“Moonfall”, released in February 2022, is a disaster flick directed by Roland Emmerich. Emmerich is known for his long history of creating and directing several incredibly successful disaster movies, such as 2012, Independence Day, and Geostorm, but this one has a sci-fi twist. There’s several instances of multiple universes and alien-like presences as well as incredibly advanced technology. The new sort of open reality and plot stretching really made me enjoy the entirety of this movie, and I didn’t even want to get up to get more popcorn when there was a lull in activity fearing I might miss more action-packed content!
Joicinda “jo” Fowler (Halle Berry) is a now retired astronaut working for NASA. Her former partner and old friend Brian Harper(Patrick Wilson) who is in the dumps mentally after being shunned away and fired following a mysterious anomaly that destroyed their station during a routine maintenance session, killing the new rookie that joined them.
Trusting the whistleblower conspriacy theorist named K.C Houseman (John Bradley) they and her former astronaut partner, rocketing into space while their family and friends dodge disaster in order to reach saftey.
Emmerich co-wrote “Moonfall” with Harald Kloser and Spenser Cohen. Moonfall – of course – has a good amount of cliches and generic plot lines one would expect in a normal Emmerich disaster movie, but I did appreciate his method of not falling completely into it but adding twists and turns to where it wasn’t the same tropes over and over again. It doesn’t mean it didn’t have its issues, though.
One of few issues was the overwhelmingly just…bad decisions made by the crew and basically everyone else in the movie. A lot of dialogue seemed forced, and it took a while to actually get into the action. It seemed as if the movie wanted to pull some heartstrings hoping to keep the audience rooting for the heroes in the end. Problems like these can really harm someone’s initial perception of the film, as it seems rushed despite having a nearly 2 hour and 20 minute run time. Another thing I didn’t like was the sharpness of the CGI in this movie. It seems like it’s just boosted contrast and not as realistic as it’s planned to be. It couldn’t seem to avoid the inevitable cliches and the oddly worded sentences that clearly were changed in the script in order to fit the PG-13 rating. With unnecessary exposition itt felt as if we were being spoon-fed, but it is the sad reality of the world these days; people have to have this in order to understand.
As a whole, I’d say that Moonfall was a very good movie, and I sincerely believe that twists and the turns can lead to a new sort of positive trope/cliche that can be used for good in future sci-fi and action movies. The plot progression while somewhat slow helps the audience fully understand with little questions to be had when leaving the theater. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the movie, and would rate this a 4.5 out of 5. With the end credits scene, there is definitely going to be a sequel in the works!