Moonfall is a sci-fi movie that follows a gang of astronauts, conspiracy theorists and children who must unite to save the world because the moon has turned against us.
What is the dumbest moment in Moonfall? Without getting into the spoilers too much, this could be the starting scene where the filmmakers can’t think of anything to do with Oscar winner and action superstar Halle Berry, so they just knock her out. This could be product positioning, in which the character turns on the Lexus NX sport mode to overtake gravity. It may be the moment when someone says “The moon is coming for us!” and they do not mean general or figurative – they literally mean that the actual moon comes over the horizon to attack them.
And yet most of the time at work Moonfall is not stupid enough. Directed by Roland Emerich is best known for its typical 90’s Alien Invasion movie, Independence Day, and Moonfall is a blatant attempt to bring that magic back. Independence Day was completely absurd, but full of so many iconic moments, charming characters and striking visuals that it went beyond the derived plot. Most importantly, everyone took it seriously – even stupidity.
Especially stupidity.
In contrast, the first half of Moonfall is so reckless, so heartless, that instead of turning your eyes away from the abundant absurdities, you find yourself longing for something really ridiculous to happen.
The opening scene rips Gravity in bulk. The story of the hero consists not of one, but of two divorces (both boring). The disaster film element sees the world go to hell in a wheelchair, expressed almost entirely through the least convincing news reports that have ever been half together.
Still, stick to it and Moonfall will eventually lean towards lunar madness. As the moon threatens the Earth, the massacre known by thousands of other global disaster movies has been replaced by new scenes filled with chaos that is unique to this concept, such as gravity disintegrating. By the end, the filmmakers had thrown their hands in the air and silenced every crazy science fiction theory they could think of, such as an entire DVD library of Star Trek, Doctor Who, and Battlestar Galactica smashed into a space capsule and launched into orbit (with only one worker). engine, ovs). Nevertheless, I was sucked into Moonfall’s orbit until the end.
As for the characters, at no point in Moonfall do you see anything other than actors playing their roles. For most of the cast, this means wearing a uniform, screaming one line and then disappearing. Those who stay a little longer look as if they have just read the script and have not yet decided if they really want to star in this film. In particular, Charlie Plummer presents a performance bordering on hostility with dead eyes, as a fast food worker who has just been forced to start a double shift.
The famous exception is John Bradley, who played Samuis or something like that in Game of Thrones. Bradley grabs the audacity with both hands, taking on the bizarre role of Jeff Goldblum from Independence Day and injecting desperately needed enthusiasm into the most leaden scenes.
At least in the lead role, a tense and tense Patrick Wilson does his best as an action figure of an astronaut who can be called. His smoldering energy always stays an inch from the smile, like the moment in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, when Leonardo DiCaprio’s washed-up movie star Rick Dalton threw himself into fast-paced Italian action movies. Holly Berry, meanwhile, adds a steely note to the class as she takes over NASA and digs up conspiracy theories, though her ungrateful role mainly involves making the male character save the world for her, for no apparent reason other than he has a motorcycle and she doesn’t. right.
The thing is, from astronauts with square jaws to robbers, the people in the movie are not human. They are movie characters, little more than cardboard clippings, providing replicas copied and pasted from past movies. And in the middle of the movie, I began to wonder if this was the key to unlocking the mystery of Moonfall. Maybe it’s not a dumb B-movie, but a perfect subversive activity of the Hollywood show.
Moonfall seems like a big budget driven by Hollywood blockbuster effects – but it’s not. Just as the delightful French new wave of the 1950s was inspired by homage to American noir films, Moonfall is an updated version of the B-films of the 1950s, conspiracy thrillers of the 1970s and disaster films, all set back. in the Hollywood machine. It’s a bit like a spaghetti western or one of those French comics starring American characters: Of course, the action takes place in America, but not indeed America or even the real planet Earth. The action takes place in film America, Hollywood, a fantasy realm where men are men, bad guys are bad and cars explode when you shoot them. The world of Moonfall is a place inhabited by stubborn astronauts, so strong that you can hear their spurs jingling in space. This is a world where pencils basically just drag real characters back. This is a world where being an absent alcoholic father is actually good, because this indomitable energy will save the damned world.
I may be reading too much about the fact that director Roland Emmerich is German, but it’s tempting to see Moonfall as Hollywood’s outlook. Compare Independence Day with a similar film about astronauts against the asteroid Armageddon, directed by Michael Bay: When current Americans like Bay present frivolous speeches and dotted with stars, it reflects differently. Roland Emmerich’s films are as ridiculous as Bay’s superb work, but they allow part of the possibility that Moonfall may be some kind of architectural meta-commentary on the excesses and artificiality of the Hollywood spirit of the time.
Or maybe it’s just the dumbest movie. I can’t wait for the sequel!
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