No one destroys the planet like Roland Emmerich. Moonfall is no exception.
This movie begins with a charming and fun spacewalk in which three astronauts debating whether Toto missed the rain or blessed the rain in Africa. During this exchange something goes wrong, one gets knocked unconscious, one gets eliminated and the one remaining gets court martialed because no one can back him up on seeing something nefarious that caused the issue.
Years later, that nefarious something is causing the moon to
shift out of its orbit and begin creeping toward earth. This, of course, has terrible
consequences including earthquakes, insane tides, gravity fluxes, lack of
oxygen, you name it. Oh, and of course,
rioting, looting, and government officials making bad decisions. It is up to the two remaining astronauts from
that original mission, a comic-relief scientist, and their respective families and
supporting characters to identify the problem, come up with a solution, and
save the day.
Honestly, that storyline is pretty similar to any Emmerich disaster movie, the best of which is Independence Day and the worst of which is 2012 – others are somewhere in between, but all have popcorn, big-screen, nonsense entertainment value. This one ambles a bit in the beginning. As opposed to the tight and clearly defined timeline of Independence Day (Day 1: the problem is identified, Day 2: a solution is crafted, Day 3: the solution is enacted and the day saved), in Moonfall the timeline is a little ambiguous – was there three days or three weeks during the story? The wacky scientist that no one is listening to finds the issue, but NASA also finds it at about the same time. The disgraced astronaut is having family troubles, but not enough that we care about any of the people involved. The mission is put together to save the world, but instead of everyone coming together with a strong sense of unity between all humanity, the government is at odds with NASA, plus random folks are attacking other folks. It is all a little more loose than I would like. But, that is just the story.
Getting down to the scenes of
actual destruction, my goodness the scenes of the moon rising as it creeps
closer and closer are spectacularly menacing.
The moon starts looming on the horizon, getting larger and larger. When it starts to enter the atmosphere, the
visuals combined with the score and music definitely create a sense of panic. So Emmerich is still in his element in terms
of destroying the world. The cast is
mostly game, but in some of his other movies, the thrown-together ensemble of
random heroes is charismatic and engaging, here they are mostly forgettable.
Patrick Wilson does stand out as disgraced astronaut Brian
Harper – the side plot of his troubled kid, ex-wife, and her new husband (and
apparently two other daughters?) was a bit fuzzy and lost some steam. That is
unfortunate, because Michael Pena play the new husband and even his charm wasn’t
enough to make me care about their situation.
Halle Berry plays the other astronaut who accidentally
becomes the head of NASA during the course of the story. She is fine in the role,
but I did want a little more from her ‘big speech’ moment. Eme Ikwuakor plays her husband who is over at
the DOD and I did want the two organizations to come together a little more and
work together on a solution – this movie was missing the “unification of
humanity against external threat” that can take a movie like this to the next
level.
John Bradley plays the crazy scientist who first discovers
the threat. Typically in this movie, no
one is listening to that character until it is too late – but here, NASA has
made the same discovery about the moon’s decaying orbit – it is just his theory
about it begin a “mega-structure” that adds to his lunacy. Slight spoiler here - the twist ending, which was spoiled in all the trailers, of him being right and that something dragged the moon out of orbit, was interesting, but could have been a little simpler. He was fun and
provided some comic-relief while also doing what he could with a handful of
tender moments.
The others are all forgettable, which is a shame, because what pulls you into a disaster movie is relating to the wide cast of characters – and being moved when you inevitably lose some of them.
Overall, the movie is fine and certainly an entertaining
piece of nonsense. I wish it had been
better paced and that the characters were better – but honestly, I can just
rewatch Independence Day and be happy about that. Also, I really want someone to make a movie
from Michael Crichton’s book Prey. And I'm going to continue to be super polite to my Alexa anytime I ask for anything... just in case.
6 out of 10.
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