Moonfall

 This review may contain spoilers!

 

Moonfall sees the entire Earth placed under threat when the Earth drops out of orbit and threatens to collide with the planet. Three astronauts are the heroes who must fly to Earth's rescue and stop the extraterrestrial threat that seeks our destruction. As a whole this is a film that doesn't have a lot to give but I will praise the special effects. I found a lot of the visual effects of space, the moon and the 'megastructure' interior of the Moon to be absolutely fascinating visuals.

 

The best (and only good) performance within the film came from Michael Peña, who played Tom Lopez. This character is perhaps a little more grounded than the roles a lot of the rest of the cast play, which is definitely an advantage. Peña serves the character well because he's that new husband/stepdad character who feels like he's living in conflict with the reckless behaviour of the original husband (Wilson). Seeing this pair bicker and fight on-screen is quite fun, and I enjoyed that Peña doesn't fall into the same traps as other on-screen stepdads but rather comes at these conflicts in quite a sincere manner. As the feature progresses and we see the love and care he has for his family you see a lot of heart under the surface. I was particularly impressed with Peña's last scene, in which his role selflessly gives up his own means of survival and uses his last words to drive his young daughter to safety. A very moving moment in an otherwise senseless piece of blockbuster.

 

Seeing this film felt like I was trapped back in that era of 90s to early 00s blockbuster, in the worst way possible. The idea here of the moon being rooted in disaster for the Earth is fine, but then we start learning the conspiracy theorists are right and that the moon was built by aliens. Oh, then we learn that the 'aliens' were in fact the original humans who built the moon to help oversee the development of Earth humans. Oh and then we learn that those original humans? Yeah they were wiped out by a swarm of machines governed by an A.I. that they built themselves. So the Moon is plummeting to Earth because a rogue A.I. our alien descendants made is attacking it from within and the only way we can stop it is if 2 astronauts and one conspiracy theorist go to space and set off an EMP. They will greenlight any old blockbuster script these days. There's a lot here that doesn't work, the film begins with a huge ten year time jump that's very jarring and makes character relationships quite murky to follow. Even then a lot of the characters in the film barely feel connected with one another, a lot of them are so annoyed to be in the same room as one another that it's difficult to get any joy out of actually watching these roles interact. The disaster element of this film goes quite extreme, to the extent that it's very hard to believe anyone has actually been saved by the end of the feature. The entire journey this film takes us on, in which a barely functioning NASA is deferred to by an American military brimming with impotency and paranoia is a strange one. Too often the film just stumbles through cliche, goofy one liners or rips off better science-fiction to find its way through to the next scene. Emmerich's special effects may be good but his camera work sure isn't. this is a film crammed with a lot of dull wides and over-populated with some strange and very jarring close ups. Kloser and Wanker's score is a very generic blockbuster fanfare of sound, there's no heart or emotion in the music to lift the scenes up.

 

Halle Berry, who played Jacinda Fowler, comes off the back of directing and leading an exceptional MMA film to co-leading this dumpster fire; watching Berry deadpan deliver science jargon seemed like a waste of my time and hers. Patrick Wilson, who played Brian Harper, is also quite off as a lead in this film; they were clearly going for a man who felt larger than life with a chip on his shoulder and Wilson never matched up to this. John Bradley, who played KC Houseman, is some very weak comic relief; the entire film pushes Bradley to be as zany and out there as possible and he never managed to make me laugh anywhere but at him. Charlie Plummer, who played Sonny Harper, has no chemistry with Wilson whatsoever despite their father/son relationship being his defining motivation; Plummer is so lacking in emotion this entire film that you struggle to get through those Earth scenes. Carolina Bartczak, who played Brenda Lopez, is shoehorned into the overly concerned mother role with little room to play outside of this; Bartczak has no real connection with either of her on-screen partners which sees her drop into the background early on. Zayn Maloney, Ava Weiss and Hazel Nugent, who played Jimmy, Nikki Lopez and Lauren Lopez respectively, are young performers with not alot of range between them; Weiss and Nugent in particular feel like they're more in the film to be plot devices rather than play characters. Eme Ikwuakor, who played Doug Davidson, was quite a stoic role with a very distant chemistry with his on-scren ex-wife Berry; Ikwuakor is meant to play quite heavily to the concerned father aspect of his character but you never really feel that that relationship is present. Kathleen Fee, who played Elaine Houseman, gives the same absent-minded old parent with dementia performance a lot of these hollywood blockbusters toss out; it's quite a two-dimensional take and Fee is happy with dishing little more than that out. Donald Sutherland, who played Holdenfield, is a very big name for such a forgettable role; Sutherland's cryptic warnings in the dark is a scene that felt quite confusing to watch and added nothing to the film as a whole. Azriel Dalman, who played Young Sonny Harper, doesn't function as much of a role when he plays a kid; using Dalman later in the film to dish a heavy exposition dump was an exceptionally big mistake on the film's part. Kelly Yu, who played Michelle, is such a confusing role that never really justifies her place in the feature; the exchange student angle of her character feels retroactive in some scenes because she often feels like she's playing to Berry romantically.

A career low for Roland Emmerich, which by this point is saying something. I would give Moonfall a 1/10.