Film “Moonfall” in the cinema: The dark side of the moon. – Culture

The moon falls to earth. It has lost its orbit and is approaching the mother planet in elliptical orbits. The impact will destroy all life. Before that, however, its gravitational pulls do some damage because they get stronger with each round. The perfect template for Roland Emmerich, the grand master of blockbuster cinema To smash big cities, oceans and entire mountain ranges.

New York? In pieces. The Rocky Mountains? Just rubble. The Pacific off Southern California? A mud broth that rears up to the clouds up to the tsunami.

There are also family dramas, AI visions, sci-fi myths, conspiracy stories, action heroes, top gun flights on the space shuttle and what feels like five years of scientific reporting. Because the people in the cinema also follow them and such an end of the world can only have an effect if it at least halfway adheres to the findings of research. Even if logic is the first victim early on in the somewhat insane premise of the renegade celestial body. But when humanity then finds itself in a showdown in the third act… But that shouldn’t be revealed, because Emmerich uses turning points like ignition stages that accelerate his script towards the finale. Everything inside, like a triple deluxe burger. With an extra portion of lard, because it was always important to Emmerich to populate his special effects orgies with characters that somehow touch you. And how are the stars supposed to assert themselves against the barrage of effects if not with a lot of melodrama?

The astronaut has a few problems: divorce, debt, addiction

The main characters are Jocinda Fowler and Brian Harper, who have known each other since they were crew members on a space shuttle. Their last flight together went terribly wrong, and because Harper still landed the space shuttle safely without instruments, he should have become a hero. If only Fowler hadn’t testified against him before the board of inquiry. Harper then drew the threefold lot of fate: divorce, debt, addiction. Fowler, on the other hand, has risen in the hierarchy of the space agency Nasa to the top management. Great conditions to hate each other, adding relationship drama to the doomsday drama that keeps the storylines on an emotional track quite well.

If you disregard the fact that the two were cast with Halle Berry and Patrick Wilson and therefore look far too good for their jobs, the characters are quite good to tie the film together. A nice side aspect is that the two stars turn a Hollywood law of nature upside down. Berry is a bit older than Wilson and her character is a lot more sensible and gripping than his.

Now, alongside hedge fund managers and reinsurers, blockbuster directors belong to the group of people who have to assess people’s fears and needs as far into the future as possible in order to make the investments worthwhile. Emmerich always had a feeling for it. He often outsourced his fears to mythical creatures like the extraterrestrials in “Independence Day” or the monster lizard in “Godzilla”. He explained it once by saying that he didn’t want to serve as an enemy. With the climate catastrophe, however, there is finally an evil that can reach a consensus.

Years ago, Emmerich became the forefather of the educational disaster film. He even got things moving. “The Day After Tomorrow” from 2004 ensured on two levels that the climate catastrophe was finally taken seriously by the American population and then also by politicians there. On the one hand, the strip was a didactic introduction to the topic. On the other hand, at the premiere in New York, documentary director Davis Guggenheim and former Vice President Al Gore met, who then produced the educational film “An Inconvenient Truth”.with which they cemented the issue in discourse, at least in sane America.

Moon instead of comet, excitement instead of satire: “Moonfall” is the counterpart to “Don’t Look Up”

“Moonfall” is also a climate catastrophe and a pandemic film. The metaphor stands like a colossus. It was obviously in the air. The Netflix film “Don’t Look Up” just came outwhich uses the same premise only with comet instead of moon and satire instead of suspense.

“Moonfall” also has the core message that it can end badly if you don’t believe the Cassandras of this world. But because blockbuster directors not only have to make sure they capture their audience’s fears in order to create excitement, but also not to alienate anyone, Emmerich uses a rather charming trick. He provides the two main characters with a sidekick named KC Houseman, played by Game of Thrones’ John Bradley, an amateur scientist and conspiracy theorist. He settles it in the field of ufologists and alien believers and thus in political harmlessness. In general, he dances quite elegantly around the politically mined fields of discourse, which is not so easy in America when it comes to environmental catastrophes.

And because everyone really has to be literally brought on board, fate throws the blended families of the two main characters ever closer together during the catastrophe. Then there is the stepfather with unspecified Latin American roots and professional success (Michael Peña), the father of divorce of African American descent with a brilliant career in the military (Eme Ikwuakor), and for the Chinese co-producers there is also a Chinese au pair student (Kelly Yu ), who is the only character who doesn’t really have a role in the plot, but is very pretty and helpful.

At some point the question arises as to whether a film can still work if everything is done right. And then you have to realize that Roland Emmerich, with all the demands that a film industry, an American and, secondarily, global society, the course of things and the funds, all of which have gotten into huge difficulties, make of him, above all is a good storyteller. If you want to have the feeling for two hours that a blockbuster is really pushing you into the cinema seat, you will be well served.

moonfall, USA 2022 – Director: Roland Emmerich. Book: Roland Emmerich, Harald Kloser, Spenser Cohen. Starring: Halle Berry, Patrick Wilson. Leonine, 130 minutes. Theatrical release: February 10, 2022.