The Wandering Earth

Official Australian release date: 7/2/19. Viewed: 16/2/19.

Director: Frant Gwo

Actors: Chuxiao Qu, Jin Mai Jaho, Guangjie Li, Jing Wu

Genre: Action / Sci-Fi

Rating: M

‘The Wandering Earth’ is one of China’s first forays into big-budget sci-fi – and it mostly works! The premise of the film hits close to home – severe drought, extreme weather, tsunamis pointing to the extinction of humans. Set in the near future, the more unrealistic part of the plot is that the sun is going to explode and devour the Milky Way, so all the Earth’s governments decide to move the planet to another solar system. Pretty far fetched, but they try to stick to some scientific principles, such as oceans freezing, temperatures plummeting, billions dying – but I’m not sure how plausible thousands of giant rocket boosters and underground cities would be. But it is science-FICTION.

While the special effects are good – although still funny to see Earth being driven through space like a spaceship – the film does well to focus on six main characters. These are Liu Qi (Qu), his sister Duoduo (Jaho), their dad Liu Peiqiang (Wu) trapped on the space station, their granddad Han (Ng), captain Lei (Li) and scientist Yiyi (Zhang), as they try to get a replacement engine to one of the rockets on the surface. Some of it is needlessly melodramatic, but in general the balance between humanity and CGI is well done.

It’s a nice mix of ‘The Day After Tomorrow’, ‘2012’ (but better than both) and ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ – and thankfully much better than ‘The Great Wall’. I found the subtitles and action easy to read/follow. Nice score and there’s some humour in with the end-of-the-world-ness.

Overall: Fast and action-packed, strong addition to the sci-fi genre.

Gav's Rating: 3.5 stars.