Roland Emmerich is a filmmaker known for blowing stuff up, namely the Earth. Proof in point? Independence Day, Godzilla, 2012 and The Day After Tomorrow all involve destruction in some way shape or form. Emmerich is back with his finger on the trigger for his latest disaster flick, Moonfall. The title says everything you need to know about the film. The plot of the film revolves around the Moon falling out of orbit and what follows are the destructive consequences, yet again.
The cast for Moonfall feels very unbalanced with Game of Thrones actor John Bradley in the lead role of a conspiracy theorist named K.C. who appears to know a lot about the Moon and is also the first to discover that the Moon is out of orbit. This leads him to Patrick Wilson’s character Brian Harper, a disgraced former NASA-employee, and astronaut Jo Fowler, played by Halle Berry. Like I said the cast is unbalanced. Bradley comes off as a bit over-the-top while Wilson and Berry attempt to take the film more seriously than it should be. As well as comedy actor Michael Peña in a supporting role, the tone of the film is constantly shifting.
The concept of the film however is intriguing to say the least with Emmerich grabbing the idea from real-life conspiracy theorists online who believe that the Moon is not a natural formation. Wiithout spoiling anything, the execution of this “out there” idea though feels very weird and so surreal that you’ll be confused as to what is going on. Moonfall is the kind of film you’d expect to find while scrolling through TV channels in the middle of the night.
The film relies a lot on visual effects and some of Emmerich’s previous films such as The Day After Tomorrow and Independence Day utilized CGI in a way that aided the film. Here however it feels very noticiable for a lot of wrong reasons. I can only assume that the reason this film has a high budget was solely to pay for the visual effects artists, as there is a lot of effects in the film!
Not all of the visual effects are bad though especially with a very promising prologue at the start of film, but the majority of the destruction that follows feels fake and as an audience member it takes you out of the film experience which should never happen. With a bit more time spent on the visual effects and more time finessing the characters while working on the right tone, Moonfall probably wouldn’t have been so bad.
★☆☆☆☆
1/5
Moonfall is too short and overstuffed with shonky CGI. The film explores some interesting ideas but the story ends up falling flat by the end. There are some very questionable decisions to the way the story plays out, especially with the explanation of what the Moon actually is. The scale is up there with some of Emmerich’s other films, but with rushed character development and a lot of plot holes this ends up being a film made purely for entertainment purposes and nothing more.
Thanks for reading today’s blog!
Alex Murray, the Head of Eyesight Productions
Thanks for reading today’s blog!
Alex Murray, the Head of Eyesight Productions
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