Moonfall || Spoiler-Free Review

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Genre:  Science Fiction, Disaster
Directed by:  Roland Emmerich
Written by:  Roland Emmerich, Harald Kloser, Spenser Cohen
Starring:  Halle Berry, Patrick Wilson, John Bradley, Michael Peña, Charlie Plummer, Kelly Yu, Donald Sutherland
Score by:  Thomas Wander, Harald Kloser  ||  Cinematography by:  Robby Baumgartner
RottenTomatoes - 39% from Critics, 69% from Audiences  ||  IMDB Average 5.3 out of 10  ||  Letterboxd Average 2.2 out of 5


Brief Thoughts on the Movie 

"Moonfall offers a ludicrous premise, solid effects, a legitimately fantastic performance from Patrick Wilson...and that's about it. On a story, character, and editing level - Moonfall is a complete mess of a movie."

What's It About?

Director Roland Emmerich (Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow, 2012) returns with his newest disaster movie, Moonfall, which sees a mysterious force knocking the Moon from its orbit and onto a collision course with Earth. With zero hour quickly approaching, it's up to three people - Deputy Director of NASA, Jocinda "Jo" Fowler (Halle Berry), disgraced former astronaut Brian Harper (Patrick Wilson), and a "megastructure" conspiracy theorist, K.C. Houseman (John Bradley) - to save the Earth from impending doom and uncover the ominous truth about our moon.



What Worked?

If you're familiar with Roland Emmerich, and the director's uniquely over-the-top brand of entertainment, then you will most likely already have a good idea of what to expect from his newest movie, Moonfall - and your expectations would probably be right. For anyone not already familiar with Emmerich - he's a director whose penchant for bombast and spectacle rival Michael Bay's with an affinity for simplistic, archetypal characters going up against, and defying world-ending stakes.

Moonfall is no exception to this, with Emmerich focusing his attention on the movie's production design and visuals more than the story or characters. While this ends up being something of a double-edged sword for Moonfall overall, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't impressed by the effectiveness of the visuals - especially when considering Moonfall wasn't back by the traditional, big-named movie studios. Instead, Moonfall wound up being the most expensive independently produced films of all time (on an estimated budget of $140 million). And let's not pretend that anyone who is going to Moonfall is looking for anything outside of the promised spectacle (which it fully delivers on) and the underlying sci-fi hook (less effective, though gleefully and brazenly dumb enough to sort of make up for it). Some of the scenes of pandemonium during the final act are just breathtakingly realized, with literally thousands of moving elements and particles within a single frame. Again, Moonfall resoundingly delivers on the spectacle.

Outside of the special effects work, I think the cast is interesting and notable, with some actors faring better than others in terms of their overall performances. At the top of that list with high marks is Patrick Wilson's Brian Harper, who seems to be the only actor who understands exactly what movie he's in and the tone needed within each scene. He's charismatic through and through, and his delivery is effortless and easy. Honestly, Wilson's character here is not far off from Han Solo (Star Wars) or Mal Reynolds (Firefly, Serenity) - or at least Roland Emmerich's closest approximation of that scoundrel type.

John Bradley wound up working more than he didn't, ultimately ending up as the closest thing to Moonfall's emotional center. It's an odd choice given his role as the movie's comedic relief, coming off like a tonally confused amalgamation of the Jeff Goldblum and Randy Quaid characters from Independence Day. So even with all of his incessant babbling about "megastructures", K.C. remains likable throughout the entirety of Moonfall thanks to Bradley's earnestness shining through.



What Didn't Work?

Of the three main leads, Halle Berry seems to have drawn the shortest straw when being given Jocinda Fowler - a character that ends up completely lost in the clutter of Moonfall's overstuffed narrative. Berry's character is a notable example of this, in having no real agency of her own, instead being pulled by the needs of the exposition and narrative. Before the film concludes its historical prologue, it has already done Fowler's character a disservice by placing her as the antagonist for no legitimately earned reason - simply because her words were used against her. This needlessly artificial drama between her and Wilson's character never amounts to anything - any potential cathartic relief found in the reconciliation is gone, as the film hurriedly rushes over it, then on to the next scene. The drama is gone as quickly and lacking as little impact as when it was introduced.

