The Wandering Earth

Science fiction tends to love using absurd means to place Earth in danger. Typically these adventures follows a group of characters traveling from point A to point B to do something to stop the planets destruction. This type of disaster sub-genre has been in abundance for decades before losing any sense of excitement and tension in the post-2000s with how tired they've become, at least for those American made types. This brings us to The Wandering Earth, a Chinese science fiction film directed by Frank Gwo and based on the novella of the same name by Liu Cixin. This came to my attention when I heard about how much money this was making in the box office report video I was watching from ScreenJunkies News on YouTube. I felt like I needed a change of pace to see if a foreign language feature can help improve my luck to find great entries among the 2019 movies. I entered the auditorium ready to see how if it can shake things up for me and I'm glad to say that it provided some solid over-exaggerated thrills.

What's it about? Taking place in the future, the governments of Earth have worked together to build enormous thrusters to push the planet to another solar system since the Sun's getting too unstable. This takes on two perspectives of that journey with a father who's working at a space station monitor and his son living on the moving Earth, with most of the screen time spent with the latter. A fascinating aspect in this movement is how the living conditions of the planet that are affected and how people are surviving in their day to day lives. The dangers that arise in this venture allows some intense hazards that harm a group of citizens and scientists trying to figure a way out of an unexpected predicament affect their civilization. Another thing to appreciate about this is how it avoids most cliches of similar films such as a love story subplot or an unnecessary smug villain. The plot is simple and the execution is surprisingly effect for a blockbuster film that feels like more than what the actual budget was.

How are the characters? The only protagonists with development that are focused on are Liu Qi (Qu Chuxiao) and Liu Peiqiang (Wu Jing). The father-son bond is standard between them isn't overplayed but is given enough material to feel like effort is put there to have some sort of emotional attachment (along with the solid performances from both actors). It should be noted that there's a lack of character development here since it does play with some cliched archetypes on a few characters. Honorable mentions go to Han Zi'ang (Ng Man-tat) and Han Duoduo (Zhao Jinmai) for their contributions to establishing memorable connections with good acting chops.

Overall Consensus: The Wandering Earth provides impressive thrills for its genre with great environmental dangers to overcome, a simple but effective premise, and memorable character archetypes. ⭑⭑⭑⭑🎟 Runtime: 2 hours 5 minutes PG-13

Reasons to watch it: You like any of the aforementioned actors. You enjoy predictable science fiction films with familiar archetypes. You want to see a Chinese made blockbuster project. You are familiar with the novel this is based on and want to see how it's adapted.

Reasons to avoid it: You dislike any of the aforementioned actors. You hate predictable science fiction films with familiar archetypes.