DIRECTOR: FRANT GWO
STARRING: ANDY LAU, WU JING, SHA YI, ZHU-YAN MANZI
RUNNING TIME: 2 HRS 53 MINUTES
Humans built huge engines on the surface of the Earth to find a new home. But the road to the universe is perilous. In order to save Earth, young people once again have to step forward to start a race against time for life and death.
STARRING: ANDY LAU, WU JING, SHA YI, ZHU-YAN MANZI
RUNNING TIME: 2 HRS 53 MINUTES
Humans built huge engines on the surface of the Earth to find a new home. But the road to the universe is perilous. In order to save Earth, young people once again have to step forward to start a race against time for life and death.
FILM REVIEW:
(This review contains spoilers.)
“Remember. A civilization without humans is meaningless.”
The Wandering Earth II is the International Feature submission for China. The end of the world idea has been brought up time and time again. Religious leaders, scientists, and astrologers have been making predictions for the destruction of Earth for almost as long as the world has been around. They’ve predicted the destruction of the world through floods, fires, and comets. Luckily, for us, none of it has come to pass, yet.
The film is about the start of a catastrophic situation. As the sun becomes an expanding red giant and threatens to engulf the Earth in 100 years, the United Nations, now renamed as the United Earth Government, decides to proceed with a new project called the Moving Mountain. It’s a proposal of building ten thousand gigantic nuclear fusion engines that can propel the Earth out of the Solar System. Its long term goal is to move the Earth to a more habitable star system. A second project is also proposed, which is called the Lunar Exile Project, and it involved pushing the Moon away from the Earth, utilizing three fusion engines to minimize its gravitational attraction to Earth.
As both projects are getting built, a series of terrorist attacks occur trying to stop the success of these plans. These terrorists support another proposal called the Digital Life Project. This idea to continue human civilization through digital immortality by developing mind uploading technologies. Although the engineers working on the Moving Mountain Project are able to stop the attackers, the hijackers are successful in their attempt to stop all operations. Due to this attack, many countries working on the pilot program pull out, leaving China alone to finishing construction of the Lunar Project and the Earth engine.
The film tries to showcase the price humans would pay to survive an apocalyptic event. And it also tries to show whether self-aware artificial intelligence machines can replace living humans. It begs to question whether a sophisticated simulation that is so realistic can substitute for reality. During a crisis, it’s interesting to see if nations with greatly differing ideologies can actually work together during a long, drawn out tragedy. In the film, the sun isn’t going to supernova for a century so do the people alive today really need to care about the upcoming apocalypse. Is it better to ignore it? What would you do?
It’s an interesting idea to see if the world is indeed going to end, would we all be able to work together to force the Earth to wander to a new location for safety.
REVIEW: C+
(This review contains spoilers.)
“Remember. A civilization without humans is meaningless.”
The Wandering Earth II is the International Feature submission for China. The end of the world idea has been brought up time and time again. Religious leaders, scientists, and astrologers have been making predictions for the destruction of Earth for almost as long as the world has been around. They’ve predicted the destruction of the world through floods, fires, and comets. Luckily, for us, none of it has come to pass, yet.
The film is about the start of a catastrophic situation. As the sun becomes an expanding red giant and threatens to engulf the Earth in 100 years, the United Nations, now renamed as the United Earth Government, decides to proceed with a new project called the Moving Mountain. It’s a proposal of building ten thousand gigantic nuclear fusion engines that can propel the Earth out of the Solar System. Its long term goal is to move the Earth to a more habitable star system. A second project is also proposed, which is called the Lunar Exile Project, and it involved pushing the Moon away from the Earth, utilizing three fusion engines to minimize its gravitational attraction to Earth.
As both projects are getting built, a series of terrorist attacks occur trying to stop the success of these plans. These terrorists support another proposal called the Digital Life Project. This idea to continue human civilization through digital immortality by developing mind uploading technologies. Although the engineers working on the Moving Mountain Project are able to stop the attackers, the hijackers are successful in their attempt to stop all operations. Due to this attack, many countries working on the pilot program pull out, leaving China alone to finishing construction of the Lunar Project and the Earth engine.
The film tries to showcase the price humans would pay to survive an apocalyptic event. And it also tries to show whether self-aware artificial intelligence machines can replace living humans. It begs to question whether a sophisticated simulation that is so realistic can substitute for reality. During a crisis, it’s interesting to see if nations with greatly differing ideologies can actually work together during a long, drawn out tragedy. In the film, the sun isn’t going to supernova for a century so do the people alive today really need to care about the upcoming apocalypse. Is it better to ignore it? What would you do?
It’s an interesting idea to see if the world is indeed going to end, would we all be able to work together to force the Earth to wander to a new location for safety.
REVIEW: C+
