‘Moonfall’: Roland Emmerich Orbits Around Recycled Gimmicks for a Mundane Apocalypse

Alci Rengifo

Director Roland Emmerich must surely hold the record as the filmmaker who has destroyed Earth the most times. He is the auteur of CGI apocalypses, big and small. Emmerich also has a knack for wrecking terror on the world in exactly the same way each time. His trick is to simply replace the threat. Aliens, wild weather, Godzilla are all interchangeable in the Emmerich universe. Sometimes it can work, as with his crowning achievement, the blockbuster “Independence Day.” But now we get “Moonfall,” which a few decades ago might have worked as a guilty pleasure B-movie, had it been made with cheap practical effects. Alas, this one is pure Emmerich on autopilot, aiming a big digital Moon at Earth to threaten the lives of all his recycled characters.

In the year 2024, a team of astronauts led by Jocinda Fowl (Halle Berry) and Brian Harper (Patrick Wilson), are carrying out a space mission when a mysterious force slams into their shuttle, killing another crew member. Disgraced in the public eye, the astronauts leave the shuttle program. Ten years later Jocinda is still working at NASA’s Mission Control while Harper is divorced and falling behind on rent. Meanwhile, an amateur scientist, KC Houseman (John Bradley), has found evidence that something is quite off in the Moon’s orbit. It seems our vital celestial neighbor is headed right in our direction. When Houseman tries to warn Harper he’s understandably dismissed as a quack. That status doesn’t last long when NASA itself confirms the Moon is indeed headed for Earth in a sort of death spiral that will first sprinkle the planet with chunks of fiery debris. As you can expect, Harper is called back into action with Fowl, and Houseman close behind, to figure out how to save our home as the seas get out of control and oxygen depletes. But what is the source of this sudden turn of cosmic events? It turns out the Moon isn’t really the Moon, but the vessel for something quite alien.

Walking into a Roland Emmerich movie means you can at least anticipate some momentarily entertaining doomsday scenery. This director has mastered the art of bringing to life some of our explosive fantasies. His most iconic shot probably remains the moment an invading alien ship fires a death ray into the White House in “Independence Day.” Any theme involving possible doom gets diluted into pop fantasy by Emmerich, like climate change in “The Day After Tomorrow” or Mayan calendar prophecies in “2012.” Those movies were all goofy, but visually exuberant and rarely boring. By comparison “Moonfall” is surprisingly rather dull. Some of the signature Emmerich shots are present, as when waves of overflowing ocean drown Los Angeles or some crafty moments where the Moon massively appears in a distant horizon. For whatever reason, the director holds back and doesn’t even do justice to the time-honored tradition of annihilating New York City. All we get is the Chrysler building’s top half washing up in some Arctic landscape. This was meant to be the big popcorn cousin of those existential films like Lars Von Trier’s “Melancholia,” where planets will collide but it’s all about the characters processing fate down here on the surface. 

A key component of any Emmerich film is that the big effects make up for the cardboard characters, with the exception of “Independence Day,” where Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum injected some real laughs into the material. The problem in “Moonfall” is that the characters are both copycats of Emmerich’s earlier creations and too mundane for this story. It’s all part of a checklist. Fowl and Harper are the former colleagues now forced to work together again. Fowler has a son and military husband, who finds himself in the typical situation where he might need to order the firing of nukes in the direction of his wife. Harper has a rebellious son, Sonny (Charlie Plummer), who hates college and was recently arrested for some petty crime. Sonny of course becomes a hero by helping his mother (Kelly Reilly) get away from raining Moon chunks with rich stepdad Tom (Michael Peña). KC is the guy with glasses no one takes seriously until it’s too late. He’s the more entertaining persona here. Emmerich also uses him to poke fun at general conspiracy theory culture as well. “Moonfall” also features a throwback spirit to ‘90s disaster movies in the sense that we get no sense of what’s happening in the wider world. Only the U.S. matters in this movie. We never see the president consult with at least the Chinese to figure out how to stop the Moon from canceling out all life on Earth. 

When the explanation for what is turning the Moon into a death threat gets revealed, there might be a collective yawn. It has a lot to do with aliens, roving cosmic communities and those favorite theories about Earth’s extraterrestrial origins. It almost doesn’t matter since considering the eventual climax the Moon could have just as easily been made out of cheese in this movie. In his final use of an old Emmerich checklist item, the director boils it all down to the simple use of a bomb. Maybe Emmerich just needed to get one out of his system. He has aimed for more creative heights before with some intriguing and entertaining movies like “Anonymous,” about those theories that Shakespeare was more than one author, and the macho American Revolution offering, “The Patriot.” With “Moonfall,” you sense Emmerich searching for grand ideas but getting trapped by his own formula. It’s not even a guilty pleasure. Next time he should aim higher, since it seems he has now become boredom, the destroyer of movie worlds.

“Moonfall” releases Feb. 4 in theaters nationwide.