The Wandering Earth (2019)

Enjoyable popcorn movie with big budget special effects and questionable science.

This movie reminds me of Armageddon (Earth in danger, group of unlikely people need to save the planet, lots of special effects, family), but this actually succeeds in making the story about the humans and family. There’s a greater focus on the characters even if many don’t get much story and the female characters are just as secondary.

There are some impressive visual effects and sets which helps offset some of the HIGHLY questionable science. Seriously questionable. But this is a popcorn flick and not a documentary so just enjoy the action and the ride.

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disclaimer - i watched this in HD on my phone and not in theater so no fancy surround sound or cool graphic effects.

The only thing I'm not confused about is the main character's family situation and their fight for survival. There isn't a romance. Just a lot of high strung emotions which did fit the story.

The rest of the story/disaster is not well explained. After reading online posts discussing the original book, it seems like they cut out a lot of explanations on why the 'rescue teams' do what they do and why everyone is looting and why it seemed like just this one family is capable of solving this Jupiter sized problem. There were convenient losses of communication. Lots of predictable deaths. Lots of unnecessary discharge of a machine gun to express anger. Overall would have liked some actual 'showing' explanation (like more scenes of conflict origin with dialogue) rather than a voice over telling you the Sun is going to explode. This movie could have definitely been longer.

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