Moonfalls, Everyone Dies
As I’m an contrarian asshole, I often like to start things of with the bad stuff. So let’s begin. First off, Moonfall is full with the typical inaccuracies and Hollywood-bullshit you can find in every single movie, from the beginning of time to the end of time. Like, even in a zillion years, when only black holes remain, the society of intelligent blackhole-based AI filling the universe will still make something like movies, and it will still be filled with this shit. Ugh, I need a drink.
To expound a bit on this, I’ve counted at least seven separate moments where the movies should have ended prematurely, as the dumbasses involved got themselves killed. Luckily human technology in Moonfall runs on movie magic, so they made it out alive every time.
Also, you get the typical clichés, like big organizations like NASA being incredibly weird with trying to suppress information every idiot with a toy telescope could find, and of course the crazy conspiracy theorist is 100% right with fucking everything. The rest of course is also there, while not bad, just basic psychological manipulation to make you care for the characters, because othewise no-one would care about them, like here are the kids, they’re quirky, here are various dangers to try to kill them, please let them survive oh sweet Artemits! You get the drill.
A Kessler-Syndrome of Spoilers
And that’s already it I think with the negative stuff. A number of other things turned up, but the movie actually adressed a lot of them eventually, like a wink to the audience that Roland Emmerich actually had some help for his writers on the science (or comon sense) department. On the neutral side, I’ve learned that after my eye surgery last October, my eye sight still is not good enough to walk into a movie theater unaided. Luckily for all the people who are mad enough to care for me, I wasn’t actually stupid enough to walk into the theater alone. Weighted down by glasses, an eye-flap and a mask, plus my not exactly premium-class eyes, I had a friend help me out. Without her aid, I’d probably just stumbled and then rolled down the theater steps like the worst stupidest comedy skit. We’re talking Z-clas YouTuber skit here.
As it happened, I managed to prepare by avoiding all information about Moonfall like the plague, to enjoy (or not enjoy) the movie on its own merits. My friend did the same, and so all we knew when we sat down was two things: 1.) We were watching a disaster movie and 2.) The moon would fall on Earth.
And then the movie started and Roland Emmerich’s hand came out of the movie screen to bitch slap us, because Roland Emmerich is the greatest troll alive.
See, Moonfall is only tangentially related to the disaster movies of old. As we learn through the movie, the moon is actually a giant space station build to protect us from evil nanite swarms! Boy, did this come as a surprise for me. Instead of an incredibly silly disaster movie, Moonfall is an incredibly awesome science-fiction film! Nicely done, Roland!
The story of the movie is rather simple, after all secrets are uncovered: Billions of years ago our ancestors ruled the galaxy, but their AI turned evil. The moon is a surviving Anti-AI superweapon and revived our dead ancestors on Earth, recycling their ancient DNS to do so. Now the nanites are here and want to snuff out the last bastion of organic life, too!
Of course this is all bullshit, spitting into the face of every Earth-scientiest in person and in sequence, starting with Aaron Aabernathy, Astronomer. But despite it’s many flaws, it’s a really fun kind of bullshit and there are a lot of nicely done explosions to distract you from the stupider parts.
Self-Sacrifice and Smartphones
The dumb nerd who gets to tag along, despite being a stupid sack of shit and being cursed with so many health problems he’s like a poor man’s Mr. Burns, redeems himself by making a huge sacrifice to blow up the ancient AI nanite swarm, saving the moon. Though really, after nearly killing everyone by waving his smartphone around inside the spaceship despite knowing the evil aI is drawn to electronics, that was really the only way for his character to go without leaving the taste of bile in the viewers’ collective mouths.
On Earth, things turn out a lot stupider, since Earth can only draw on Earth-technology. Without space magic being available to dumb Earthlings, seeing people fleeing to Colorado as if the impact of the motherfucking moon would actually leave anything to “survive” in on the surface, was so bad it turned into black comedy. The minor plotpoint of the military trying to swat the moon away with nukes of course turns even more into farce when the military first plans to fire on the moon after it already entered the stratosphere (nice going idiots, was your plan to tickle the moon a bit before impact?) and then is stopped before wiping out mankind for real when the one smart general realizes that nukes don’t work well in a vacuum and pelting the moon after crashing into Earth’s atmosphere is a tiny bit too late to do anything useful. Though the evil AI would probably have praised this advanced method of self-termination.
While our moon-protagonists, with the help of the good moon AI, manage to save all of mankind, the dumb military guys all get buried alive when the giant moon-like structure scratches the mountains they’re in a bit, causing the ceiling of their bunker to cave in. The Earth-bound protagonists meanwhile manage to survive (well, most of them), only because the movie’s dramaturgy made them late for the party, so they only make it to the tunnels in front of the bunker before the movie is already over.
Oh and the nerd gets revived as an AI-ghost in the end. But don’t worry, the moon AI rewards him with immortality, he doesn’t turn evil.
Verdict
Nukes don’t work in space, morans. Also, the story resembles David Weber’s Mutineer’s Moon series a lot. Rather suspicious! Though to be fair, this could be he cause of Moonfall being roughly taped together tropes and clich+es: Our AI turning against us, our ancestors being really awesome and we’re actually post-apocalyptic versions of them, weird shit hiding in our moon, it’s all been done before. Even the extreme timescales of Moonfall (“billions of years”, oh my lord) do show up a couple times in the wondrous world of science fiction.
But the movie does have nice explosions, the absurd story is great fun to watch and everything I could complain about is in every single movie made in Hollywood, and always has been. Could Moonfall have been done better? Sure, but considering the average movie goes has the attention span of a may fly, that would have been a risky move. I can’t fault the publishers from staying conservative. At least they executed their idea fairly well and created a nice big-budget B-movie for us to enjoy.
Final verdict: 8 out of 12 moon-sized Death Stars. Have fun with your new galactic superweapon, Emperor Brian I. of Earth!
Blue Omen 