A mysterious force knocks the moon from its orbit around Earth and sends it hurtling on a collision course with life as we know it.
I’ve long been a fan of director Roland Emmerich. He took over the moniker of “Master of Disaster” after Irwin Allen passed away in 1991. For those not familiar with Mr. Allen, he was the creator of the sci-fi TV series “The Time Tunnel,” “Lost in Space,” and “Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea,” but in the early ’70s, he made the transition to movies and became known as the “Master of Disaster,” producing such films as “The Poseidon Adventure,” “The Towering Inferno,” “Flood,” “Fire,” “The Swarm,” “Beyond the Poseidon Adventure,” and “When Time Ran Out…”
Disaster and end-of-the-world movies have always been among my favorite film genres, and Roland Emmerich began his career with “Moon 44,” a 1990 low-budget sci-fi effort starring Michael Paré that takes place on a distant moon. He then directed “Universal Soldier,” “Stargate,” “Independence Day,” “Godzilla,” “The Patriot,” “The Day After Tomorrow,” “2012,” and “White House Down.” While many of them were entertaining, more some than others, he seemed to begin a downward spiral, similar to Irwin Allen, where later in his career, his subsequent films were less enjoyable and focused more on special effects and less on the human element. “Independence Day: Resurgence” and “Moonfall” are two titles that feel like Mr. Emmerich was given a big paycheck and directed both movies with more complacency and less enthusiasm than their predecessors.
In 2011, astronauts Brian Harper (Patrick Wilson), Jocinda Fowler (Halle Berry), and Alan Marcus (Frank Fiola) are orbiting the Earth in a Space Shuttle while on a mission to repair a damaged satellite. Out of nowhere, the shuttle is attacked by a strange black swarm that appears to have come from the moon, and it kills Marcus and immobilizes the shuttle, knocking Fowler unconscious in the process. Harper manages to take back control of the ship and safely lands the shuttle, and while initially hailed a hero, he is written off as crazy and fired when he informs NASA about what he saw. Ten years later, conspiracy theorist K.C. Houseman (John Bradley) determines that the Moon’s orbit has deviated from its present course and is moving closer to Earth. When he tries to contact NASA, nobody will listen to him, so he takes matters into his own hands and goes live on social media, causing widespread panic.
When NASA comes to the same conclusion as Houseman, they send three astronauts to the moon to investigate, and the first reports are that there is a miles-deep hole on the moon’s surface. Before they have time to explore the deep cavern, they are attacked and killed by the same anomaly that struck Harper and Fowler a decade earlier, NASA realizing that Harper was telling the truth. Fowler, now the deputy director of NASA, reaches out to Harper and begs him to come back to NASA so they can try and determine what is happening. With Houseman now on board, the three take off from Vandenberg Space Force Base, and having brought the retired Space Shuttle Endeavour out of storage, they make their way to the moon, where Harper learns about the real reason the Earth is being attacked, as well as the slim potential humanity has for fighting back, before it’s too late.
“Moonfall” follows the same narrative structure that all end-of-the-world movies must adhere to; inform the viewer early on that the Earth will soon come to an end, whether it be from an alien invasion, an external force like dangerous solar flares from the sun, or something from within, such as rendering motionless the Earth’s magnetic field, whatever the cataclysmic rationalization, we need to be aware of its existence. All of that is explained moderately, early on, but as the film progresses, instead of Emmerich allowing the plot to unfold as the moon being blown out of its orbit and, as a result, advancing toward Earth, he decides to imbue the narrative with a convoluting plotline that includes the construction of the moon billions of years ago by an ancient civilization, who also created a form of A.I., only for the machine intelligence to become self-aware, and fight back, killing all symbiotic lifeforms.
Emmerich adds so many characters that you stop caring about them after a while. When one dies or sacrifices themselves to save another, you’re apathetic to their cause because they weren’t given enough screentime for us to get to know or care about. The entire cast appears to be going through the motions, expressionless and unenthusiastic. Consequently, there is no real fear of impending doom; we just accept what is about to transpire and go along with it monotonously because that’s what the script says. Even some of the CGI is cringeworthy. In one scene, Los Angeles is being flooded by a small tsunami, and I swear, some of the shots appeared to possess model cars, streets, and buildings, with the camera elevated above them and with the advancement of CGI and special effects today, this type of shot felt sorely out of place. I still have faith in Emmerich that he’ll return to this genre again, I just hope he allocates as much screen time to his characters as he does to his lavish CGI.
Now available on Digital HD, and on 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray, & DVD April 26th
