There was a point in time where the disaster movie ruled Hollywood. The genre can be traced back to the earliest days of film, but in the 1990s, alongside developments in visual and special effects, it experienced a moment of near dominance. One of the most successful films in the genre’s history by a wide margin was Roland Emmerich’s Independence Day, released in 1996 to enormous success. Combining crowd-pleasing patriotism, epic destruction and Will Smith approaching the height of his power, it’s not hard to see why. The film’s success led to a revival of the genre and cemented Roland Emmerich’s status as its master for years to come, something he embraced with Godzilla (1998), The Day After Tomorrow (2004) and 2012 (2009). Emmerich returned to the genre in 2016 with Independence Day: Resurgence, a success obviously advantaged by the franchise name.
2022’s Moonfall represents not only the return of the genre’s biggest name but a kind of experiment regarding its viability in the current state of Hollywood. The film is enormous, in both scale and cost, being one of the most expensive independent productions ever.
Moonfall takes place in the modern day, following disgraced NASA astronaut Brian Harper (Patrick Wilson), space-obsessed conspiracy theorist K.C. Houseman (John Bradley) and Jocinda Fowler (Halle Berry), the very recently promoted director of NASA. After a disastrous mission and a mysterious cover-up a decade earlier, Harper and Fowler are on very different paths in life, reunited only by Houseman’s decision to tell the world that the moon’s orbit has shifted, with Earth directly in its path. The film splits its time largely between this trio’s efforts to save the planet and their families’ efforts to find safety on a planet being torn apart.
The film’s story is as bare-bones as some of its predecessors, with characters generally not serving more than one totally mechanical function and arcs being telegraphed from their very first frame. Where the film takes a turn is in just how strangely that is all presented. The script is strange, often jumping between incoherence and bizarre literalism, as if characters are just reading a plot synopsis. Plot points are introduced and resolved off screen, mostly in service of getting the film to Emmerich’s main interest — the destruction. The film’s cast is charismatic but are all playing such broad archetypes that there’s not a lot of room for much else. That the film is mostly uninterested in its plot makes the reveal in its third act even stranger as the film commits a good few minutes to explaining the origins not only of its main threat but the moon itself. It’s a pretty sharp turn into some hard sci-fi concepts that, at least, confirm the film isn’t about to get boring. On the other hand, there is a strange quaintness to the film’s general disinterest in trendy self aware snarkiness, with its lens genuinely believing that every frame is the coolest thing in the world and its characters being inhumanly earnest.
The film’s destruction is generally good, with the worldwide consequences of the moon’s approach explored in a more diverse number of ways than just watching buildings fall apart. The science is far from interested in reality, but there is at least a consistent sense of playing with the situation — especially in regards to gravity. The low gravity car chase shootout that may as well bear the Lexus logo is similarly not boring. Where Emmerich and the entire film seem to stumble is that it feels generally unsure of how to do anything new or exciting besides just going bigger, the same route taken by Independence Day: Resurgence. While the effects in the original Independence Day were groundbreaking for the time, audiences are generally pretty familiar with the experience by this point. Though the early 2000s took a break from watching buildings fall apart, every action movie now is a little bit of a disaster movie and, thanks to advances in technology, the spectacle is easier than ever. Unfortunately, that leaves the holes in Emmerich’s formula more exposed than ever without that unique offering to fall back on.
Similarly, the film is strangely absent of actual ideas. The same heroic optimism of Independence Day is present, albeit without the jingoistic streak, but in the face of such utter destruction it feels reductive at best. Without demanding every film be a COVID film, it is made slightly stranger in the face of a real world calamity to see a film so set in the idea of saving the world in one grand gesture. The presence of Harper and Fowler’s families, while effective on their own terms, do little to communicate the global scale of the disaster and tell any story bigger than what’s happening to this select group of people — something that feels like a missed opportunity when the whole world is experiencing this together.
Moonfall feels less like an attempt to bring epic disaster movies into the current landscape of film and more an experiment as to whether audiences will still watch these films as they were produced 25 years ago. There is an irony that the success and influence of Emmerich’s films is directly responsible for it being harder to keep making them, but it is one that he seems to care very little about, as the film seems utterly content with its cardboard characters and thoughtless optimism. This film is the same good fun Emmerich’s efforts have always been, but it’s no surprise audiences are asking for just a little more.
