Roland Emmerich has lost his spark. There was a time when a new movie from this action auteur promised a high-concept global catastrophe, vividly depicted with the eye-popping annihilation of national landmarks, meanwhile hitting our hearts with a tapestry of interwoven human narratives, brought to life by big, almost absurdly charismatic stars. Regrettably, Emmerich’s latest, Moonfall, feels like the Independence Day maker is just going through the motions.
Once more, mankind must band together against a threat to life as we know it. But this time, it’s not aliens, or climate change like in The Day After Tomorrow, or Godzilla. It’s the moon. Moonfall is literally about the moon plummeting to Earth. Only a cantankerous pair of astronauts and a plucky conspiracy theorist can stop it. How do you stop the moon from blowing Earth out of existence? Look, logic takes a flying leap away from Moonfall the first time “megastructure” is uttered, and it will be uttered roughly 87 more times. The script by Emmerich, Harald Kloser, and Spenser Cohen will throw a lot of science-y sounding words at us, while a booming orchestral score rumbles ominously and a sound design of doom literally rattles the theater seats. Enjoy that stimulus, because the presumed “logic” of the plot will not make sense no matter how many exposition dumps hit.
Anyhow, the moon is falling. And in this version of Emmerich Earth, NASA knows why but won’t tell its top scientists why. So, it’s up to steely rogue astronaut Jocinda Fowl (Halle Berry) to uncover the truth. Meanwhile, her disgraced former colleague Brian Harper (Patrick Wilson, wearing a scruffy almost-beard to visually cue ROUGH TIMES) has gotten snarled up with KC Houseman (Game of Thrones‘s John Bradley), a conspiracy theorist/amateur astronomer/”megastructurist,” who believes the moon isn’t really a moon at all.
Credit: Lionsgate
Nearly everyone else at NASA is depicted as a useless bureaucrat. So this underdog trio basically DIYs a space mission to try to save the day. And to add to the stakes, there’s not one ticking clock device but two! The first is the moon crashing into the earth and thereby extinguishing all life. The second is the American military’s inexplicable plan to blow up the moon with nukes. How would that work? Wouldn’t that cause a ton of other deadly issues? Full Disclosure: I am not a scientist — but I would think so. However, Moonfall isn’t interested in that; it’s too busy running from one setup to the next, so busy that it can’t be bothered with reason or even character development.
At first, I admired the rush to get through the setup: Moonfalling, introduce the motley crew, let’s get to space! But Emmerich rushes so breathlessly through his two-hour movie, too little time is allowed for the audience to get to know the characters. They don’t feel like people, they feel like half-assed sketches. The three leads are ornamented with family members in naked attempts to make us value them as loving son, dedicated dad, and devoted mother. But those tertiary characters of dementia-addled mother, troubled teen son, and sweet little boy are so thinly established, they may as well be played by cardboard cutouts.
“Moonfall” feels bizarrely inert.
When the last act splits focus between the three moon-headed heroes and their earthbound children, who are racing through an America quickly descending into violence and ferocious territorialism, it’s pretty hard to care. These terrestrial scenes feel like a clumsy rehashing of the Casse family thread from Independence Day, where the wild card hillbilly dad (Randy Quaid) went into space while his scrappy kids clung together and looked hopefully to the skies. But Moonfall has no character as gleefully bonkers as Russell. There’s no moment as kick-ass as Will Smith punching an alien in the face and shouting, “Welcome to Earth!” There’s no cross-section of life on Earth explored as thoroughly, showing how we all come together in a crisis. Instead, as soon as the moonfalling news hits, the film’s focus is chiefly on rich, privileged people fleeing to the resort towns in middle America. This makes the requisite scenes of coastal cities getting annihilated grim in a way that Emmerich doesn’t seem to recognize. He doesn’t tie us to anyone who can’t afford to run. The characters who don’t have ski dens or government bunkers to flee to are forgotten in a flooded hotel, because moonfalling waits for no one.
Credit: Lionsgate
While so much is going on, Moonfall feels bizarrely inert. The hasty pacing is a part of it, as is the shrug toward establishing characters worth a damn. But part of it is Emmerich’s failures in casting. This isn’t a slight against Berry, Wilson, and Bradley, exactly. Each commits to the script, giving their all to faux-scientific prattle or comically melodramatic exchanges like:
“I’ve got a lot of my own problems.”
“And a moon falling to the Earth isn’t one of them!?”
However, these actors are playing these parts with deep sincerity, which bleeds fun from the outlandish premise and absurd dialogue. While Bradley’s socially awkward pseudo-scientist is sometimes employed for comic relief, these characters just aren’t as broad or bombastic as Emmerich’s past heroes. There’s little swagger or outrageousness. And there’s not a ton of stars beyond them, which, frankly, could have been a help with the smaller roles. Don’t have time to actually develop a character? Slap a famous actor in there, and the context of their persona does a lot of heavy lifting. Then again, Emmerich threw MCU scene-stealer Michael Peña in the mix, and even his character came off as flat and disposable. So, maybe the problem is just Emmerich. Because in the end, Moonfall feels like a lazy rip-off of his best work.
Characters are so thinly established that they may as well be played by cardboard cutouts.
Sure, Moonfall offers terrifically executed CGI action sequences, a star-studded ensemble, and a concept that is out of this world (literally and metaphorically). On the surface, it looks like a standard Emmerich movie, the kind of rollicking action ride you can switch off your brain and enjoy with a soaring heart and racing pulse. However, under this familiar facade, Moonfall has a hollow lack of vision. The film itself barely seems interested in the characters, so why should we be?
Edge-of-your-seat action isn’t exciting if nothing feels real. The plot is so full of holes that the brisk pacing seems like it’s trying to outrun them. But trust me, you’ll get tripped up. It’s little things, like how a rando can leak unverified scientific data online and it immediately becomes worldwide news. And it’s bigger things that’ll make you scream internally, “That’s not how security clearance works. That’s now how NASA works. That’s not how science works!”
Credit: Lionsgate
Even if you can shut off your brain to ignore the nonsense that constructs too much of this plot, there’s little left over to enjoy in terms of action or characters. Instead of breaking new ground, Emmerich seems to be revisiting bits from his glory days, down to daring escapes in a spacecraft. The first time around, they were a blast. This time, they’re a bore.
If you see one stupid movie this weekend, see Jackass Forever. If you see two, the other Jackass movies are on Paramount+.
Moonfall opens in theaters on Feb. 4.
