Moonfall is the first big action movie of the year, and it will certainly be one of the dumbest. The Moon has moved out of its normal orbit and now seems destined to collide with Earth. NASA sends out a desperate mission to save the day, whilst relatives of those onboard that flight struggle to survive the catastrophic weather events, caused by the Moon shifting, and widespread lawlessness.
That sounds enough plot for what could be an unoriginal but spectacular disaster movie from an old hand at the genre, Roland Emmerich. But no, the plot is far dafter than that. The Moon is not a natural phenomena, instead it was constructed by friendly aliens who are also our ancestors. And that’s not it! Malevolent aliens, actually artificial intelligent beings created by the good aliens who became self-aware and turned evil are the ones trying to destroy the Moon and Earth.
That utterly preposterous plot is described in an embarrassingly bad expository scene quite near the end of the movie. It grinds proceedings to a halt, which is a shame, as otherwise the film’s breathless pace covered up the problems with the cardboard characters and extremely weak script. The cast includes Patrick Wilson and Halle Berry as the intrepid astronauts. They are not bad, but they have very little to work with, and, at times seem as baffled as the audience.
This is a strange hodgepodge, leaning heavily on other movies. The opening scene appears to be lifted from Gravity, the mission is reminiscent of Armageddon, the events on Earth are a mixture of Deep Impact and Greenland and the sci-fi elements are influenced by 2001. Unfortunately, all those, with the possible exception of Armageddon, are much better!
This is a hard one to mark as it is completely ridiculous but mostly entertaining.
Rating: 5 out of 10