Moonfall

In diesem Film gibt es keine Spur von Dingen, die voriges Jahr aus The Tomorrow War einen so tollen B-Movie gemacht haben (eine erfinderische Arbeit mit Klischees, ehrliche Emotionen, eine schöne visuelle Stilisierung). Emmerich ist in einem schwarzen Loch verschwunden. Das kann nicht sein Film sein. Es kann aber auch sein, dass er sich dessen bewusst ist, dass er nach 2012 nichts mehr mitzuteilen hat. Ein Asylum-Drehbuch mit einem erstklassigen Casting. Ich kann immer noch nicht glauben, dass ich Patrick Wilson und Halle Berry gesehen habe, wie sie diese Dialoge sagen. (03.02.2022)

This is so heavenly stupid that it's kind of beautiful. This movie is about 60 years late, and that's actually a good thing. I felt like I was watching vintage sci-fi from the 1950s again, only that Roland goes much, much further with the stupidity. In the 1950s, during the Golden Age of science fiction, these pieces were made like Bata's trainers, nothing makes sense to today's viewer, but you still have fun and smile because you can feel the sincere effort to make a good film. Probably like Edward D. Wood Jr. when he was hanging models of flying saucers on string, Roland has the technical side of the craft down pat, but the boys are on the same page in terms of message. Emmerich is a genre on his own. I don’t want to watch it again, but it was a guilty pleasure. (02.04.2022)

The moon has deviated from its orbit and will collide with the Earth in a few weeks. Only two former astronauts and one annoying conspiracy theorist can save the world, but they have no idea what awaits them in space. Roland Emmerich rips himself off and makes another disaster movie, but one that is a shadow of Independence Day or 2012. It's just not very entertaining this time around, which makes how stupid it all is stand out that much more. (03.02.2022)

So hat Rolča im Preis-/Leistungsverhältnis den Planeten schon mehrmals viel besser und mit einem schöneren humanistischen Furore dahingeschlachtet. Diese inceloide Verschwörungsvision ist in Ordnung, solange sie sich an die Regeln eines Katastrophenfilms hält, aber dann hat mein Gehirn bei diesem Versuch von gehirnamputierter Science Fiction den Geist aufgegeben. Er hätte auf Netflix landen sollen, so hässliche Greenscreens habe ich schon lange nicht mehr auf der großen Leinwand gesehen. Und durch die Möglichkeit, dabei die Waschmaschine zu befüllen und aus dem Fenster zu schauen, würde der Film nur gewinnen. Ich erwarte nicht viel von Emmerich, aber auf jeden Fall mehr Spaß als Moonfall. (03.02.2022)

It has a bit of an Independence Day 2 feel. I like Emmerich, he handles the VFX attractions well, but the rest is noticeably inferior to the competition. I found everything here to be incredibly rushed forward (it's quite a ironic that Don't Look Up was able to present the threat in a much more interesting, exacerbated and intense way), which is a shame, I believe with a strong background this could have been very good. At the same time it's a shame that Emmerich had to mix in artificial intelligence and aliens, in other circumstances I would have welcomed it, but here the threat of the moon alone would have been enough to give the whole thing a more serious feel. It's cheesy and quite entertaining, but it's a shame that the destruction itself takes a while. 5.5/10. (05.04.2022)

Yesterday I was in Apollo 10 1/2, today it’s the regular Apollo 11... Emmerich destroys a planet again in a similar way, but this time he does it a bit differently. Perhaps everything is a bit more laid back here and the destruction isn’t as opulent as in his previous disaster hits like 2012 or the climatic The Day After Tomorrow. This time round, the destruction somehow takes a back seat. The main things here are the journey to the center of the Moon and the mystery of the Dyson Sphere, entertaining mucking about involving a cloud and a decrepit space shuttle, family values and great lines. It’s a hair’s breadth worse than the other Emmerich movies to date, but it’s still good entertainment for two hours, during which your brain can get some rest. (03.04.2022)

A mix of Independence Day and 2012, but it can’t hold a candle to either. Sure, this is primarily light entertainment, or classic Emmerich, if you will, though even lighter than usual because it’s worse than even Godzilla in character work, dialogue and level of stupidity, and that's saying a hell of a lot. Surprisingly, even the visual effects flourishes don't dazzle to any extreme, and the once so inventive wizard has fallen into the average green screen, where he greases up one unimaginative make-up scene after another. What would Elon do? I'm sure he wouldn't have made this occasionally funny travesty. (15.05.2022)

