Moonfall (2022) Review

Time: 130 Minutes
Age Rating: Offensive language
Cast:
Halle Berry as Jocinda Fowler
Patrick Wilson as Brian Harper
John Bradley as K.C. Houseman
Michael Peña as Tom Lopez
Charlie Plummer as Sonny Harper
Kelly Yu as Michelle
Donald Sutherland as Holdenfield
Director: Roland Emmerich

The world stands on the brink of annihilation when a mysterious force knocks the moon from its orbit and sends it hurtling toward a collision course with Earth. With only weeks before impact, NASA executive Jocinda “Jo” Fowler teams up with a man from her past and a conspiracy theorist for an impossible mission into space to save humanity.

Ever since I saw the trailer to Moonfall and knew that it was directed by Roland Emmerich, I had already figured out what kind of movie it is. I didn’t watch it in the cinema, but I was interested in watching it eventually, because it looked like some dumb fun. It ended up being sillier than I thought it would be, for better and for worse.

The script is incredibly weak; the story is incoherent with cookie cutter characters, and the dialogue is cheesy and cliché-filled (with way too many references to Elon Musk). It also clearly rips off so many better sci-fi movies like Elysium. I was expecting all the absurdity going into Moonfall; it is another Roland Emmerich disaster movie, and one about humanity trying to stop a moon from crashing into Earth. There is certainly a lot of gloriously silly moments where it defies physics, and it managed to be particularly dumb even by Emmerich standards, which I guess is a plus. However, I wasn’t expecting the movie to be going into conspiracy theories absurdity. I won’t spoil things, but much of the reveals make the plot reminiscent of a rejected Ancient Aliens episode. Despite the silliness, it plays things a bit too seriously than you’d expect, especially when it came to a major aspect and reveal much later in the movie. There is a long exposition dump on the third act which is just grating and hard to watch, really taking away from the movie’s enjoyment. As wild as it makes the movie, it would’ve made for a better movie if it was a straightforward plot about stopping the moon from crashing into Earth. There are plenty of pointless subplots which also bring the movie down. Along with the main plotline with Halle Berry, Patrick Wilson and John Bradley going up to the moon, it also focuses on a subplot following their families on Earth. I get why its there, mainly to show off all the destruction on a ground level. However, it was less interesting than whatever was happening on the moon. The movie is too long at over 2 hours in length and would’ve benefitted from cutting down some of the unnecessary subplots.

The cast aren’t the best here, but they’re mostly passable at the very least, and make the movie more enjoyable. Patrick Wilson and Halle Berry have given far better performances in many other movies, but they do commit to their parts and are decent here. John Bradley is also a third protagonist, playing a conspiracy theorist who gets involved with the wider plot. The character is very cliched as to be expected, but with Bradley’s performance and his large involvement in the plot,  the character became one of the highlight of the film. These three lead actors gave more than they should and made it enjoyable to watch. The rest of the cast unfortunately doesn’t fare as well. Donald Sutherland just shows up for one scene, and Michael Pena is barely in it at all and does not do much.

This is a Roland Emmerich movie, and you can easily recognise that. There are plenty of large scale and over the top action sequences. The visual effects could be inconsistent however, sometimes they were pretty good, other times the CGI could be awful. That aside, there are some entertaining action with massive destruction, and I liked the design of the aliens and creatures that the humans are up against.

Moonfall is definitely not one of Roland Emmerich’s best movies and it’s very average. However, the action sequences, some of the ridiculous aspects, and the main trio of Halle Berry, Patrick Wilson and John Bradley made the movie somewhat fun to watch.

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Independence Day: Resurgence (2016) Review

Time: 120 Minutes
Age Rating: Violence
Cast:
Liam Hemsworth as Jake Morrison
Jeff Goldblum as David Levinson
Jessie Usher as Dylan Dubrow-Hiller
Bill Pullman as Thomas J. Whitmore
Maika Monroe as Patricia Whitmore
Sela Ward as Elizabeth Lanford
William Fichtner as Joshua Adams
Judd Hirsch as Julius Levinson
Brent Spiner as Dr. Brakish Okun
Patrick St. Esprit as Reese Tanner
Vivica A. Fox as Jasmine Dubrow-Hiller
Angelababy as Rain Lao
Director: Roland Emmerich

As the Fourth of July nears, satellite engineer David Levinson (Jeff Goldblum) investigates a 3,000-mile-wide mother ship that’s approaching Earth. 20 years earlier, nations across the world started to use recovered extra-terrestrial technology to develop an immense defence program. When the alien invaders attack with unprecedented force, the U.S. president, teams of scientists and brave fighter pilots spring into action to save the planet from a seemingly invincible enemy.

I liked Independence Day, I don’t love it as much as others do but it was an enjoyable film nonetheless. I wasn’t really excited when the sequel was announced, it felt too late, if this film was to be created, it should have been done 10 years ago. None of the trailers particularly hyped me. After seeing it, I can say now that Independence Day Resurgence is not really good. The story is messy with subplots and bad humour as well as questionable visual effects. It’s not horrendous, but I still don’t think this movie is worth watching.

The most surprising thing about this movie is how long it felt. It was actually only two hours long but it felt so much longer. The pacing is to blame for the most part, the first act jumps all over the place to introduce all the characters (and I’ll get to them later) and it moves at a very slow pace. Even in the last act, I felt completely bored. This is probably because unlike the first film, the sequel doesn’t have any charisma, it’s not exciting and just feels oddly generic. There are also so many pointless subplots that go absolutely nowhere. I think I should bring up the humour, there’s so many jokes thrown into this movie, and it’s quite obvious when they try to be funny. None of the jokes except one actually lands in the movie, the rest are cringe. Oh and I should mention that this movie has an obvious set up to a sequel that will never happen.

The actors are fine for the most part but are only good as the material that are provided to them, which is to say, not great. It’s enjoyable seeing some of the original cast, particularly, Jeff Goldblum, who’s hands down the best part of the movie. However there are just way too many characters in this movie, at one point the focus shifts to some random kids who have no relevance, it’s very jarring and confusing. The film didn’t need so many characters, the first film certainly didn’t need it. Also some of the characters are given way too much screen time certain characters like Brent Spiner’s returning character and a guy named Floyd… the latter being particularly annoying.

Oddly enough the special effects in the first film work better than in here. While the effects here aren’t the absolute worst, they do look very fake looking at times, sometimes Star Wars prequel levels of visual quality, especially when it came to the ships. But even some of the non-action scenes, the visuals looked weird, there was just way too much CGI on screen, sometimes it looked like a video game cut scene. In terms of the camera work, its fine, you can actually see what’s going on.

Independence Day: Resurgence isn’t one of the worst films I’ve seen but is definitely flawed. The film felt too long, the dialogue was bad, the pointless subplots are endless, the effects were too fake looking, it’s not a good movie at all, borderline bad. Overall I think that it’s just a mediocre movie, I didn’t hate it. If you didn’t like the original, you probably won’t like this movie, and if you do like the original, it could go either way, however I have a feeling you won’t like it either. I didn’t expect much from this movie and yet I got less than I thought I would get.