Chinese hit 'Wandering Earth' seems out of time
Back in the ’90s, Hollywood loved big, loud disaster films. Movies like “Armageddon” and “Independence Day” gleefully destroyed famous landmarks while bombarding audiences with convoluted sci-fi missions to save humanity from annihilation.
Superheroes ultimately suffocated big-budget disaster movies out of American theaters (minus the occasional Gerard Butler vehicle, e.g. “GEOSTORM!”). Overseas, however, audiences haven’t reached their saturation point.
Take “The Wandering Earth,” a Chinese science-fiction extravaganza released earlier this year that grossed a staggering $700 million.
Yes, $700 million. And that’s counting in our money.
Stateside, the movie had a tiny theatrical run a few months ago. Then last week, with almost no advance mention, “The Wandering Earth” landed on Netflix’s streaming service. It didn’t even get any featured placement on my Netflix app, probably because the streaming service still wants me to rewatch “A Christmas Prince 2.”
Anyway, “The Wandering Earth” is absolutely insane. The exposition dump in the first five minutes by itself rivals even the dopiest Roland Emmerich disaster movie plots of the last 25 years (Pull Ups subplot in “2012” included).
Let’s see what we can do with one paragraph. Deep breath … Our sun is about to turn into a fiery red giant, so all the nations of the world unite to build 10,000 massive propulsion devices that will turn Earth into a giant roving spacecraft. Half the world’s population will die (sorry), but the other half will live deep underground for 2,500 years while Earth travels to a new solar system. A real spacecraft will lead the way, but some bad things happen near Jupiter and Earth will get sucked into the giant gaseous planet and destroyed unless a couple of kids and their grandpa help some rocket scientists and soldiers redirect all the Earth’s engines.
Phew. That’s not even the half of it. Even with its crazy premise, “The Wandering Earth” manages to settle in with a few memorable characters, and, really, nothing about this movie is more preposterous than, say, redneck oil drillers digging a hole on a giant, seemingly sentient asteroid.
Unfortunately, “The Wandering Earth” commits many of the same crimes as the late ’90s and early 2000s onslaught of American sci-fi disaster flicks. While the space imagery is fairly convincing, much of the Earthbound action is swallowed by an overabundance of unconvincing CGI snowstorms and giant metal structures. It all looks the same, with the actors working almost exclusively in front of green screens. Think of the most cartoonish elements of the “Star Wars” prequels, remove all the color and detail, and you basically have the “set design” of “The Wandering Earth.”
The movie plays ALL the tropes too — debris-filled spacewalks, evil computers, mass destruction, father-son rifts, bureaucratic betrayal, heroic sacrifices, inspirational speeches, etc. It’s actually somewhat impressive how many cliches get crammed into this thing in just over two hours.
I wish I could say “The Wandering Earth” provides enough guilty pleasures to explain that colossal box office haul. It’s more “The Core” than “Armageddon” on the scale of cheesy sci-fi with entertainment value.
However, “The Wandering Earth” serves as a nice reminder to those complaining about the overabundance of superhero movies in the current American market. It could be worse. And at least we still have Gerard Butler to give us the occasional gem, like “GEOSTORM!”
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Tyler Wilson can be reached at twilson@cdapress.com