The Wandering Earth (2019) Movie Review
The sun is dying out so the earth becomes a giant spaceship with rockets placed all over it in an effort to push it out of our solar system. The Wandering Earth is a Chinese sci-fi epic. As I said, the sun is dying and what's happening is it's expanding and so what all of the people of earth do is they build all of these massive, massive rockets and they're placed all over the earth and then they also place them around the equator.
By doing this it keeps it from spinning and rotating but then because they're all just placed on there it just becomes this massive spaceship that pushes the earth through our solar system in an effort to escape it and to go on to a brand new solar system.
Now it's going to take something like 2,500 years for them to actually get all the way there so it's going to go through generations and generations of people but as they're on their journey this massive gravitational pull from Jupiter just forces the whole world to work together in an effort to save the planet, not only from the sun but now from Jupiter as well.
In The Wandering Earth there is a great amount of tension that's being built but it's also mixed up with some good humor as well. I believe it's told in Mandarin but but there are English subtitles. Parts of the dialogue though are going so fast in this movie that the subtitles change really quickly and so you end up missing a little bit here and there.
One funny thing though is because it's being translated from Mandarin into English the translations aren't exactly perfect every single time. You can still understand the gist of what's being said and the grammar didn't translate perfectly made me chuckle to myself.
For the most part the special effects in this are really good also. There are moments where it looks a little bit more like animation or even like a video game but for the most part. The story does share some similarities with Armageddon and there's also this AI system that's on board the space station.
Parts of the action and the story do jump around a little bit and so at times I felt myself trying to play catch up just a little bit of wait what's going on or where are we. I really liked the characters and their development comes over time throughout the film and so we really connect with those that we're meant to connect with.
I also did like the musical score too because it builds the intensity of the drama and I gotta be honest that this made me cry. The emotions just welled up and there is a scene that got the better of me. I had a lot of fun with this and was sucked into the story even if it felt a little similar to some other films.
There are a couple of things that go unanswered in the film but you can enjoy it without knowing the answers. One of the things in particular it has to do with all of these people in cryo-hibernation and it did leave us wondering at the end.
I've never seen a huge high budget Chinese film before and I loved The Wandering Earth. I thought it just captured my attention, the story, the visuals everything was just really done well and it's a lot of fun to see. So I give the movie 9/10.