Cast and characters:
Alexa Marie Anderson … Carrie
Eva Ceja … Dominique
Tyler Christopher … Steve
Pauline Egan … Amanda Sawyer
Joe Finfera … Dave
Jamison Jones … Logan Sawyer
Jeremy London … General Madden
Marisha Shine … Nina
Jenny Tran … Jing
Azeem Vecchio … Bobby
” …so wildly random and poorly made that it won’t impress you in any way. The fact that nothing in the film works well is not only due to the mediocre story and the ridiculously bad way in which the story is handled, but also certainly because of the mediocre special effects and poor acting, which don’t make the whole thing more believable.” 2/10 Seal_Team1138 [translated from Dutch]
“Everything just plods along with characters spouting loads of technobabble while looking worried and occasionally throwing themselves around trying to convince us there’s been another meteorite impact. As a result, Moon Crash never builds up momentum or excitement. Similarly, there’s no real tension either because every time something starts to build, the script reverts back to a couple of people talking…” Voices from the Balcony
Roland Emmerich destroys the world again with “Moonfall,” but this time his heart just isn’t in it. The German nihilist blockbuster filmmaker, who has rarely met a conspiracy theory he didn’t like, has become the "master of disaster" with films like "Independence Day," and his own global warming epic, “The Day After Tomorrow.” But while his film “2012” in particular was overwhelming in its passion for turning mass death into a roller coaster thrill ride with two kids in the backseat, here is "Moonfall," which proves a boring apocalypse movie is worse than one fixated on how we are all doomed.
“Moonfall” depicts the horror that would unfold if the moon were to go out of orbit and crash into the earth. Before that big bump, Earth’s gravity would be progressively out of wack, while the moon would dump debris as it gets closer. For good measure, Emmerich throws in a “Transformers”-type edge to the hare-brained science about why this could be happening, but that too comes with a bland imagination and execution. Don’t be confused, this movie has more worth as a comparison to Lars von Trier’s “Melancholia,” about a massive planet crashing into Earth, than a decent piece of entertainment.
The American military decide that the moon, well, they gotta nuke it. But there’s something else going on with the moon—something inside it—and it’s ultimately up to three smart people to stop the moon from destroying earth, including a disgraced astronaut Brian Harper (Patrick Wilson), a courageous head of NASA and Brian’s fellow astronaut partner Jocinda Fowl (Halle Berry), and a conspiracy theorist named KC (John Bradley) who has long thought that the moon was a megastructure. KC finds out about this change of course and leaks it to the media, with NASA equating that there are only about three weeks left. They take off in a shuttle with eventually no crew on the ground, and it doesn't feel triumphant so much as the film trying to minimize its cast numbers.
All three of our heroes have their personal connections that make for ho-hum on-the-ground drama: there’s Brian and his troublesome son Sonny (Charlie Plummer) and his ex-wife and their two girls; Jocinda and her son and her ex-husband and the foreign exchange student she makes babysit her kid (Kelly Yu); KC and his mother and his cat, Fuzz Aldrin (given an amazing close-up).
Co-written with Harald Kloser and Spencer Cohen, “Moonfall” is a lumbering, long locomotive of one cliche attached to another, making time pass slowly even though there is so much juggling of these different one-dimensional relationships. The human stories are gratuitous themselves instead of involving us, so telegraphed in the drama of their characters. This is how a stepfather and angsty son reunite midway through the movie: “I don’t hate you.” “You know what? I’ll take it.”
“Moonfall” suffers from other more consciously cut corners, suggesting a budget that could only include so much destruction (his previous film, "Midway," was more successful at looking less phony with similar constructs). It’s so obvious that the film's version of Colorado is a sound stage with one tiny snowy road for numerous shots; you can see how cramped the actors are, and specifically hear the contempt in Charlie Plummer’s line-reading. Working with smaller resources than his previous blockbusters, “Moonfall” constantly seems constrained by its unsubtle reliance on green screens, and the immense labor of its visual effects crews. Emmerich's blockbuster vision has come full circle: he might have inspired countless direct-to-video disaster movies with titles like “2012: Doomsday,” but now he’s made a movie that’s just as visually junky and is not inspired to be more.
