The Wandering Earth, 2019.
Directed by Frant Gwo.
Starring Jing Wu, Chuxiao Qu, Guangjie Li, Man-Tat Ng, Mike Kai Sui, Jin Mai Jaho, Hongchen Li.
SYNOPSIS:
Sometime in the future, the sun is dying out, so mankind have built gigantic thrusters to propel the Earth from its orbit, to find a new home across the solar system. With the journey set to last 2500 years, it’s a mission fraught with danger, with The Wandering Earth chronicling the adventures of the intrepid young survivors at the heart of the story.
Frant Gwo’s science-fiction blockbuster crash lands onto Netflix as something of a perplexing surprise. Not least because surely its near $700 million Chinese box-office receipts afforded it more of a fanfare than being inconspicuously dumped on the streaming platform’s notoriously labyrinthine menu page. But maybe it’s deserving of such a fate?
The story is bonkers. It’s the kind of save-the-world fare that peppered multiplex electronic readouts throughout the late nineties and well into the astronoughties. The Core, Deep Impact, and to an unavoidable extent, Armageddon, are all influences on this eco-disaster pic. It goes without saying, that if you love films in which OTT serious music orchestrates the drama of a group of action movie archetypes uttering increasingly ludicrous dialogue, then The Wandering Earth is worth strapping in for.
The spacesuit wearing characters assigned with saving the earth are a ramshackle group of recognisible types: stubborn kid with daddy issues, little sister who he’ll learn to protect, their father who promised to return home, floating somewhere above the planet, and army grunts whose icy exteriors will melt faster than the ice covering the harsh landscape of this future world. However, despite such tick-box archetypes, the the film’s greatest strength is in making you root for these people. In the same way you could embrace Armageddon‘s ludicrousness, yet still shed a tear as Grace Stamper said her goodbyes to Harry, The Wandering Earth has a similarly schmaltzy soft centre.
Initially the look of the film is an overtly artificial one: CGI bloat meets video-game cut scenes, as large vehicles careen through the bleak landscape, or planets jettison across the kind of visuals you’ve seen in countless Sci-Fi shows. The good news is that the aesthetics are consistent throughout, so you adjust to the vision, and by the time Earth is plummeting towards Jupiter, the backdrops against which the drama plays out are truly spectacular.
It’s not all about the spectacle though, with the more affecting moments being the smaller flourishes, in particular the way in which teardrops pool around the face of a character during a pivotal moment.
There’s nothing that new on offer in The Wandering Earth, but it does prove that China are a force to be reckoned with when it comes to making the kind of silly big-budget blockbusters that have been peppered throughout Hollywood summers for the last few decades.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film ★ ★ ★ / Movie ★ ★ ★
Matt Rodgers – Follow me on Twitter @mainstreammatt
Originally published May 28, 2019. Updated May 29, 2019.
