The Wandering Earth is the gigantic epic Chinese blockbuster about the Earth turned into a gigantic spaceship to flee away from our dying Sun into a new Solar system, humanity being relegated to underground cities for the 2500 years of the travel and Earth being guided by a space station built for the purpose. As the planet passes Jupiter to do some gravitational slingshotting, disaster strikes and an astronaut on the station plus his estranged son on Earth will be at the spear of a last ditch effort to save the planet...
After a rocky first half where the moment to moment storytelling is kinda pushed through at a frantic pace, I found the Wandering Earth to be a rather pleasant variation on disaster films from the late nineties / early aughts, one much less callous and morally vulgar than Emmerich entries or Armageddon. Maybe has to do with different priorities in the writing or sensibilities ? I couldn't tell but the characters being flatter or plainer than the quirky stereotypes US films abundantly used may actually mesh better with the high stakes of an utterly straight faced tone (despite how ridiculous the premise is) appealling to our most selfless instincts. There's a lot of sacrifice towards a long term project spanning several generations but I was surprised by the amount of insubordination and disobedience portrayed all throughout. Maybe I was selling the CCP censors savvyness short here ? But it makes for much more compelling drama.
The film is obviously derivative (Beyond Diebuster, you have 2001 and a bunch of other influences) but it never gets to the point it's crippling to the overall work. Same with the VFX work, some parts are a bit behind the state of the art but the general quality is never a detriment to the spectacle and bigger than life vistas.
And wow, Ng Man Tat (Stephen Chow favorite sidekick) sure managed to keep his career going strong in this brave new PRC world. Good for him, it's nice to see a familiar face.
It's not high art by any means but you can give it a try.
