Zack Snyder's Rebel Moon: Part One – A Child of Fire ended with a major tease of a looming battle – and its sequel, titled The Scargiver, more than delivers on that promise.
After Ed Skrein's fearsome Admiral Noble was resurrected at the end of Part One, he was set on a collision course with Sofia Boutella's Kora – AKA the Scargiver herself. Part Two sees them go head to head in a dramatic duel on a crashing spaceship, which Skrein, who played the villain Ajax in Deadpool, says was similar in scale to the Marvel movie.
"I've done a lot of stunt work periodically over the years, and this was huge," says Skrein of his showdown with Boutella. "The final fight we did in Deadpool was probably comparable just as a single set piece, just in terms of the amount of days that it ended up being covering it. It was crazy. We had a gimbal that we were sliding down and then running back up again and sliding down."
"This is the Titanic moment of Rebel Moon," adds Fra Fee, who plays the tyrannical Regent Balisarius. In Titanic, the set of the titular ship was tilted diagonally to film the sinking scenes – much like the Dreadnought in Rebel Moon: Part Two is tipped at an angle.
"When I read it in the script, I said, 'How are we going to shoot that?'" Skrein continues. "And then when they said we're going to do a gimbal, I thought, 'Okay, so we're going to just do 30 metres or whatever, and then reset.' And I thought, 'Okay, well, I believe in the magic of cinema, and that Zack guy's got a bit of experience, so I think he'll be alright.' And when I saw it, I said, 'Wow, this is unbelievable.' I thought it was really brilliant. And presumably the Snyder Cut is going to be even better, because we're going to have blood and more and crazy stuff."
As for Boutella, she has nothing but praise for her co-star. "It was pretty intense. I know Ed from before, we were supposed to do a few projects together," she explains. "And this was our first one. He does not look like this in real life at all. He's the kindest. He just went for it so much that he didn't give me the choice but to go there. At times I had to go home at night and remind myself this is Ed, it's not the character, because he was really intimidating, which was very helpful to play the part, but it was also very collaborative. And we had to do a lot together, like we had those acting scenes. And in movie number one, we had this giant fight, and in this one also, so we did spend a lot of time together. And it's really important when you do these kinds of scenes that you're doing it with somebody who's just so helpful and nice to be around, and kind and patient also."
Noble and Kora's round two isn't the only action to expect in the sequel, either. "It's an assault film," says Snyder. "The Imperium forces are going to annihilate our villagers, and they have to figure out how to defend themselves, and other things I won't spoil. I think that's what all of our inspiration was, to be like, okay, we're going to make [a war film]. In the course of making this movie, we made maybe three or four different movies. We made a Western, we made a road picture, a gather the soldiers movie, we made an agricultural film, it feels like, when we were harvesting the wheat. And then we made a full blown war movie at the end, that is just pretty intense."
Rebel Moon: Part Two – The Scargiver arrives on Netflix this April 19. In the meantime, check out more from our interviews with Snyder and the cast on the director's cuts and the future of the franchise, and Snyder on the "misunderstood" Sucker Punch and his "surprise" next project.
You can also fill out your watchlist with our guide to the best Netflix movies streaming now.
