The Wandering Earth

Growing up with Star Trek and Blade Runner, I adhere to the belief that cultural and racial boundaries will have dissolved in the mushroom protein-filled dystopian future that awaits us. This film, however, would have us believe that the future is naught but a culturally stagnant Shanghai with upgraded tech. What I learned from this movie: Indians are cowards, Japanese are cowards who kill themselves, and half Sino, half Aussie boy-band rejects are Jar-Jar Binks (as long as the dad is Chinese).

On one end I want to say this is worth watching just for the neat visuals alone, but its filmmaking is otherwise pretty flawed - the characters give you no reason to care about them yet the film pushes heavy sentimentality, the score tries too hard to push emotion, the action scenes don't have much substance, etc. Despite the fascinating setting the film comes off as rather run of the mill and derivative.

The closest I've seen big budget Chinese cinema get to hard sci-fi, but still "The Wandering Earth" hinges on a fairly implausible premise. Still, I'm just happy to see Shang-Hollywood take the plunge into space. It's a pretty solid sci-fi action flick that adheres to Chinese tropes and panders to the wider Chinese public a little too much to be great.

90% of the dialogue is characters explaining the plot to each other and there are still points where it's unclear what they're trying to do.

On route to flying the entire planet Earth to a new home star, the Earth is imperiled when it is pulled into the gravitational field of Jupiter. It's a big budget disaster film in space with some stellar CGI and scenes of destruction, but not much else. The script is awful, dishing up a steady stream of nonsensical science and lame characters, and none of the actors do enough to elevate the material in the slightest. Essentially a Chinese remake of Armageddon. Pretty explosions, though.

Chinese big-budget Hollywood-type film not really any worse than numerous Hollywood big-budget Hollywood-type films. Also not worse than something like SNOWPIERCER, but I guess South Korean fake class war films get more attention and approval than Chinese "we're all in this mess together and goddamn if we all try our best we can get out of it" earnestness films. Kind of makes me think that ANIARA was really a missed opportunity for Europe to go all out and do something different and worthwhile.

Good CGI and outstanding art and set design. Yet, plot is full of mcguffins, convenient deus ex machinas, cheap emotional twists/hooks, comic relief side-kicks and any other formulaic scheme from the fimmaker's playbook. A both heartwarming and dazzling fairy tale for the masses. Too light on the palate for a real hard SF fan and hard to follow for a westerner due to Chinese-assumed knowledge that feels like plot holes and all the similar faces that you'll have hard time to tell apart.

If you can ignore the INCREDIBLY ABSURD scientific thinking behind this "disaster movie" it's actually quite enjoyable - a titanic, expertly put-together, no-holds-barred effects-laden Chinese sci-fi epic that could have been a huge hit here... if only it had reigned in its imagination just a tad. You see, if you push Sci-Fi too far, you tip over into fantasy where the story can make up its own rules and the audience stops caring about the characters. A++ for everything else though.

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The sfx and scale of this are impressive, but everything else is plainly terrible The characters are shallow stereotypes without any arcs or clear motivations. What's worst of all the action scene aren't suspenseful, cause I have no idea what's going on beside characters running away or toward CGI shit, cause Gwo doesn't know how to establish a scene and how to keep his camera still for one shot for even a minute (like so many of his contemparies).

Proof that the U.S. doesn't have the market cornered on sadly generic sci-fi; this has a brilliant and original look, with settings and design a deliriously intoxicating mix of photorealistic comic book and the "real world", but undone by a dense, confusing screenplay and bland and generic characters - tips of the hat to 2001 and SUNSHINE don't do this substandard work many favours!

Suffers from the lazy screenwriting that a genre more concerned with sound effects is wont to do, but pulls off pretty solid visual effects. Combined with the self-image on display quite interesting as a coming of age for China.

Great premise, lackluster execution.

The Cub Swanson-y lead was the least interesting and charismatic character in the entire film, so that was weird. The editing was kinda muddy at times -- visually throughout, and the music in the epilogue was loud in the mix to the point of distraction. The emotional stuff waa all pretty played out already, and surely no one cares about the side characters. That being said, it was nice to look at and presented a pretty interesting future. Watched it with my mom on vacation and enjoyed it.

Despite the hopelessly messy plot, the CGI was worth to see. Specially I liked the outside vehicles and sceneries.

This is an entertaining film. The script has some interesting moments and scenes. The movie runs a little bit long and they could have cut out some stuff but overall I would recommend this film.

To be exciting, action doesn't need to be completely-stupidly-insanely over-the-top where nobody could possibly survive one-trillionth of the degree of absurdness we're given. But I guess this Chinese film production wants to be like Hollywood. Planets totally have "gravity spikes"... I'm fine with suspending disbelief, but they could come up with *some* better excuse. Played the sentimitality card heavily but we don't care about any of these characters.

The larger scale visuals of the Earth and the firing engines were interesting, and the first 30 minutes in the underground city, but outside of the city there are a lot of incoherent scenes of the camera shaking and people yelling at each other. Actual characters would help. Wouldn't it be simpler to continuously modify the orbit of the planet to be a good distance from the sun whatever size it grows to, as opposed to going interstellar? It made lots of money so expect similar to follow.

Ambitious and silly as hell -- I mean, moving Earth out of solar system and endagering it being swallowed by Jupiter is the disaster movie we all needed, right? – but it's just too bad how bloated this is, specially in the second half. Every Armageddon-like drama delivers, but all the rest just seems so bloody uninteresting.

Interesting premise...but that's about it. If you're into 90s Bruce Willis or Kevin Costner films you might enjoy this--you know, the endless budget films ruined by sappy bullshit, horrible melodramatic use of sound, and annoying, banal dialog. Maybe watching it on a large screen, on mute, with your own selection of music, and some some decent drugs would have been a better way to view this, but even then, might as well just watch a good film.

This movie is ambitious as its premise. Unfortunately it doesn't deliver.

A great start to sci-fi blockbusters from China. The humour is hit & miss and the story is a bit convoluted at the start, but it's an otherwise entertaining spectacle. Watched: 7-May-19

Gets some points for the somewhat interesting and unusual plot, if you can overlook the scientific bullshit. But the cgi and acting are hard to stand.

It all looks good but the story is a bit of a wandering mess. Still, worth a look just the same. The dialog is awesome!

It was kind of okay but often boring and underwhelming apart from the good visuals. From the description i thought it would be a sci-fi epic, this team exploring a new and unknown planet, so my interest was greatly piqued. But no, it's mostly about Earth, and it's a disaster movie. That's it. It was a disappointing realization, and the film got worse as we got not good characters doing dumb decisions in an uninteresting plot in an unrealistic setting, along with annoying melodrama. Dropped.

perfunctory, disjointed action and boring characters plague this movie. some of the CGI is great, but sometimes I found the visuals cluttered and poorly lit. the setting and concept is interesting so it isn't all for naught but... oof

As a sci-fi fan, I expected to like this. And I really tried to like it. But wow, after 20 minutes I just couldn't take it anymore. The basic plot was fine, as were the special effects. But the filmmakers seemed to assume nobody had ever seen a sci-fi film before, and that we were all 10 years old. The exposition was insultingly oversimplified, and instead of making the most of the intriguing scenario they'd set up, we were treated to watching two teenagers being idiots. Nope nope nope.

7??????????

Boring and uninspired

Chinese meet Hollywood SF (in both good and bad ways).