ComingSoon Senior Editor Spencer Legacy spoke with Rebel Moon stars Sofia Boutella and Ed Skrein about Zack Snyder’s space opera movie. The duo discussed Snyder’s approach to action and how practical filming was. Rebel Moon – Part One is now playing in limited theaters and will be released on Netflix on Thursday, December 21.
“A peaceful colony on the edge of the galaxy is threatened by the armies of a tyrannical regent named Balisarius,” reads the film’s synopsis. “The desperate civilians dispatch Kora, a young woman who has a mysterious past, to seek out warriors from nearby planets to help them challenge the regent.”
Spencer Legacy: Sofia, we get a lot of backstory of Kora through flashbacks. When you actually get to act out that history rather than just have it be a part of the character or mentioned in the script, does that make it easier for you to incorporate it into your full performance?
Sofia Boutella: Yeah. Everybody’s process is different, I suppose, but for an actor, a lot of people that I know work from this place of backstory a lot — building that backstory, writing, journaling, and making the past of your character as real and rich as possible. But when you actually get to film all those backstories, it just makes it more tangible and more real, and it helped and facilitated my process to play nowadays Kora.
Ed, your character’s a real hater. There are some really brutal scenes, and he gets satisfaction from using that bone staff. What was your approach to playing this antagonist that’s so intimidating and menacing?
Ed Skrein: So much went into it. My approach was actually to strip away rather than to add, you know? To strip away the moral conscience and moral code and strip away all ethics entirely. What happens if you strip all this away from a human being? What are you left with? It’s pretty monstrous. It also makes things a lot more simple when it’s like … you’ve taken all this away, and at your core, what do you have left? Cold, sadistic ambition.
Sofia, the amount of effort that went into making Veldt a real village is really remarkable. Did that help your performance and give greater context to the world that you were acting in?
Sofia Boutella: Yeah, of course. It facilitated so much of our process. Again, not only Veldt, but Providence, Daggus … I think we got the luxury of having these amazing sets right before our eyes. I remember in Santa Clarita, we had Veldt, and then we had Providence, and the first thing we shot in Santa Clariata was on Providence. I remember having my electric bike, and I just started to stroll around because there are a few sets there. I remember coming across Veldt before I knew that it was for us, thinking, “Wow, that’s incredible. Look at this set. The roof is giant.” And then, next thing I know, it was for us.
Ed Skrein: That’s where you lived.
Sofia Boutella: That’s where I lived. That’s where Kora lives. No, honestly. Then the set deck and everything was so spot on. The scene with Hagen that you see at the beginning of the movie was shot in one of those huts. Literally, it was not even in-studio. That’s how real it was. The scene where I’m settling the horse was all in there, all so practical and and literally sturdy.
Ed, your fights look great in this film. What stood out to you about Zack’s approach to action sequences?
Ed Skrein: I think the main thing that stands out about Zack and his physicality was when I spoke to him on the Zoom when I was back in London. He said to me, “Oh yeah, on every set, I build a big gym, and everyone goes there.” And I was like, “Oh wow. This is amazing. Usually, I’m a gym rat by myself, and I’m just this lonely gym rat. My director is a gym rat as well. This is going to be amazing.” But at the beginning, I was just thinking about it in terms of enjoyment. Like, “Oh, great, I get to train with people,” but what’s tangible and what you see on screen is that everyone looks like warriors. Everyone really looks like they’re from this world.
Survival is not easy, even on the spaceship, you know? So we all had this physicality that was really tangible. In terms of the way Zack shoots the scenes, other than the fact that he’s really on top of it and he knows exactly what he wants. It’s not so different from other filmmakers in that when you are in the midst of it, what’s different is when you see what he’s done on screen. I don’t really look at the monitors too much unless they say to me, “Hey, come over here. What you’re doing is terrible!” Or, “Come over here, this looks badass. You need to see this.” I didn’t see any of it, basically, but in the back of my mind, I’m like, “Well, Zack Snyder’s shooting this movie, so I’ve just got to make the movements correct, and then he’s going to make it beautiful.”
When I saw it, I was like, “Oh, wow.” The slo-mo shot with [King] Levitica — boom! It’s like, obviously, we don’t shoot in slo-mo. It was kind of just the greatest. It was like Christmas. The night before I was going to the screening, I was like, “It’s like Christmas Eve. Oh my gosh, I get to see what Zack did to us and how he made us look.” Every now and then on set, I would think, “Oh yeah, this beautiful man that I’m hanging out with, this lovely human being is Zack Snyder and is going to make me look badass?”
I was so caught up in the minutiae and the specifics and the emotional specifics. “If I bring the emotional narrative correctly, he’ll make me look badass.” Same way with the fight scenes. If I do the correct movements on my footwork and balance and everything is in the right place, I’ll let him worry about how he’s going to cover it.” The outcome was spectacular. He did not disappoint. I still can’t believe I’m in a Zack Snyder movie, man.
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