First act: wheat... lots of wheat... fields of wheat... a tremendous amount of wheat...

Second and third acts: a whole bunch of quite watchable action.

It's... surprisingly alright?

I don't know how The Scargiver isn't an improvement over the dreary first film. With the team assembled and the shock of the project's general ineptitude (the derivativeness, the swampy color palette, etc.) out of the way, it's much easier to enjoy the purer video game bonanza of Part Two (no, not that one!). My heart sank a little during the movie's opening bits, descending dangerously close to the abyss at the "royal betrayal" flashback with its live orchestra idea striking me as especially moronic, but after this rough start the slow motion wheat harvesting kinda kicked things into gear. I'll take reasonably entertaining shoot'em-up-blow'em-up chaos over a boring let's-go-meet-this-person-let's-go-meet-that-person quest any day of the week.

Heck, I even managed to find not one but two character moments here that felt genuinely human: 1) Bae Doona's reaction when the Aryan child gave her a gift; 2) Sofia Boutella's anguished cry of 'Why can't I have this one thing?' to no one but herself after fate once again dealt her a bad hand. I know it ain't much but hey, at least they're both in Part Two! If Snyder keeps this up, we're probably gonna get a halfway decent blockbuster by movie #6. If we ever get there, of course. Which, by all means, we should since Rebel Moon is bigger than Barbie, don't you know.