It's time for the man behind 'Independence Day' to make something closer to his heart.
People who’ve dutifully followed each of director Roland Emmerich’s blockbuster features may get stricken with a sense of déjà vu once the ending of Moonfall arrives. Seemingly deceased conspiracy theorist K.C. Houseman is suddenly resurrected within the core of the moon. Greeted by the moon’s technology masquerading as his mom, Houseman is then told he has a lot of work to do. This will apparently entail fighting off further evil cosmic forces like the rogue A.I.
After all, there’s no question Emmerich’s got the dedication necessary to bring a space opera to life. This is even reflected in how the trappings of such a story crept into the big plot twist of Moonfall. Rather than settling on a straightforward concept of there being an evil being lurking in the moon, audiences are delivered an expansive backstory involving how the technologically advanced descendants of humanity used to lives far away deep in space.
However, it must also be very restrictive for a blockbuster director to never even have the opportunity to go into the cosmos, a domain that even the Fast and Furious gang ventured into for F9. Meanwhile, the Marvel Cinematic Universe or Star Wars titles can always hop on over to a brand-new planet should storytelling get stale in their respective sagas. That’s never been an option for Emmerich, at least right away.
The space stuff in Moonfall isn’t perfect, but it’s got more fun and imagination to it than the simultaneous Earthbound sequences, which are told with such an obligatory aesthetic. Even the destruction of New York City at the hand of the incoming moon is here executed as an entirely digital creation that the camera captures from a distance, with no live-action humans on-screen to lend weight to the carnage.