Half ‘Moon’
Master of disaster Roland Emmerich’s latest sci-fi epic is a turkey so dull it isn’t even bad enough to be good-bad.
moonfall
Director: Roland Emmerich • Writer: Roland Emmerich, Harald Kloser, Spenser Cohen
Starring: Halle Berry, Patrick Wilson, John Bradley, Michael Peña, Charlie Plummer, Eme Ikwuakor, Kelly Yu, Donald Sutherland, Stephen Bogaert
Germany/USA/China • 2hrs 10mins
Opens Hong Kong Apr 21 • IIA
Grade: C
Okay. How anyone convinced NASA to agree to using its name and logo — much less paint the agency director as a snivelling coward — in this POS is anyone’s guess. Really. Is it that hard up for funding? Because a big fat cheque (like, a manned Mars mission sized cheque) is the only reason to put your name to this. Roland Emmerich is beloved for the deliciously gooey cheese that makes up one of the great ’90s triple bills — Universal Soldier, Stargate and Independence Day — but he turned into a madman after those successes, hell bent on torturing us. Godzilla, 10,000 BC and 2012 are clinics in Emmerich’s worst habits, the kind that make you see the inside of your skull from rolling your eyes so hard.
Among those habits: regular male and female leads that are divorced, often from each other. One of them will be exposing a child to a — gasp! — stable step-parent that has the audacity to have a job. Venal bureaucrats that dismiss the genius scientist warning of impending doom, only to turn around and try to weasel their way into the official Safe Space (arks, bunkers, libraries, etc), though they usually wind up dead. The hero is a certifiable fuck up. And of course, terrible science, that 100% of the time involves unfurling a giant map on a lab table to demonstrate how fast the flood/ice/aliens/moon is coming. The mathematics of Emmerich’s filmmaking is admirable.
This is not how the moon works under any circumstances
So Moonfall’s premise is solid enough, if egregiously silly (for a better spin on the moon crashing into the surface of the Earth check out Neal Stephenson’s novel, Seveneves). A couple of astronauts, Brian Harper (Patrick Wilson, The Conjuring) and Jocinda Fowler (Oscar-winner Halle Berry) witness a catastrophic event involving… space critters (?) in 2011. A third astronaut dies, and investigators lay the blame at Harper’s feet. A decade later, conspiracy nut KC Houseman (John Bradley, Game of Thrones) is convinced he has proof the moon is a celestial megastructure because it’s moving closer to Earth. Surprise. He’s right, and the changing orbit starts messing with tides and shit. So Fowler, now acting as NASA director because the first dude turned out to be a chicken shit, calls her old mate Harper — who she hung out to dry by not backing up his space critter story — collects the conspiracy freak and get an old space shuttle out of mothballs. Off they go to save the world.
Everything about Moonfall screams backyard cheapie except for the US$140 million budget. For the price, the effects are relatively shoddy, at this point Emmerich is ripping himself off narratively, and the cast looks moderately embarrassed. Berry, who for some reason has never really become the supernova she should be, and Wilson, Hollywood’s second sexiest Bland White Guy (Kyle Chandler rules this particular roost) have a tiny bit of chemistry, but that’s neutered fairly quickly in a painful attempt to strip them of any chemistry because Heteronormative Scientists Who Respect Each Other or something. Always welcome and routinely underused, Michael Peña (Ant-Man) gets to play the role of Responsible Adult With Bullseye On Their Back. These are not spoilers. This kind of ridiculousness should be laugh-and-point-and-comment fun, and that’s Moonfall’s biggest crime. It’s just forgettable. Emmerich is being eclipsed by Gerard Butler these days. The ludicrous radio news in the background of Greenland was more amusing than this. Seriously. Listen for it. It’s hilarious.
It’s an Emmerich sci-fi disaster so of course everyone has to stop and stare into the distant sky at some point…
Here’s the thing. We want to like Emmerich. We really do. His fun stuff is outrageously fun, and by all accounts he’s a decent person who’s pro-stunt Oscar category, who advocates for LGBTQ+ inclusion, who cast Will “Slappy” Smith against studios wishes (he was allegedly too Black) and who is very into climate change activism. He’s that rare Hollywood machine type who you can root for. Moonfall tanked at overseas box offices, and it’s easy to see why. There’s no joy this time around; no glee in blowing up the White House or attaching killer icicles to the Statue of Liberty. It just sits there. Inert. Here’s hoping NASA’s cheque clears. DEK
Samwell Tarly, Not Josh Lucas and bad Catwoman doing the 21st century equivalent of throwing a map onto a table