Rebel Moon: Part Two – The Scargiver might be bringing Zack Snyder's two-part sci-fi epic to a (potential) close, but there's still more to come from the universe.
There are extended director's cuts for both movies on the way to Netflix, which will clock in at around three hours each. We sat down with Snyder and the cast to talk about The Scargiver – and, in the process, we learned more about the upcoming new versions of both movies.
"The thing I'm most excited about people seeing when they watch the director's cut is, rather than it being an extended or different version of these movies, they're kind of like this alternate universe version of the movie," Snyder tells us. "That's kind of how I describe them. Even though, of course, there's many scenes that are the same, there's so much that's different, even the points of view are slightly different. And I think that'd be fun for audiences to see this much deeper dive. Each of them is one hour longer, the two movies together are six hours. And I think that that's going to be fun for fans. And also, this is very adult as a difference."
Ed Skrein, who plays the villainous Admiral Noble, has more to say on the adult nature of the new versions. "We had a 179 page script, so the first 11 pages of that, no one's ever seen, because by nature it could only be in the R-rated cut," he says. "It is horror. And that was fun to shoot, and I'm excited for people to see that."
There's one other scene in particular, though, that has Skrein's attention. "Also, I don't know whether to be worried or excited, because the people at Netflix keep saying to me, 'Have you seen the R-rated cut yet?' and they say, 'Have you seen your alien sex scene yet?'" he says. Noble is seen in a dalliance with an alien creature in the standard version of A Child of Fire, though the movie cuts away before we see anything too graphic...
"They're like, 'It's crazy. You really went for it, didn't you?'" he continues. "And I'm like, 'I go for it every take and scene, I don't hold back.' So I'm super excited to see that. And I hope I don't become too much of a meme."
Skrein's NSFW tentacle tangle won't be the only thing that's different in the new versions of the films, either. "The director's cut specifically is a lot more gritty and a lot more scuzzy," says Staz Nair, who plays the griffin-taming Tarak. "If we were living in a dystopian future where there was one planet autonomously dictating how and where people eat, surviving at the cost of one kind of superpower, people would be horrible. People don't get held accountable for what they do in their own countries. If you could do something and then go off world and have no one reprimand you for it, the world would be dirty, it would be dangerous, it would be scary and quite dark. A lot of the time when we do these beautiful dystopian science fiction stories, we lose some of the realism for the sake of charm, and these kinds of worlds, they wouldn't be charming, they would be difficult. And I think the director's cut gives more of that scuzzy realism."
Keep your eyes peeled for the details, too. "There are a lot of Easter eggs," Sofia Boutella, who plays Kora, AKA the Scargiver herself, teases. "A lot of what you see or hear in movie one, you understand the full scope of it in the extended. Like, 'Oh, that's what happened.'"
While the director's cuts don't yet have a release date, The Scargiver arrives on Netflix this April 19. For more, check out our interview with Snyder on his "surprise" next project and why he wants to release his director's cut of Sucker Punch.
You can also fill out your watchlist with our guide to the best Netflix movies streaming now.
