The confused nature of the theatrical window for streamer-owned films reached a new level of absurdity with Zack Snyder’s Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire. Not only is this blockbuster behemoth merely the first installment of a two-part film—the second, subtitled The Scargiver, is set to be released in April—it’s a truncated version of its maker’s substantially longer preferred cut, which makes the film two-thirds of one-half of a story.

Rebel Moon began life as a Star Wars project before Snyder’s concept was turned down, and the resulting film often sounds as though the director and co-writers Kurt Johnsta and Shay Hatten did little more to their draft than perform a find-and-replace for any terms trademarked by Disney. The film even piggybacks off of George Lucas’s indebtedness to Kurosawa Akira: Its protagonist, Kora (Sofia Boutella), is a disillusioned veteran of the “Motherworld” autocracy who,...