Geek Review: Moonfall

After numerous disaster movies that threatened the planet, there’s no denying that director Roland Emmerich has a huge dislike for Earth and its inhabitants, but no one told us that he especially hates the movie-going audience.

This time, the 2012 and The Day After Tomorrow director is imagining what the end of the world would look like if the moon were to come crashing down onto Earth. But unlike his earlier movies that sees humanity work together to prevail against nature, and emerge victorious against the great unknown, Moonfall is an epic sci-fi post-apocalyptic movie masked as a disaster flick, and neither succeeds where it matters. 

Starring Patrick Wilson (The Conjuring) as washed up astronaut Brian Harper, Halle Berry (Catwoman) as a NASA executive Jo Fowler and Game of Thrones’ John Bradley as space enthusiast K.C. Houseman, the fate of the world is left in the hands of these unlikely heroes as they embark into space to stop the moon from careening into Earth.

The movie starts off with basic introductions of our protagonists – who they are, how they’re related to NASA, how they met etc – and quickly attempts to set the scene in the first 30 minutes. The movie’s first act is basically a rush of information and story setting that isn’t the most engaging, but necessary to carry viewers on to the second act. Not that it matters because the way the movie is set up, and filmed on sets, audiences already feel the pain of mankind’s irrational stupidity, and that of the filmmakers. 

The second act of the movie sees the three heroes in space, because why not right? Whilst they attempt to figure out why the moon has decided to stray off its path, folks on Earth are seen scrambling to mountains to seek refuge, because when the sky is falling, the safest place is up. We don’t quite see the logic in that, but in case you’ve missed it, there isn’t much logic in Moonfall. 

What makes disaster movies believable, or at the very least reach the desired effect of feeling thrilled or even afraid, is that it has to make sense and that the threat is real. Natural disaster? Check. Ancient prophecy? Sure. Climate change? Bingo. Moonfall made sense for the first five minutes, until up the bit where flying nanobots invaded the screen. And things get weirder as the movie shifts from disaster flick to sci-fi epic, but goes back and forth, unsure of where it wants to be.

By the time the halfway mark arrives, audiences will stop caring and when the movie’s climax explains why the moon is acting up, you would wish that someone would end the pain, for the sake of the whole cinema. We wouldn’t want to spoil it for you, but even if you’re not knowledgeable on the moon and how the galaxy works, it’ll only take you a second to realise that the premise is extremely far-fetched and ridiculous. 

And just like that, Moonfall became a rather interesting film that has you going from “How are they going save the world?” to “What in the world was that?”. Poor story aside, we can’t say that Wilson, Bradley and Berry are the best at their roles too. 

Individually, each actor carries their character fairly but fails to hold the movie on their own, unlike say, Will Smith’s Captain Steven Hiller from Independence Day (1996), considered to be Emmerich’s only modern masterpiece. Wilson’s douchey dad with a saviour complex isn’t convincing enough, while Berry’s character is slightly annoying with her self-righteousness, do as I say attitude, and Bradley… well.. we just can’t unsee Samwell Tarly. Put them together, and there’s hardly any chemistry. Not only are we supposed to believe two of them are astronauts, we have to buy that the third is a moon-genius and all three are all that it takes to launch a shuttle to the stars, as they try to take down the floating Death Star… I mean, moon. 

The supporting cast of Kelly Yu, Charlie Plummer, Carolina Bartczak, Eme Ikwuakor and even the always funny Michael Pena are also forgettable, and aside from the moon sequences, the only fun thing to watch are some car chase scenes that look like an impressive Lexus car advertisement – something that local filmmaker Jack Neo should watch, to get tips on how to more naturally inject product placement. 

Perhaps Moonfall’s saving grace is how grand their visuals are. Granted, Emmerich is no stranger to making natural disasters seem real in his films, but it certainly takes a master to shoot special effects sequences in space that seem more believable than those from the supporting cast on Earth. 

Moonfall had so much potential to lean towards science and logic, but it seems that with each disaster epic he’s taken on since 1996, Emmerich cannot seem to top his alien invasion masterpiece. Even if its writers don’t intend for this to make much sense, they could’ve at least made use of believable knowledge like the law of gravity or something along those lines to explain why the moon has gone off path, the way this movie obviously has.

Moonfall is a disaster movie in every way possible. From it’s unbelievable premise, poor writing and sub-par acting from talents we had expected more from, Moonfall misses its mark spectacularly, choosing instead to dabble in nonsense theories that don’t hold ground. Perhaps if you save your money, you can stave off a bigger disaster – another disastrous epic from Emmerich.