Say what you will about Zack Snyder’s Rebel Moon, but, in conversation, the director continues to make great points about the genre of science fiction. The story of how his sci-fi saga began is a tad more interesting than the film series itself, especially in what it reveals about the franchises that inspired the filmmaker.
Rebel Moon was initially a pitch for an R-rated story in the Star Wars galaxy. Snyder’s a lifelong Star Wars fan, and before Lucasfilm found itself under the Disney banner, he saw a big opportunity for the franchise to do something different. In a conversation with CinemaBlend, Snyder described that period as “a moment in time when Star Wars was in this weird place.” It was also a time when Lucasfilm was more likely to accept the most out-there ideas, which encouraged Snyder to pitch his Seven Samurai-inspired Star Wars story.
The filmmaker’s idea “was really like a fan-fiction film in a lot of ways.” Snyder wanted to tell a story within the Star Wars galaxy that was entirely set apart, without any characters one would recognize elsewhere. It wasn’t until later — once Disney purchased Lucasfilm and set off to tell a familiar tale with legacy characters — that Snyder realized his idea was better off removed from the Star Wars brand entirely.
“I felt like an R-rated Star Wars was a fetish concept,” Snyder continued. “[It] was an outlier, and didn’t really belong within the continuity of Star Wars.” Snyder did believe that Rebel Moon could find an audience outside of that franchise, however, “for people who grew up with Star Wars and whose aesthetic evolved.”
Anything R-rated would have a difficult time making it into the Star Wars universe, especially after Disney’s acquisition. The franchise has always chased all-ages, four-quadrant appeal; and most Star Wars stories end up fairly tame as a result. Some fans have long been hoping for darker, more intense fare as they grow with the franchise: films and shows that will take creative risks alongside narrative ones. It doesn’t have to be as gnarly or risqué as the Rebel Moon director’s cuts — but audiences are definitely hungry for more maturity and grit where applicable.
The most adult Star Wars fare comes from two of its most recent shows, Andor and The Acolyte. Apart from more challenging storylines on indoctrination and grief, both series pushed the envelope with implied nudity and the suggestion that people do, in fact, get busy in that galaxy far away. It was admittedly a massive deal, but it still took the franchise 40 years to get to that point. In the end, Snyder is definitely right: adult Star Wars fans deserve sci-fi stories that cater more to their tastes. Sometimes, though, you have to move beyond Star Wars itself in order to get it.
