The Wandering Earth is currently the highest grossing film of 2019, hitting just over $600 million worldwide after merely two weeks of being in theaters since February 8th. How haven’t you heard of it? Well, simply put, it’s a Chinese production. It’s also the second highest grossing film in China, just behind 2017’s Wolf Warrior 2. If the success of films like this are of any indication, Chinese audiences will no longer rely on big Hollywood films to get the kind of spectacle they enjoy. And who knows how that will change the way Hollywood does business in the future.
However, that’s a discussion for another time. For now, I just want to tell you how awesome The Wandering Earth is. It’s based on a novel by Liu Cixin, and the basic setup is that we’re in a future where the sun is expanding and the Earth is in danger of being destroyed, but the governments of the world have decided to unite, and their solution? Build thousands upon thousands of fusion powered thrusters that will send the Earth on a course to a habitable system light years away. Meanwhile, the world’s population has been taken refuge in underground cities beneath the engines.
While there are a number of characters we meet through the course of the film, we focus squarely on Liu Qi (Qu Chuxiao), his adopted sister, Han Duoduo (Zhao Jinmai), and Qi’s father, Liu Peiqiang (Wu Jing). Peiqiang Has been stationed at a space station that assists in Earth’s navigation for many years, and he hasn’t seen his son since he was a child, and as a result, Qi has grown a bit angry, detached, and a tad reckless. But they all soon find themselves in a pickle when a devastating earthquake screws up the engines, putting Earth on a direct path to Jupiter.
So, yeah, it’s very much operating on that kind of Roland Emmerich type science, very B-movie on paper, but in fully realizing it on screen, I was surprised at how easily I was able to buy into some of the wackier sci-fi elements. Everything is grounded in the gritty details of the world that director and co-writer, Frant Gwo, has created with his effects and production teams. It’s catches your eye as you want to look in every nook and cranny of these underground cities. We don’t even spend a lot of time inside them, but we get glimpses on how people have grown to live there, and it’s endlessly fascinating.
What also grounds the silly elements are the main characters. We open with a brief, intimate moment between Peiqiang and a young Qi. He is informing his son about the mission he’s about to embark on, and that it might be a while before they see each other again, but he can always look to the stars and know his father is there. It creates an immediate attachment, that continues to build once we cut to the future and meet the adopted sister and their grandpa, Han Ziang (Ng Man-tat) through some lighthearted shenanigans that brings them out to the surface before the eventual earthquake wrecks everything.
I mentioned Roland Emmerich earlier, and he is one of many influences I detected while watching the film. Structurally, this is very much like an Independence Day type disaster film. We have a few central characters that we follow along with an amusing and colorful supporting cast as they work through a very big problem, and the tone is similarly dopey but earnest. There’s a little bit of Interstellar with the relationship between the kids and the father. The surface of Earth looks identical to the icy landscapes of Snowpiercer. There’s even the obligatory 2001: A Space Odyssey nod with this A.I. on the space station called MOSS, which causes a few problems for Peiqiang later in the film. Even with all these influences, the film comes together in a way that feels wholly its own.
The film is also a very thrilling one. You grow to care for these characters as the movie goes on, and as the circumstances grow more and more dour, the more you hope they succeed in getting everything back on track. By the time the climax hit, I was – as hackneyed as it might sound – legitimately on the edge of my seat, nervously tapping my feet, and pumping my fist at one particularly delightful breakthrough. It’s hokey, sure, it’s has that very distinctive Asian melodrama vibe, but I absolutely loved it. The only drawback is that most of the supporting characters lacked in characterization. There’s one introduced as the funny one, but the authority figures that Qi and Duoduo end up tagging along with are largely interchangeable, to the point where a couple deaths made me confused as to who died and who is still alive. However, I can look over it because they aren’t the focus. They are there pretty much to get our main characters from one place to another, and they serve that purpose well.
I was so pleasantly surprised by The Wandering Earth, not just in the fact that China can deliver a striking and beautiful spectacle that is just as good, and in many cases better, than most Hollywood blockbusters, but in the fact the filmmakers were able to create a deeply resonate experience by remembering that all the effects in the world won’t help anything if you don’t care about the people. I found myself so invested in the family at the center of this grand sci-fi epic, and caring about them made me care about the world. If this is playing near you, I urge you to see it on the big screen, but if not, Netflix has picked up the streaming rights recently, so you’ll be able to see it at home soon enough.