And this is but one of many needless and contrived additions to Fowler's backstory - all of which rang completely hollow to me. The same can be said for her Four-Star General ex-husband, who  aside from really stiff and unnatural acting, was given dialogue that could have been written by artificial intelligence - and not once did I ever buy these two (now or ever) as a believable couple. It's all so by-the-numbers and obvious, but without ever having any fun or leaning into it. There's nothing to this ex-husband character, with no reason for his inclusion in the larger narrative than for a convenient plot point in the third act.

All across the board in Moonfall, characters are placed squarely in the background of Emmerich's focus. There's the live-in nanny/foreign exchange student (Kelly Yu), whose connection to Halle Berry (and the film itself) feels superfluous at best. I have my personal (and admittedly cynical) suspicions that Yu's was merely included at the request of the Chinese producers - the long standing rumors of Hollywood blockbusters having to make edits and changes to the final cut before being played in China and the fact that Huayi Brothers International (a Chinese production company) helped fund Moonfall would seem to indicate that being the case. While this explains the character's inclusion, it absolutely doesn't validate it either. I'd be less critical if there was something more interesting for her character to do, but she's a background character at best until being attached to the woefully humdrum character that is Sonny (Charlie Plummer) - Patrick Wilson's son who lacks all of Wilson's charisma. Not helping this pair is just how quickly their subplot in the final act devolves into pure absurdity, with pair continually running into a comically attired gang of looters who have the dimwitted persistency of Wile E. Coyote.

These issues aren't exceptions - there are simply too many characters in Moonfall and not nearly enough screen-time afforded to any of them to help make something meaningful, or even fun! I understand that I'm writing about a Roland Emmerich "disaster flick" here, so time spent criticizing and analyzing the characters and the intricacies of the story might be fruitless and lost on certain audience - but even then, I think those audience members are going to have a hard time justifying what Moonfall gives them. If all you want is base spectacle, I think you'll still be disappointed, as many of the set pieces in Moonfall are cribbed directly from other Roland Emmerich movies (not to mention the better, non-Emmerich sci-fi movies visually referenced). If you've seen Independence Day, 2012, or The Day After Tomorrow - congratulations, you've now seen the majority of the big effect "reveals". It arguably looks better and more accurately realized in Moonfall, but it's not drastically different either. Even if that wasn't the case, or if you're uninitiated when it comes to Roland Emmerich, these set pieces aren't satisfying in their own right either. Outside of the opening, all of the set pieces are rushed over, just like the characters and story, often choppily edited and impatiently hurried through in order to quickly get to the next one.

There is nothing in Moonfall outside of the visual effects that was given the adequate care, attention, or screen time to feel particularly effective. Anything that works in Moonfall, seemingly does so in spite the intentions of the filmmakers behind it. The set pieces, the characters, the story - none of these are given the adequate care, attention, or time to breathe within its already cramped two hour runtime for any one element to feel particularly effective.



Standout Scene

Liberally borrowing from Alfonso Cuarón's 2013 masterpiece Gravity, Moonfall opens with a perfect blockbuster cold open - setting up two of our main leads with likable, easy dialogue flowing between them before delivering a harrowing and tensely edited action scene that sufficiently teases the movie's central mystery.

Standout Performance

If you've read through the review up until this point, it should be no surprise that my favorite performance here was Patrick Wilson. He's just so good as Brian Harper - seriously, any fleeting moments of fun can be directly attributed to his performance here in a way that's reminiscent of Brendan Frasier in The Mummy franchise.



Behind-the-Scenes Trivia

  • Before the role went to John Bradley, Josh Gad was originally cast as K.C. Housman before having to drop out due to scheduling conflicts.
  • Likewise, Stanley Tucci was originally cast as Sonny's step-father before stepping down due to complications surrounding travelling restrictions during the height of the COVID-19 Pandemic. He was replaced by Michael Peña.
  • In the scene where K.C. is presenting his megastructure presentation to a small group at a hotel, the wallpaper in the background directly mirrors the iconic pattern seen in The Shining. A nod to the rumor that the moon landing was filmed by the same director, Stanley Kubrick.

Pairs Well With...


Film-FTW Rating  ||  4 Stars
"Uninteresting / Trifling"

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