Crater (2023)

September 18, 2023 7:20 PM

After the death of his father, a boy growing up on a lunar mining colony takes a trip to explore a legendary crater, along with his four best friends, prior to being permanently relocated to another planet.

This was a Disney+ release that lasted less then two months before being pulled. As of this moment, there is no legal way to see the movie.

posted by 2N2222 (5 comments total)

I was impressed with the movie overall. It's reasonable sci fi, but at its core, it's not rockets and lasers. Rather, it's townies and families/friendships broken up over time and distance, plus a road trip of sorts. Most of our characters are mine colony kids, strictly working class, who've never seen Earth, and have no hopes of ever leaving the colony. They're not entirely gloomy, but they exist in a small world. Over the course of the story, we see the depth of the world the kids live in, a corporate ruled colony that exists to provide fuel for a new Earth-like planet being settled, many years of suspended animation space flight away. And the abandoned developments that were created before the new planet was discovered. The story is centered on kids who don't seem to have long term hope, and only really have each other. It's sentimental and touching.

Interestingly, despite the working class, corporate skeptical angle we see, it's never really resolved, if that's something you're wanting to see. The corporation is the government, the oppressor, and also the saviors for our young protagonists. Their impact is less revolutionary, more incremental. It turns out well for our youthful gang in the long run, yay, but the system isn't really shaken up in any significant way. I wouldn't expect so much in a YA movie, but it would be nice to have seen the power structure fleshed out as much as other parts of the movie.
posted by 2N2222 at 8:10 PM on September 18, 2023 [1 favorite]

How strange. Without having seen this, it sounds a lot like the plot of Growing Up Weightless by John M Ford. I wonder if that's why it was pulled.

(Growing Up Weightless: kid growing up in a lunar colony with an uneasy relationship with his father escapes for a trip with his 5 best friends to the furthest-away crater they can get to, before he leaves the Moon. In that book, the political/corporate power structure *is* explored further; the father works in it.)
posted by Pallas Athena at 5:14 AM on September 19, 2023 [3 favorites]

The upside of the streaming-services-producing-their-own-content era was supposed to be that things would never disappear. Bummer. Didn't get to see this one.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 2:39 PM on September 19, 2023

I've been out of the loop, but apparently there was enough complaints that Disney made the movie available digitally on Sept 26th. via several outlets.
posted by 2N2222 at 7:48 PM on November 18, 2023

Finally got to see this. I thought it was good. My ten year old son liked it, though he didn't seem totally blown away. For a kids film I thought it was suprisingly sophisticated in its politics and its relatively realistic science. (Apart from the artificial gravity inside the moon bases).

I was a bit startled by the vandalism of the model apartment though, and my wife didn't like the risky oxygen-cylinder-rocket-jump game. I wonder if those were factors in Disney withdrawing the movie.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 7:21 AM on March 24 [1 favorite]