Rebel Moon Part Two - The Scargiver

So, I'm pretty good at suspending my disbelief, particularly wen it comes to sci-fi and fantasy.

I can bend.  A lot.

Still, some things are sort of part of my DNA and I can't just gloss over them when they are the main thrust of a plot.

The recent movie, Rebel Moon - Part Two has a couple of "oh come on" foundational problems.

It's not a spoiler to tell you that the dude that got tossed off a cliff at the end of part one gets resurrected.

This is problem number one.  The organization behind this dude is modelled after the Roman Empire.  I have a real problem imagining that the Roman Empire would put ANY resources into resurrecting a soldier of any rank.  Empires churn out soldiers because they're replaceable.  

Further, I have a real problem with the idea that a ruthless empire would take the time and energy to resurrect a soldier of any rank who had failed.  It seems much more likely that they'd simply promote the next in line, point him at the problem and move on.

Then there's the whole mcguffin of these ragtag warriors protecting the village from the empire.  This series (two already, no doubt 3 and more on the way) is based on the Seven Samurai movie by the great Kurosawa; an epic film that has inspired films ranging from westerns to space operas.  I have no problem with the idea that the warriors have the village harvest their grain to use as a shield and bargaining chip.  I love Seven Samurai and have great affection for some of the film it has inspired.  I have no problem with a small village hiring mercenaries to protect them.  All of these things make a certain kind of sense. 

The Seven Samurai plot is based on a feudal society with small, mobile armies that could plunder on the move this way.  Adapting it to different times and settings works up to a point, but you can't swap out a small force for a massive space faring empire and assume the plot will still work.  It won't.

What bugs me is that this massive space faring empire needs all this grain and apparently has no centralized method to provision its fleet.  They plan to have these almost technology free villagers grow, harvest and (I assume)  package and load the grain onto their SPACE SHIPS.  The villagers harvest the grain with scythes and thresh it with wooden flails.

Scythes and wooden flails.  In three days.

Three days worth of hand harvested grain from a subsistence community of what looks like about 40 or 50 people.  Let's say that's enough grain to make the year's bread for the village plus half again.  How long do you imagine that would sustain hundreds of soldiers and space travellers on a ship with enough soldiers to count as a credible force?  A month, maybe two?   They take it all and can't take it all again next year because the farmers starve to death before they can grow more.  

At this rate, the fleet would spend ALL its time stealing grain from farmers just to not starve to death themselves.  Even if they could find enough grain in this patchwork way, they seem hellbent on these transactions being a fatal one and done every time.  The Rebel Moon farmers opt for likely death in battle instead of certain death from starvation and you have to imagine that would be the choice of at least a small percentage of all the villages they raid like this.

No empire gets to be space worthy big with this kind of short sighted approach.  

Yeah, I think far too much about a silly movie.  I can't help it.  During the slow motion, fast motion, slow motion space-amish harvest sequence I kept thinking that one combine-harvester and a good crop management plan would have made this a much shorter film.

Oh and as I was reminded during my viewing of the second Dune movie, what is it with American movies and the glorification of hereditary rulers?  I thought they did a whole thing to get rid of kings and queens, but it seems like every Hollywood sci-fi and fantasy movie revolves around and revels in the chosen prince or princess (or duke) being the one to fix everything.  Where's the democratically elected hero?

Ah well.  It's pretty to look at and the robot with the antlers is cool.