It's not that Snyder doesn't have a creative bone in his body. It's that he doesn't understand anything.
You know that tired cliche where, at an end of a fight scene, a character draws a gun on the protagonist, there's a tense heartbeat, he shoots, and the camera cuts to reveal that he shot a goon that had risen behind the protanist's back?
In Revel Moon, you see the goon from the time he picks up the gun all the way to standing up, aiming at the protagonist's back, getinng shot and fallinh down.
It's like Snyder has a bone to pick with the cliche, but not because it's boring and overdone - he thinks he can do it better.
Plus, it's not the only scene that gives the impression that Snyder doesn't understand that incidental detail can happen off screen.
That same bar scenes has:
- Weird alien guys, but instead of appearing in wide establishing shots or in the background as the characters stroll in, each of them gets a close up to stare at the camera for two seconds
- There's a "harrasing a character at a seedy bar to give them a chance to establish badass cred" scene, but this time it's a gross alien rapist who wants to get the guy!!1! And the girl saves him! Only we already know she can fight.
- The harasser returns with two goons in tow. The protagonist says she can face them. The harasser says she can't take all of them, revealing a third absolutely generic goon. This isn't played for laughs.
There are at least two-three dumb things I'm leaving out to save on length.
@daavpuke is right. Snyder works entirely like ChatGPT - never understands why he puts a thing in the movie, only that he does.
Also, the opening on half an hour of the movie looks like it was AI generated in every shot, which is a weird thing to achieve with live action. It's even worse with the evil-guy troops, since their armor is detailed in that OpenAI way where there's no reason for detail.
To conclude, Rebel Moon is the big-budget sci-fi version of The Room. Get some friends, some mind-altering substances and watch it.
I can't wait for a two-hour RLM ep about it.
Of course I'm going to watch it, it's the closest I get to watching a so-bad-it's-good[^1] movie.
