Chinese Film
The Wandering Earth (Chinese Movie Summary & Review)
The Wandering Earth poster
- Genre: Sci-Fi, Thriller, Space
- Date Released: 5 February 2019
- Origin: China; Based on the novel of the same title by Liu Cixin.
- Netflix
Cast:
- Qu Chuxiao as Liu Qi
- Li Guangjie as Wang Lei
- Ng Man-tat as Han Zi’ang
- Zhao Jinmai as Han Duoduo
- Wu Jing as Liu Peiqiang
- Arkady Sharogradsky as Makarov
- Mike Sui as Tim
- Qu Jingjing as Zhou Qian
- Zhang Yichi as Li Yiyi
- Yang Haoyu as He Lianke
- Li Hongchen as Zhang Xiaoqiang
- Yang Yi as Yang Jie
- Jiang Zhigang as Zhao Zhigang
- Zhang Huan as Huang Ming
Wow, this film has been acquired by Netflix so it would be widely available soon in the comfort of your home or where you can access your Netflix account.
Apparently, this movie is the highest-grossing film worldwide for 2019.
It had a $50M budget but currently had made $608M and still counting.
The film is set approximately 300 years in the future.
We also see a date of 2044 on one wrecked building.
The first scenes begin with Liu Peiqiang using a small telescope while describing and showing his young son, Liu Qi, the biggest planet in our solar system, Jupiter, which is 90 percent hydrogen gas while helium and other gases make up the remaining 10 percent.
He then tells his son that he was leaving earth soon to join the United Earth Space navigation Station, which will find ways to prevent Earth and humankind from complete annihilation.
It was discovered that our star, the sun, was beginning to expand rapidly and eventually would engulf the Earth.
Earth’s nations got together forgetting all conflicts and differences to form The United Earth Government and try to collectively save the human race. The sun will actually expand to become a red giant star and will engulf the Earth in around 1 to 4 billion years as it runs out of hydrogen fuel and begins to die.
So scientists and engineers around the world develop and build huge and powerful plasma type engines scattered around the world that would propel the Earth away from the sun.
Because of the reddening of the sun with its expansion, Earth’s temperature had plummeted to -80 degrees Celsius, which is, of course, deadly to surface humans without properly insulated space suits. In fact, as the earth gets further away from our sun, the surface temperature would drop to around -200 Celsius, Oxygen and gases will freeze to liquid and ice.
Underground city bunkers were built 5 km below the surface for populations to live during the journey. Most of the people had not been on the surface of the earth except for those needed to service the engines and navigating space station.
Seventeen years after Liu Peiqiang had their father and son bonding, Liu Qi took Doudou, his adopted sister illegally to the surface. Some underground forgers helped them to obtain fake IDs and space suits.
The Earth had been propelled to Jupiter in order to use the gas giant’s immense gravitational field effect to slingshot the Earth outside of our solar system. (space probes really used this effect).
The Earth would then be propelled and navigated to the nearest star 4.5 light-years away. This journey of many generations of humans would take 2500 years. Earth would then have a new stable star to orbit around.
Liu Qi wanted to see Jupiter, which is now very near to Earth.
The brother and sister’s adventure had turned really dramatic as a rare spike of Jupiter’s gravity meant that it is pulling the earth into a catastrophic collision with Jupiter.
The earth’s many engines had to work overtime and therefore most of them had been drained of power. The majority had stopped working altogether.
The United Earth Government had advised for the people to be with loved ones during their last seven days before the end of the world as we know it.
It was really now doom and gloom, because if it can go wrong, then it went wrong. There were many fatalities on the surface.
So many that finding the solution was left to Liu Qi, who was still barely a young man, & his friends.
He remembered that Jupiter is made up of so much hydrogen and if they can ignite Jupiter’s gas then the shockwave from the explosion on Jupiter will push the Earth away into a safe distance.
Liu Qi is a genius boy and a pretty good driver as well. With a snow-bendy truck, they traveled to various stations to turn off the engines. They would then adapt one engine to produce a powerful beam to reach Jupiter’s gas to ignite it.
Unfortunately, the energy was sadly lacking by 5000 km to reach Jupiter.
Meanwhile, Li Peigiang, who was due to go back to earth as he had completed his tour of duty was supposed to go into a hibernation capsule as most of this fellow crewmen had done.
Li Peiqiang though he went as far going into the capsule, can’t settle for a long sleep, worrying about his son and father.
So against orders and protocol from the United Earth Government (UEG), he aborts his hibernation and returns to the station’s control room to assist the earth. The UEG instructs the stations AI computer who runs & controls most of the station’s systems to stop Li Peigiang at all costs. The computer and its actions seem to be a homage & borrowed from one the of greatest sci-fi moves made, 2001 A Space Odyssey, where a computer named HAL 900 goes rogue to protect the mission.
HAL’s lookalike is rather menacing but certainly not as sinister as HAL 900. It even has a similar English speaking voice to the actor Douglas Rain who originally superbly voiced HAL 900.
It was left to Li Peiqiang to make a decision to direct himself and the space station to go into the earth’s plasma beam to add power to it from the station’s exploding fuel and thereby gain enough power to reach Jupiter. Of course, this was a suicide mission which was heartbreaking for both father and son who said goodbyes to each other on live public broadcast.
Li Peigiang mission worked.
The heroes surface dwellers had to scrabble back underground as Jupiter is raining energy onto earth to nudge it away, The Earth’s massive engines are restarted again to further push our planet on its original course.
Three years later, Liu Qi and Doudou are officially members of the surface patrol & transporter corp. Earth continues its multi millennium journey to our nearest other star Proxima Centauri.
This film is two hours, the CGI was very good, the story is meandering in some parts, but still watchable but if you had watched a lot of sci-fi movies like 2001, etc you are reminded that you have seen all these before, even some parts of the story has similarities, the renegade computer, etc and therefore nothing really stand-out.
But one thing we have noticed (Peter and I watched this movie together) was that the United Earth Government did not asked help from the Americans or the Brits. Why is French the official language of the UEG?
Peter and I agreed that it may be reasonable not to ask help from the Brits, because 200/300 years on, the British Government are still totally consumed with talking about Brexit; going back and forth to the EU. LOL
Awards:
- Best Picture – 32nd Golden Rooster Award
- Best Sound – 32nd Golden Rooster Award
1 Dec 2020 Update
Wandering Earth 2 is in the pipeline and will be released in 2023.