REVIEW: Moonfall (2022)

Movie Reviews

This weekend, Ronald Emmerich’s new apocalyptic epic, Moonfall, was released into theatres, surprising fans with how utterly insane a single film can be. One Rotten Tomatoes user said:

“While I was entertained, that was one of the stupidest movies I’ve seen in my life. Actually, scratch that. That is easily the stupidest movie I’ve seen in my life.”

As with much of Emmerich’s prior work (Independence Day, 2012, and The Day After Tomorrow), this film is riddled with his staple of dumb fun, mindless action, and empty characters that give rousing speeches. Though the plot is nonsensical and the characters are empty clichés, Moonfall is still an entertaining film that provides the brain-dead escapist romp that fans so need these days.

Its fun yet meaningless characters carry this bonkers story across the finish line, drawing cheers of excitement from fans, despite their better judgment. These people are vacant cutouts of clichés with no arcs or basic motivations. However, in this type of low-brow action movie, the characters are not the priority; as such, their hollowness can be forgiven. The high adrenaline and crazy action drown out any desire or need for complex characters.

Moonfall follows two former astronauts, a crackpot conspiracy theorist, and their families on a mission to stop the moon from crashing into the Earth and ending all life. John Bradley, Samwell Tarly from Game of Thrones, is a conspiracy theorist who discovers that the moon is out of orbit, gradually losing altitude until it will eventually crash into our little planet and eradicate all life. In his mission to get NASA and the world’s governments to listen to him about the coming doom, he comes across Patrick Wilson’s character, an ex-astronaut blacklisted from NASA for past mistakes.

With Patrick’s help, Bradley manages to state his case to NASA. With her potential for recourse draining rapidly, the newly appointed director of NASA, Halle Berry, decides to listen to this crazy man and launch a hair-brained attempt to land on the crashing moon and try to stop whatever unknown force is causing this doomsday. This film cannot be called a movie of quality, but fun is an apt description.

As a sci-fi movie, the audience would expect at least an attempt to pretend that the science and math displayed was plausible, but Moonfall throws that notion out the window, presenting utter gibberish as scientific fact, thereby making the very foundation of the story built on sand. The so-called “intelligent” characters come off as idiots because of this, spouting incoherent scientific lines as if they were the most profound notions since the light bulb.

No amount of tweaking could make the premise of this movie even begin to make sense. Between this and the abundant plot holes, Moonfall is riddled with a dark, cancerous stain that cannot be redeemed by any amount of headcanon or attempt at rational reconstruction. The entire film is a broken mess that makes your brain ache in agony if you pounder the implications of the information presented for longer than a second. All this firmly categorizes the movie as brain-dead storytelling. If you can manage to turn off your brain and all coherent intelligence within you, the flashing action, fast pace, and attractive actors can draw you to engage with the story and enjoy yourself. If you are unable to turn off your brain, this movie will be painful to watch, agonizing even.

Michael Pena’s character, Patrick Wilson’s ex-wife’s new husband, is quite good. He’s the classic character that the audience is supposed to hate, though never actually doing anything wrong. He is a good man unfairly treated by everyone in the story. This character cliché of a misunderstood jerk whom the audience is told to hate despite having no reason to is getting progressively more annoying the more often it is used in Hollywood. Despite that, Michael Pena’s sheer charisma keeps his character from being a drag on the story and makes the audience feel for him more than most other characters.

Charlie Plummer’s Sonny, Wilson’s son, starts as an annoying, cool kid who thinks too highly of himself and hates everyone else. By the end, the writers throw everything that they’ve established about his character out the window and make him into a selfless hero figure. This rapid change might give the audiences whiplash with its stark transition. However, after getting used to the change, he was almost enjoyable to watch.

The supporting characters are all as empty and vapid as is expected from a movie like Moonfall. Wilson’s ex-wife is devoid of feelings or facial expressions. She never displays a modicum of emotions even when people near her die. Halle Berry’s husband, an army general, had the closest thing resembling an arc, little enough as it wi, despite his limited screen time. He starts out dedicated to obeying orders and doing whatever it takes to stop the moon. Then, he evolves once he realizes the actual cost of his actions. He is another good man whom the audience is supposed to hate without cause. There aren’t any other characters of note, the rest of the supporting cast existing solely to walk into a room, dump clunky exposition, then leave, never to be seen again.

Halle Berry’s Director Fowl is a strong, independent woman who doesn’t have to throw her weight around or complain about sexism. By being free of such SJW messaging, her character manages to be as compelling as anyone can be in this type of film. Her relationship with her son feels real and organically motivates her to risk it all to save the world.

John Bradley’s KC Houseman is the literal embodiment of comic relief, often coming off as insufferable and annoying because of it. This Game of Thrones alumn has some interesting scenes, but his comedic writing is too distracting. His jokes often undercut moments of intense gravitas to immediately take the audience out of the action. The actor does well with what he’s given, yet is written as such a 2-dimension cardboard cutout that no actor could have made the character captivating.

In the same vein as classic reckless hotheads like Maverick, Steven Hiller, and John McClane, Patrick Wilson’s Brian Harper is fun, daring, brave, smart, loving, and completely bland. His character is a generic perfect man. He might be down on his luck and in a rough place, but that is all due to his lack of motivation. When he puts his mind to something, he is immediately the coolest cool man ever to be cool. Though this cliché is not necessarily bad, Wilson does not carry the charisma of Tom Cruise, Will Smith, or Bruce Willis needed to keep a character like that interesting. In addition, he doesn’t have any chemistry with his co-stars. The audience has to be told that he’s close to certain people and cares about them while never seeing that sort of connection.

In the end, Moonfall is very much a bad movie, but the fun kind of bad. If you enjoy films like The Tomorrow War, Independence Day, or Armageddon, you will defiantly find something to appreciate about this movie.