'Moonfall' (2022)


There really should a rule that stops me spending money on rubbish the second I get paid... On the other hand, I got to watch 'Moonfall' last night and... It was pretty much what I'd heard it was. Sometimes that's all you can say but that would make for a dull (and short post) so let me elaborate...

A mysterious force knocks the Moon from its orbit around Earth and sends it hurtling on a collision course with life as we know it. With mere weeks before impact and the world on the brink of annihilation, NASA executive and former astronaut Jo Fowler is convinced she has the key to saving us all – but only one astronaut from her past, Brian Harper, and a conspiracy theorist, KC Houseman, believe her. The unlikely heroes will mount an impossible last-ditch mission into space, only to find that our Moon is not what we think it is...

Sometimes, after a week of trying to stop everything else falling apart, all I want to do is round the week off by watching this poor planet get battered to hell by some natural disaster or another. Or all of them at once, I'm not fussy. I love a good disaster movie and just to be fair, I love all the bad ones as well ;o) No matter what the disaster is; it's fun to watch it play out, root for the people you want to survive and know that none of it is happening to you.

Natural disasters don't come any bigger than the entire Moon being dropped on you so when I heard about 'Moonfall', I knew I'd be watching it sooner or later. And now that I have... Er... it's alright?

'Moonfall' is one those very rare disaster movie that threatens a disaster but doesn't really follow through on that promise. Because the Moon is constantly moving, it never seems to be around for long enough to cause real damage. Gravity goes a bit funny and there's a half hearted tsunami, that's it really Don't get me wrong it looks great and when things actually happen, it's very easy to get caught up in the action. It's just that we could really have done with more of that, being a disaster movie and all...

There's more to 'Moonfall' than just that though as we find out the secret that lies within the moon. There are some good bits here as well, mostly involving John Bradley (who has clearly realised that he can make a living off being Sam Tarly in everything he does, fair play to him), and while the whole 'first contact' thing is well signposted, it's done with enough heart that you can go with it. Although I was left wondering why the rogue AI chose to concentrate on the Moon instead of checking out the blue/green planet next door, that would have made for a very different film... The main problem though is that there isn't quite enough time for 'Moonfall' to be both a disaster movie and a first contact movie; it basically flits between the two states and doesn't quite do either of them justice...

The result is a movie that hits it's targets very sporadically, just entertaining enough to keep you watching in the hope of more but nowhere near consistent enough to deliver on that. Which was a shame because... Damn, the concept sounded great... 

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