As part of our cover story on director Zack Snyder, IGN debuted an exclusive clip from Snyder’s upcoming sci-fi film Rebel Moon - Part One: A Child of Fire, an extended scene that showcases the film’s most glorious creature: the bennu. (The scene can viewed via the player above or the embed below.)
The look of this winged beastie was inspired by the griffin of European mythology, but Rebel Moon, like Star Wars before it blends various world mythologies with the sci-fi and fantasy genres to create an original otherworldly saga.
In Rebel Moon, the enigmatic Kora (Sofia Boutella) assembles a ragtag band of fighters to save the agrarian community she has found a home with while evading the insidious Motherworld empire.
Among the disparate individuals recruited by Kora and her farmer pal Gunnar (Michiel Huisman) to defend the citizens of Veldt are mercenary pilot Kai (Charlie Hunnam), battlefield legend General Titus (Djimon Hounsou), laser sword-wielding Nemesis (Doona Bae), insurgent siblings the Bloodaxes (Cleopatra Coleman and Ray Fisher), resistance fighter Milius (E. Duffy), and Tarak (Staz Nair), an indentured servant with a royal past.
In this exclusive scene, the high-born Tarak, now a lowly captive on a barren planet, scores a chance to win his freedom if he can tame and ride a penned-in bennu. (Think of it like a cowboy needing to break a wild horse.)
Although not immediately apparent in the scene, Tarak has an advantage here, as Snyder explained in his one-on-one interview with IGN. The bennu is a native of the same world that Tarak hails from – a majestic steed for a fallen prince – so there’s a bond between them.
“[Tarak’s] not on his homeworld now, but these creatures come from his homeworld. He has a really deep connection and understanding to those creatures, which you'll see another taste of in the next movie,” Snyder said.
Snyder also pointed out an Easter egg in this scene to us: “One detail to notice is that when Tarak is looking at the bennu, on his little teeny amulet, which is a really teeny detail, [it] has a little bitty [bennu] on his necklace. …It was that kind of stuff, that understanding of who Tarak was and where he came from, that allows the sort of detail of the scene.”
The language Tarak speaks to the bennu is his mother tongue, a language that Snyder says was developed by the film’s linguistic expert and draws in part from Staz Nair’s Russian heritage: “It allowed him to be natural with the language. Because if you have an aptitude toward a certain way of phrasing or sound shapes, those make the language easier to speak, of course.”
For more Rebel Moon coverage, read our in-depth cover story interview with Zack Snyder and learn about the important role Anthony Hopkins’ robot warrior plays in the Rebel Moon saga.
Rebel Moon - Part One: A Child of Fire launches on Netflix on December 22, while Rebel Moon - Part Two: The Scargiver follows on April 19, 2024.
