The Wandering Earth (2019)

  • Guest, it's time once again for the hotly contested and exciting FoH Asshat Tournament!



    Go here and fill out your bracket!
    Who's been the biggest Asshat in the last year? Once again, only you can decide!

spronk

FPS noob
22,473
25,379
3.00 star(s) Rating: 3.00/5 1 Votes
Title: The Wandering Earth (2019)

Genre: Science Fiction

Director: Frant Gwo

Cast: Wu Jing, Li Guangjie, Chuxiao Qu, Ng Man-Tat, Jin Mai Jaho, Qu Jingjing, Mike Sui, Arkady Sharogradsky, Lei Jiayin, Guo Jingfei, Zhang Yi-Chi, Hongchen Li, Zhigang Jiang, Liu Cixin, Hao Ning, Wang Zhi, Lu Yang, Xiaobei Zhang, Xiaozhi Rao, Gong Ge-Er, Frant Gwo

Release: 2019-02-05

Runtime: 125

Plot: The sun is dying out, a group of brave astronauts set out to find new planet for the whole human race.

 
  • 1Like
Reactions: 1 user

spronk

FPS noob
22,473
25,379


This is playing in 3D IMAX at my local AMC so I saw it today ("free" thanks to A-List) before Lego Movie 2 takes over. It was released at the start of Chinese New Year.

Its batshit insane, the plot is that in a few decades its discovered our sun is gonna turn into a red giant soon and so the governments of Earth get together and decide to move Earth to another star. By attaching 4500 engines and pushing. They'll use Jupiter as a gravity slingshot to accelerate to enough speed. Yes, all that is the setup in the first 2 minutes. Of course being any disaster movie bad shit goes down and this is the movie.

It was fun and goofy, reminded me a lot of those disaster movies in the 90s I enjoyed. The remarkable thing about it is that the CGI was pretty good, at least 90% of it, fairly equivalent to Hollywood standards. A few scenes were pretty bad but mostly closeup type of work.

Pretty much the entire cast and backdrop is Chinese, there are a few foreigners but all minor characters. Kind of eye opening to see a big blockbuster from "the other side", like how foreigners must see stuff like Transformers or Independence Day with its American drumbeat, here its all China all the way. Maybe its racist but I honestly couldn't tell one character apart from another, but it didn't really matter its far less about the characters than about being heroic and science is awesome.

The movie is based on a book by Cixiun Liu, who was the guy behind the Three Body Problem set of novels which is a fantastic space opera series that is very, very different than Western scifi novels. I believe amazon is adapting TBP to the tv screen.

Anyways if you love big soap opera sci fi I think you'll enjoy this, its weird and quiite different than traditional Western blockbusters in setup and story beats and tropes but all the space shots were totally worth it. Pretty good in 3D as well, although today is probably the last day its playing in IMAX in NA theaters.
 
  • 3Like
  • 1WTF
  • 1Seriously?
Reactions: 4 users

Wingz

Being Poor Sucks.
12,338
38,166
Just saw this today. Was excellent. Hollywood needs to watch out for this because this is a lot of quality. Only thing I can see that would turn away audiences is that it's subtitled. Though I think for many this may not be as such an issue.
 

Inque

FunEmployed
488
585
The Wandering Earth - Putlocker

Watched this tonight as well. Enjoyed it, subtitles were no problem, definitely far superior than most disaster type movies in recent years. Watched another of the same vein, called Cargo; It's a German movie with a decent twist.
 
  • 1Like
Reactions: 1 user

Ukerric

Bearded Ape
<Silver Donator>
7,862
9,411
The remarkable thing about it is that the CGI was pretty good, at least 90% of it, fairly equivalent to Hollywood standards.
CGI is all about talented animators/artists, which Asia is full of (see all the asian RPG eye candy) and computer farms for the final renders.
The movie is based on a book by Cixiun Liu, who was the guy behind the Three Body Problem set of novels which is a fantastic space opera series that is very, very different than Western scifi novels. I believe amazon is adapting TBP to the tv screen.
Cixin is the numero uno of chinese SF. Which is why we're discovering him today.

Alas, it's not going to be distributed in theaters here, so Netflix it is...
 
  • 2Like
Reactions: 1 users

Ukerric

Bearded Ape
<Silver Donator>
7,862
9,411
No date yet, I just saw an article saying that Netflix had just snagged the streaming distribution rights worldwide.

We were talking about this (with a friend) during Alita, because it had overperformed that movie internationally... despite being distributed only in like 3 countries.
 
  • 1Like
Reactions: 1 user

Kiroy

Marine Biologist
<Bronze Donator>
34,560
99,745
No date yet, I just saw an article saying that Netflix had just snagged the streaming distribution rights worldwide.

We were talking about this (with a friend) during Alita, because it had overperformed that movie internationally... despite being distributed only in like 3 countries.

cool i'll wait, I can't deal with d'ling movies anymore with quality/sound issues
 

iannis

Musty Nester
31,351
17,656
That sounds so irredeemably retarded that it has to either be great or terrible. No room for just alright with a premise like that!
 
  • 1Like
Reactions: 1 user

Warr

<Bronze Donator>
940
1,294
Alas, it's not going to be distributed in theaters here, so Netflix it is...

Depends on market. It has at least a 2-week run with multiple showings per day at about 3-4 theaters here in the DC area. Was pretty good. Hoping it gets a more widespread national release.
 

Szlia

Member
6,547
1,310
Kind of eye opening to see a big blockbuster from "the other side", like how foreigners must see stuff like Transformers or Independence Day with its American drumbeat, here its all China all the way.

To get the full inverted experience, I recommend Operation Red Sea or, even more extreme, Wolf Warrior 2.
 

Tarrant

<Prior Amod>
15,516
8,969
Just watched it. It’s good, but not as good as I thought it might be going into it. It was a like cross between Armageddon and Wall*E.

I’d give it a 7/10, maybe a 7.5. I think we will see sequels which I’d be fine with.
 

Qhue

Trump's Staff
7,465
4,413
Watched it. Was standard disaster movie fare. Have to immediately suspend disbelief at the entire premise as well as everything even remotely 'science' in the whole movie, but it was enjoyable enough to sit through. Worst part was that it stretched out what was essentially a pretty tight novella to a much longer runtime courtesy of stupid people doing stupid things.

I'd give it a solid 6.5/10
 
Movie information in first post provided by The Movie Database