Since Moonfall's script could not have been devised by even the most consummate conspiracy theorist, there can be no doubt that the filmmakers are not serious. In my opinion, this is a deliberate contribution to the category of not perhaps intentionally stupid, but logic-ignoring and the most insane fear-mongering B-movies of the 50s, 60s or 70s, which pretended to be serious, but were mainly concerned with entertaining the audience and packing cinemas. This is exactly the feeling I had, much stronger than in all of Emmerich's previous efforts. I like his work, but the films that stand out interestingly are 10,000 BC and Midway, which I liked the least by far. Why? Because Emmerich wanted to deliver a serious story on the one hand and a big visual effects spectacle on the other, but the combination didn't work. At the same time, a serious story without lavish effects can certainly be made (The Patriot, Anonymous) as well as overblown visual effects spectacles that don't take themselves seriously, whether they're about saving or destroying our world or another, or just a proper 80s school action flick (the, in my opinion, underrated White House Down). This time he dispensed with the need for any seriousness altogether, coming up with a wacky but really unorthodox plot that allowed him to destroy a bit more and differently than what and how he had been destroying so far. The plot is heavily condensed, a couple of days go by without warning between several scenes, during which something important happens that other films would spend more time on, and meanwhile the giant moon is approaching the Earth, constantly rising and setting, doing doggy stunts with gravity that make many scenes really crazy and funny. For example, the naivety with which they travel back and forth from Earth and solve individual problems is almost Meliés-like. You watch it with a smile, see how nice it looks, enjoy the truly original design of the monster... If I like the naive films that this reminded me of, then I have no reason not to like Moonfall. (04.02.2022)

Thanks Roland! This is the kind of honest bollocks, obviously exaggerated (as it’s based on crazy conspiracies and genre aesthetics of the 50s, and even the 90s) and going full throttle from the start, that has been missing in cinemas for a long time. I don't really understand the complaints about the haphazard logic and the final existential interlude – it's a science fiction movie, not a NASA instructional film. And it's a bloody fun sci-fi, where the deadlines work brilliantly and the deliberately overblown and implausible big-screen plot simply draws you in. Some of the dialogue is admittedly cheesy, and the smoothness of the smoothly narrated Independence Day and 2012 makes up for the overly fast pace in places, but whatever. I was smiling like a little boy and it never ceased to surprise me. Emmerich still does this like nobody else in the business. 75 % (06.02.2022)

Ich gebe zu, dass es mir Spaß gemacht hat und während all dieser verrückten Absurditäten, die ständig passieren, hatte ich ein dämliches Lächeln im Gesicht, aber man muss es nur als absoluten Non-Brainer betrachten (besonders bei Dialogen). Es war für mich eine angenehme Überraschung, dass sich aus dem Charakter von John Bradley, vor der ich nach dem Anschauen der Trailer am meisten besorgt war, am Ende der Höhepunkt des Films herausstellte. Die Handlung mit ihm, Patrick Wilson und Halle Berry hat mir gefallen, aber Moonfall zieht sich leider wie ein riesiger Ball an meinem Fuß hin und auch die erzwungene parallele Handlung mit den Familienmitgliedern auf der Erde war ein Dorn im Auge für mich. Szenen mit schrecklich geschriebenen, uninteressanten, unsympathischen und auch erschreckend schlecht gespielten Charakteren (ich will Charlie Plummer nie wieder irgendwo sehen) verwandelten sich manchmal von einer dummen, aber unterhaltsamen Leidenschaft in eine schmerzhafte Blamage. (12.04.2022)

Ich mag Emmerichs (nicht nur) Katastrophenfilme sehr, auch wenn sie vom Drehbuch her schwächer sind und nicht versuchen, schlau zu wirken. In Moonfall klaut der Regisseur bei seinen früheren Filmen, was an sich nichts Schlechtes wäre, aber in diesem Fall war ich von dem Endprodukt nicht beeindruckt - nicht einmal von der audiovisuellen Aufbereitung, was gerade einem gerade bei Emmerich leidtun kann. Die Konstellation der Charaktere in Moonfall erinnert sehr an 2012, aber visuell war es auf einem anderen Niveau. Die Idee mit dem Mond war nicht ganz schlecht, aber sie wurde durch das Drehbuch - was bei Emmerich nicht verwunderlich ist, aber hier war es sehr offensichtlich - und nicht nur einen pathetischen Moment erschlagen. Bessere zwei Sterne! (04.02.2022)

Too bad. Emmerich seems to be slowly but surely degrading since his successful career peak in 2004. The Day After Tomorrow was appealing and very likeable in its authenticity. Here, however, there is perhaps no question of any potential realism. Visually mediocre and plot-wise just plain moronic. (10.04.2022)