When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that’s amore. When the moon hits earth after being knocked out of orbit by a mysterious galactic force, that’s the plot of sci-fi disaster flick Moonfall, which is crashing into Australian cinemas on February 3, 2022.
Coming to us from the director of Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow, and 2012, Roland Emmerich’s latest explosion-filled blockbuster looks like a damn good time at the movies, regardless of a few niggling laws of physics that’ll have to be disregarded.
Halle Berry and Patrick Wilson lead a solid ensemble cast as NASA astronauts trying to get to the bottom of an interplanetary collision that could devastate all life on the blue rock we call home. With the help of a conspiracy theorist (Game Of Thrones‘ John Bradley) and input from supporting characters played by Michael Peña, Charlie Plummer, Kelly Yu and Donald Sutherland, the small team have mere weeks to stop the moon’s trajectory before impact.
Lionsgate’s tantalising plot description concludes on a thrilling note: our heroes must leave behind “everyone they love, only to find out that our Moon is not what we think it is.” Please let the moon be a big round evil alien.
When it comes to the disaster genre, Emmerich is king of the sandbox, giving us multiple entertaining visions of earth’s mightiest cities and monuments destroyed by all manner of ice, fire and alien invasion.
With Moonfall, the scale of that cinematic destruction takes on a new epic dimension. But will it be fun to watch earth get smooshed by the moon, after we’ve all basically been flattened by coronavirus already? It’s hard to say without having seen the movie, but I bet Moonfall will be a good time regardless. Especially if the moon turns out to be a malevolent sentient being voiced by Donald Sutherland…
