When the moon's orbit begins decreasing, the world is thrown into chaos. Fluctuations in gravity and extreme tidal events bring destruction on a global scale. But when it's discovered that some sort of alien technology is responsible, NASA director Jocinda Fowler (Halle Berry) must turn to disgraced astronaut Brian Harper (Patrick Wilson), the only man who has seen this tech up close, and a crackpot scientist (John Bradley) with strange theories about the moon, in order to fix the problem.
The master of disaster returns, once again, to the genre that put him on the Hollywood map. Only you'll probably wish that he hadn't. Moonfall comes across like an inferior version of his previous disaster epics. Which begs the question; why does Roland Emmerich keep falling back on the same old (and very recognisable) template? This sort of thing was getting stale when 2012 came out back in 2009! But it's all here; the (sometimes) disgraced expert and/or bad parent who will make everything better by saving the world, while their family attempts to survive the carnage - something that felt particularly unnecessary here - and the teased possible reunion of the formerly married. In fact, the writing as a whole is a tad messy. On top of some rather cringe-worthy moments featuring John Bradley's character, Moonfall is a mish-mash of moments stolen from other movies, only not done so well. The writers even stole a joke from The Lost World: Jurassic Park!
It certainly doesn’t help that thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic there was no location shooting done for this disaster... movie. In its place they used a whole lot of rather obvious studio sets, made clear by some very bad and rather overused green screen effects. Leaving the movie devoid of any sense of authenticity or believability - which admittedly does sound rather stupid in regard to a sci-fi, disaster epic, but there we are. Not only is this all rather odd given the high praise Emmerich's previous disaster epics have received for their visual effects, but it also has a habit of taking you out of the movie, especially during the big action set pieces. Even the pretty decent cast - arguably Moonfall's greatest asset - are unable to do enough with the material to distract you from the movie's issues. So ultimately it becomes more about making it to the end of the movie in order to find out what's actually going on with the moon and why it's trying to kill us, rather than actually enjoying the ride.
Some underdogs are impossible to love, and it appears that Moonfall is one of them. If it's a big, action-packed, disaster/save the world movie you're after, there are much better options out there. A couple of which were directed by Roland Emmerich.
1/10
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