Moonfall (2022)
February 27, 2022 8:32 PM - Subscribe

A mysterious force knocks the moon from its orbit around Earth and sends it hurtling on a collision course with life as we know it.
posted by phunniemee (18 comments total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
I had been nursing my way through Seveneves for the last month and had to press myself to finish it before seeing this moving today, not wanting to mix up two moon fall down stories in my head. Since this movie is the sort of thing that defies you to come up with any intelligent response, I'll just share the two things that are in my head:

Thanks to Seveneves, my brain is doing a David Levinson series of logical leaps and trying to pull some meaning re. Sonar Taxlaw (notably absent from this film).

Roland Emmerich, artistic visionary and auteur that he is, has once again placed wrecked boats absolutely fucking everywhere in the aftermath of disaster, and it just gets better and better. How does he do it?
posted by phunniemee at 8:49 PM on February 27, 2022 [4 favorites]


I interviewed Emmerich once, when Day After Tomorrow was coming out. He was very proud of how absolutely locked down, perfectly credible and real the science was in that movie.

I'm reminded of George Costanza telling Jerry, "it's not a lie if you believe it." I think that's how he does it.
posted by Naberius at 5:58 AM on February 28, 2022 [7 favorites]


For those who haven't seen it yet, a video on the possibility of the moon hitting the earth:
"Hullo, I'm Scott Manley"

Even if you've seen it, it might get you sucked back into his videos which I always find relaxing for some reason.

I'll definitely be watching this sometime, along with the wandering Earth. I think they'd be a good pair.
posted by Acari at 7:19 AM on February 28, 2022 [3 favorites]


That Scott Manley video is worth watching just for the pleasure of hearing a Scot say "Moon" many times. Mūn.

Mūn. Mūn. Mūn. Mūn. Mūn.
posted by sixswitch at 3:05 PM on February 28, 2022 [2 favorites]


Mūn!
posted by Acari at 3:39 PM on March 1, 2022 [1 favorite]


How well does the movie hold up vs the illustrated science of Kurzgesagt's "What if the Moon crashes into Earth?"

(the 'In a Nutshell' science series they do is generally pretty excellent, and more detailed and researched than the animation style would belie)
posted by FatherDagon at 12:10 PM on March 2, 2022 [1 favorite]


The movie looks terrible, but worth it just to discover Universe Sandbox (from the Manley video) which looks absolutely amazing.
posted by bjrubble at 1:04 PM on March 2, 2022 [1 favorite]


(I haven't watched it, but I've seen the promos) So Allan Partridge is in this?
posted by valkane at 7:26 PM on March 2, 2022


I haven't had time to obtain the weed gummies I would need to watch this in the theater which is sad because that would be the best way to see it.
posted by emjaybee at 2:32 PM on March 3, 2022


This movie was flat out bonkers and I enjoyed every absolutely dumb minute of it.
posted by Kitteh at 5:53 PM on April 7, 2022 [4 favorites]


My wife (Kitteh, above) and I watched it tonight; she stoned, me straight, and I think we enjoyed it in equal measure. I jammed this up on Twitter:

Studio heads: well I guess that’s a wrap for today
Roland Emmerich (emerging from a mountain of cocaine): WHAT IF THE MOON IS AN A**HOLE
Studio heads: is there Donald Sutherland
Emmerich: FORTY FIVE GODDAMN GLORIOUS SECONDS
Studio heads: *sold* #moonfall

It is not a good movie but any movie where you can freeze-frame at random moments and see an earnest Halle Berry or Patrick Wilson with lines like "You are the secret key to the moon knowledge" burned into the screen is... this movie is a thing and I don't regret watching it at all.
posted by Shepherd at 5:53 PM on April 7, 2022 [5 favorites]


Half in the Bag: Moonfall
posted by Pendragon at 9:22 AM on April 10, 2022 [1 favorite]


An old school disaster movie done right!
posted by fairmettle at 10:02 PM on April 11, 2022


They get the units for g wrong.
posted by biffa at 3:42 PM on May 7, 2022


Oof. I mean, I knew going in that this was a "the science won't make a lot of sense, but don't let that bother you" sort of movie, but I hadn't heard that it only really had like maybe a central 20-25 minute nugget of solid story, and the rest of it was basically furiously shoving the pieces around the board to get the protagonists in to that story.

Everything on the moon? Yeah, fine, good times, enjoyable. Everything in the 80 minutes leading up to it just felt so barely thrown together, so forced. Oof.
posted by Kyol at 5:14 AM on June 6, 2022


On HBO Max now.

This was enjoyably silly; enormously paint-by-numbers derivative. Of Independence Day, mostly: the whole menace-from-space / outsider has the info / going inside the mothership to destroy the boss thing. Emmerich has been trying to recapture that lightning for 25+ years; this probably gets closest but is very baggy at the beginning compared to ID4's tight gradual-reveal pacing. A wee little bit of Twister in the "the moon's gravity is pulling us off the Earth" scene, too, I thought.

Sour notes: the multiply-repeated Elon Musk ass-kissing; the egregious Lexus product placement ("let me put this baby into warp speed"); the just plain weird Kapersky placement (the billboard outside the megastructurist meeting's hotel; the Endeavor's on-board computers).
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 11:45 AM on September 11, 2022 [1 favorite]


Whoo boy, this is some silly bullshit.

Nuke the moon! Or EMP it. Or whatever.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 5:46 PM on October 12, 2022


Whee!

My favorite bits involved the Moon looming:
During a spacewalk, one astronaut to the other: "Turn around."
[The Big Moon creeps up over the horizon]

"Oh, shit. The Moon is rising."


Also fun:
A construct infodumps on one astronaut, who then repeats the infodump to the other astronauts around a minute later.

The tagline: "HUMANITY WILL FACE THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON."

"So why doesn’t the swarm attack the Earth and kill us all?"
"If the Moon survives, they know that organic life can still be reborn."
"So, it’s trying to kill two birds with one stone."

From Wikipedia:
> In January 2022, Emmerich spoke about the possibility of filming two sequels back-to-back if the first film was a success. The following month, star John Bradley said that "if Roland goes down the direction that he wants to", the sequels would be "even more batshit crazy than the first".
posted by Pronoiac at 10:08 PM on December 18, 2022


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