Zack Snyder’s upcoming sci-fi movie Rebel Moon has an advantage over Star Wars in terms of character designs. The two-part sci-fi adventure Rebel Moon—focusing on a colony in another galaxy fighting off an incoming invasion—was originally put together by Snyder as a Star Wars movie. It has since been modified into its own separate universe, and Snyder has put his own distinct spin on some of the major aspects of Star Wars as a space opera.
Snyder’s recently released make-up test as part of Netflix’s Geeked Week shows a character with purple skin and large horns (shown above). While the identity of who this character will be in Rebel Moon remains unknown, it highlights Snyder seemingly intended for characters with alien features to be designed in a specific way. Namely, one that allows the actors under the make-up to have their faces more visible on camera, and this has the benefit of allowing their full performances to shine through.
Star Wars has many famous alien humanoid characters. Many of the best known, such as Han Solo's Wookie friend Chewbacca, Greedo, the Tusken Raiders, and many others are designed in such a way that the actors playing them are completely obscured from view. While there’s nothing wrong with this approach in and of itself, it has led to a fairly high number of Star Wars’ alien characters hiding their actors from the audience under elaborate suits and make-up.
Others like C-3PO, R2-D2, or Jabba The Hutt have hidden everything but the voices of the actors attached to them. Even characters like Boba Fett or The Mandalorian’s Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal), by their cultural backgrounds, have to hide their faces from view the majority of the time under their helmets. With Rebel Moon, Snyder seems more intent on making sure his cast is as recognizable as possible even with extensive alien make-up.
Snyder certainly has many unique alien lifeforms on his mind for Rebel Moon, including a spider-like humanoid known as Harmada. Though he no doubt intends to be as creative as possible with their designs in Rebel Moon, Snyder would have added a whole new element to how Star Wars has typically depicted its alien characters had Rebel Moon been part of the franchise. Instead, with Rebel Moon on its own under Netflix, this could be a way in which it distinguishes itself from Star Wars.
Snyder’s concept art for Rebel Moon makes it clear that the two-part epic will have a similar blend of humans and alien characters as Star Wars. Still, his make-up test suggests that Snyder has envisioned the latter with designs to enable viewers to recognize who is giving the performance of an alien character with greater ease. This could end up being one of the key ways in which Zack Snyder’s Rebel Moon re-works elements of Star Wars.