Moonfall

Director: Roland Emmerich
Starring: Halle Berry, Patrick Wilson, John Bradley, Charlie Plummer, Michael Peña, Carolina Bartczak, Zayn Maloney, Ava Weiss, Stephen Bogaert, Donald Sutherland
Distributor: Roadshow Films
Runtime: 130 mins. Reviewed in Feb 2022
Reviewer: Fr Peter Malone msc

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Rating notes: Mature themes and coarse language

The moon goes off orbit with disastrous results for Earth. A mission to get the moon back to orbit, dramatic revelations about the moon’s origins. And some adventures back on earth.

The moon going off orbit. That sounds like an exciting premise for some science fiction imagination. The moon coming closer towards earth, rising and setting irregularly, the loss of control of the tides and consequent flooding… Solid ingredients. And that is the basic challenge of Roland Emmerich’s Moonfall. Not that he hasn’t contemplated extensive destruction all over the earth before – Independence Day, Godzilla, climate change in The Day After Tomorrow… (Although this reviewer’s favourite Emmerich film is his Shakespeare/Duke of Oxford, de-parody, Anonymous. More films like Anonymous, please!)

For a while, in the 1970s, conspiracy theorists told us that there was no moon landing, that it was all re-enacted in a movie studio. This time, there is another conspiracy theory or, at least, a reinterpretation of human history, especially concerning aliens, and that the moon is actually a ‘Megastructure’, a source of artificial intelligence, with an enormous mechanical core…

So, this is one of those science-fiction disaster movies where one is invited to have more than a willing suspension of disbelief. Could this possibly happen!

The film opens in 2011 with, Patrick Wilson and Halle Berry as the leaders of a lunar expedition. The craft experiences a shudder and one of the crew is lost – and Patrick Wilson is condemned by courts, disgraced, from hero to pariah. And then the action shifts to 10 years later, our time. And the moon goes out of its orbit – with some visually amazing special effects, giant waves, floods, and even the tower of the Chrysler building landing in the Rockies!

Which means, of course, that there has to be an expedition to steady the moon’s orbit. And, of course, who has to go but Patrick Wilson, living alone, repairing cars, alienated from his wife who has remarried, from his teenage son who is arrested for reckless driving and drug possession. Reinstated, he teams again with Halle Berry who has become head of NASA. But, the interesting character is John Bradley’s KC Houseman, a more-than-eccentric amateur mathematician and moon theorist. He is a welcome presence, one of those large-build actors (his choice of words in the screenplay is ‘chubby’), who is something of a scientific genius, but ignored by all except his mother and some really eccentric friends.

So, no spoilers, simply to ask will the expedition rectify the orbit, save Earth, head off the chiefs of staff who want to nuke the rampaging AI? (And, for some more dramatic excitement, there is a lot of the action taking place on earth, the astronauts’ sons involved in adventures as they try to escape to safety in Colorado.)

Action adventure for science-fiction fans rather than for scientists.