A transparent and self-amusing filmmaker, Emmerich’s sense of humanity can be found in who gives the spirited performances and who does not. In this case, it’s only KC who gets the exclamation points, to scream about how the moon is a megastructure, and eventually his awe in being proven right. (For a movie that comes in the era of Elon Musk and Space X flights, KC gets to says “I love Elon.”) But everyone else deals in periods when their experience is an exclamation point: you’ve never heard someone minimize “Oh shit, the moon is rising” until you've seen "Moonfall." It used to be weird how much Emmerich’s nihilism wanted to show destruction, now he is bored with humanity. Even reliable forces like Wilson and Berry cannot sell what little drama the story has.
Sometimes the film’s lackadaisical sense about the end of the world can be laugh-out-loud; notice any time that something devastating happens in the background of a shot, and how the characters in the foreground barely react to it. “Moonfall” rarely makes room for the usual interludes of destruction from previous Emmerich films; who thought we’d ever miss them this much, or his obligatory destruction of the White House. The film practically forgets that it’s dealing with an apocalypse, that all of humanity is stake. To be fair, there is a “gravity wave” in the middle of the film, lifting carriers and tankers and bodies of water throwing them around California, and it’s an impressive feat by the visual effects artists. But the apocalypse should not feel this lifeless.
In Roland Emmerich’s new sci-fi disaster flick Moonfall, in theaters on February 4, the moon has fallen out of orbit and is heading straight for Earth. In true disaster movie fashion, the moon’s plummet creates chaos with the Earth’s gravity resulting in tsunamis, large earthquakes, erupting volcanos, and just general destruction on the third planet from the sun. A ragtag group of heroes, composed of a NASA executive, a disgraced former astronaut, and a conspiracy theorist, set out on a space mission to save all of humanity.
Emmerich is no stranger to putting the Earth in peril. Emmerich launched into stardom behind the success of his 1996 film Independence Day. Since then, he has made the potential destruction of the Earth his primary career path. Also, being the man behind the camera for 2004’s The Day After Tomorrow, and four years later, 2012.
It doesn’t take long to realize that things are not as they seem. Moonfall opens with a routine mission for astronauts Brian Harper ( Patrick Wilson ) and Jo Fowler (Halle Berry). Their mission to repair a satellite turns to tragedy when they encounter an anomaly seemingly born out of a crater on the moon, leaving one colleague sent to his death in space and Fowler unconscious. Harper makes it back to the ship in time to get himself and Fowler safely back to Earth, where no one believes his story. Leaving Harper, the disgraced former hero, and Fowler moving up the ranks in NASA.
We fast forward a decade and meet self-proclaimed Dr. K.C. Houseman (John Bradley), a megastructure conspiracy theorist who thinks he has just made the discovery of a lifetime. Houseman has found the moon knocked out of its orbit by a mysterious force and is now heading straight for Earth.
Calling the plot for this bloated and unnecessarily clunky is an understatement. The story also is weighed down by family drama. Providing us with a side story of Harper and Fowler’s children who, through a series of implausible events, are now traveling together trying to outrun the chaos back on Earth while their parents deal with what is happening in space. Unfortunately, the frantic pacing within the first 45 minutes of the film doesn’t give us the time to care about any of these characters. No scene is allowed to linger longer than a few minutes before we are on to the following exposition and more clunky dialogue.
I won’t give away the twist of what caused the moon to have been knocked off its orbit, but the explanation of it is so long and tedious that it took two actors to sit through it. One seemingly tagged out halfway through for the other cause one person sitting through it would be more human suffering than any endured by the moon crash landing on Earth.
If you can sit through the first part, the final 45 minutes of Moonfall are fun and action-packed
Not all is just big and dumb; however, there is some fun to be had. As with any Emmerich disaster film, the real highlight is the destruction of Earth. In this instance, Moonfall doesn’t disappoint. There are plenty of exciting set pieces showing devastating impact. As seen in the trailer, one in particular, showing a gravity wave speeding towards our protagonists and leaving destruction in its wake, matches any scene Emmerich has put on film. The final 45 minutes is a fun, action-packed ride if you can hang in for long enough to get to.
The cast also does a credible job under the circumstances. The dialogue doesn’t help this film, but Wilson, Berry, and Bradley give performances suggesting that this film could have been the blockbuster it wanted to be if everyone had been up to the task as well.
Final Verdict: Moonfall is a mindless affair primarily devoid of the fun that accompanied Emmerich’s other disaster films. Solid performances and fun set pieces are just not enough to save a movie that the plot has more craters than the moon itself. 2 out of 5 stars.
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