michiel Huisman) for sex, and when he doesn’t get his way, a full-blown firefight breaks out.
It’s certainly less kid-friendly than Star Wars, but that doesn’t mean it’s more complex or self-reflective. Snyder talks in the same interview about the way his “Heavy Metal” stylings allow him to “deconstruct” science fiction, but what does he mean by that? “It kind of broke me for comics for a while because it was always super sexy and super violent,” Snyder told Rogan about reading “Heavy Metal” as a kid. “You’d get a normal comic and be like, ‘Uh, when are they going to start f***ing?'”
Star Wars is designed with kids in mind. That’s always been true. But making a story more gritty doesn’t inherently make it more complex. Lucas pulled from old sci-fi adventure serials, and Snyder pulls from “Heavy Metal” — both pulpy genre exhibitions that are at times more interested in aesthetics than exploring deeper themes. Snyder has always been a visually oriented filmmaker, but he’s not so much deconstructing the sci-fi genre as he is upholding a different one.
