What do you do when the moon falls on you? Well, run underground, race to the skies and blow it out of orbit, of course!

In Moonfall, the Roland Emmerich-directed sci-fi disaster film playing in cinemas right now, that is exactly what mankind does…while evading gravity waves that make the terrain fly, and swimming over huge tidal waves that gulp down coastal cities.

But fret not, for however unconvincing the visual effects may be at times, and however ludicrous the story becomes, this is, by far, one of the director’s most enjoyable recent films.

Moonfall harks back to Emmerich’s heydays of Stargate and Independence Day (okay, Godzilla as well, to an extent), and borrows his own cliches from Day After Tomorrow and 2012, where normal people seek shelter during a global disaster.

Moonfall has franchise written all over it and it could have been a great one too

A disgraced astronaut (Patrick Wilson) teams up with his former colleague (Halle Berry), and a genius conspiracy theorist (John Bradley), as they discover the big spoiler of the plot that was leaked out in the trailer: our moon may not be organic.

Introduced late in the story as an interstellar source of power, the moon is being attacked by an alien swarm that came to our solar system in 2011. The swarm inexplicably forces the moon to suddenly start a spiraling trajectory towards Earth. With a few hours left at hand, the two former astronauts, whose children are out in the wild surviving the destruction of the Earth, travel to space to stop the moon from levelling the planet.

This high-concept space adventure sounds ludicrous, but the premise itself isn’t newfangled. Wiz filmmaker George Pal produced the adaptation of the novel When Worlds Collide in 1951, in which a rogue planet sped towards Earth and the only choice mankind has, is to escape to another world. Another similar concept was recently entertained by writer-director Adam McKay in Don’t Look Up, only this time it was a comet.

In a much more grandiose mega-event in Marvel comics, an entire parallel-timeline — and its Earth — hurtled towards the 616 Universe (616 is the designation of the main Marvel comic book continuity).

With barely hours ticking down, large- or small-scale evacuation isn’t on the cards in Emmerich’s film. The only course of action is to retaliate.

There are quite a few shortfalls in Moonfall: the ticking-clock mechanism of the story doesn’t really work; there is a perceptible lack of emotion and appeal in the characters; and the cast — with exception to Bradley — is mostly wasted. The adventure value, especially in the latter half of the film, however, brings back nostalgic memories of how tentpole movies used to be once upon a time.

Moonfall has franchise written all over it (there is even a prologue that sets up part two) — and it could have been a great one too, if the screenplay by Emmerich, Harald Kloser and Spenser Cohen was better, and the film wasn’t as ridiculous at times.

Released by Lionsgate, Moonfall is rated PG-13. The film is big on old-school spectacle and stupidity

Published in Dawn, ICON, February 27th, 2022