The Wandering Earth (2019, Dir. Frant Gwo):
Humanity’s exodus would proceed in five steps: First, the Earth Engines’ jets would be used to counteract the Earth’s movement, stopping its rotation. Second, the engines’ entire power would be used to set the Earth on a new path, accelerating the Earth into escape velocity, taking it away from the Sun. Third, in outer space, the Earth would continue to accelerate as it traveled to Proxima Centauri. Fourth, in transit, the Earth Engines would be re-aligned, the Earth’s rotation would be restarted and the deceleration process initiated. And then fifth, the Earth would be moored in an orbit around Proxima Centauri, becoming its planet. People also called these five steps the “Reining Age”, the “Exodial Age”, the “First Wandering Age” (during acceleration), the “Second Wandering Age” (during deceleration), and the “New Sun Age”.
The entire exodus would last 2,500 years, about 100 generations.
— Liu Cixin, “The Wandering Earth”
It’s fair to say that when it comes to cinema, China is having a moment. With a billion-plus customers, the country is now the biggest film market in the world, and in a world where box office receipts are favored over critical adulation, we now have phenomena like the Transformers franchise, which continues churning out sequels despite diminishing stateside returns because of boffo Chinese box office, or Terminator: Genisys, an outright disaster at home but enough of a hit in the Middle Kingdom to merit a follow-up. In return, the Chinese are getting into the global movie game, with costly gambits such as The Great Wall (watch Matt Damon battle monsters in imperial China!) and partial financing of sure-fire hits like Mission: Impossible – Fallout. Recognizing the recent international kudos given to Chinese sci-fi writer Liu Cixin, author of the Three Body Problem trilogy, China has now decided the time is ripe to dive head-first into science fiction cinema, long the domain of Western entertainment (a few cult Japanese productions notwithstanding). Their first foray: The Wandering Earth, based on Liu’s short story of the same name.
Liu’s original story is a slim little notion of a tale, fable-like in its simplicity. The sun is dying faster than experts anticipated, and Earth’s only chance of survival is to literally pack its bags and move to the next available solar system. It’s an improbable concept to say the least, but the scientific mumbo-jumbo takes a back seat to the human element, specifically the dying words of an insane man who remembers what it was like to live on an Earth with benevolent sunshine. A bedtime story of a time yet to come, told in hindsight, “The Wandering Earth” is drenched with the melancholic knowledge that although all this too shall pass, nothing stays the same.
Some of that mournfulness seeps into the film version of The Wandering Earth, but whereas the short story made do without characters or plot of any consequence, the film adopts a disaster-movie structure, with a cast of dozens we’re meant to root for, including astronaut Liu Peijiang (Wu Jing) and his son Liu Qi (Qu Chuxiao). When Earth embarked on the first phase of its journey, Peijiang was assigned to an international satellite just outside orbit, running point for the planet during its voyage out of the solar system. Qi, on the other hand, was left behind on terra firma at an early age. Bitter about his mother’s death (forced to select a limited number of family members who would be allowed to live safely underground, Peijiang let his already-stricken wife die), he’s now a hothead teen with a knack of finding trouble, and a hankering to visit Earth’s now-uninhabitable surface. When he, his adopted sister Doudou (Zhao Jinmai), and their cranky grandfather Chen (Ng Man Tat) end up topside and land themselves in trouble with the local authorities, all looks bleak — and then things get bleaker for all humankind when Jupiter’s gravitational pull knocks out a good chunk of the mammoth “engines” propelling Earth on its journey, sending it on a deadly collision course with the gas giant. It’s a race against the clock as Peijiang attempts to override the satellite’s central computer and defense system MOSS (which has its own sinister “Plan B” agenda), and organize rescue efforts on Earth, while Qi is co-opted by a ragtag Army unit to take the perilous trip from northern China to Shanghai, and then to Indonesia, to repair and restart the Earth engines needed to get the globe back on course.
Within that scenario, The Wandering Earth runs us through exposition, plot complications, character introductions, and assorted perils at breakneck speed, borrowing moves and touchstones from any number of sci-fi films. Beijing’s underground city resembles the neon cyberpunk nightscapes of Blade Runner (which borrowed much of its aesthetic from orientalism, so maybe it’s only fair that Asia is now stealing it back). MOSS’s unctuous voice and menacing red electronic eye recalls the HAL 9000 computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Peijiang engages in death-defying, weightless acrobatics right out of Gravity. Qi and his crew resemble the motley squad from The Core, burrowing away on a suicidal mission in lethal conditions. As in Interstellar, the awe of space travel is merged with soap-opera family dynamics which prove critical in saving life as we know it. Earth’s surface, like The Day After Tomorrow, has been reduced to an arctic apocalypse due to climate change. If nothing else, The Wandering Earth is hyper-aware of the sci-fi that has come before, even if it mimics its forefathers to a fault.
But just when you’re ready to write the film off as an empty copy, intriguing bits of cultural difference peek through. Given the Chinese government’s recent push towards glorifying some of its old-school idealism, it shouldn’t be a surprise that The Wandering Earth‘s heroes are resolutely proletariat: janitors, truck drivers, and technicians are relied on to save the day, with an assist from a super-competent bunch of soldiers. Sounds a lot like Communist paradise, and that’s before a junior-high school girl stirs Earth’s inhabitants to save the planet with an inspiring speech, much like the farmer girls from those Maoist propaganda classics of yore. Old grandfather Chen (dialing down his usual Hong Kong comedy shtick, Ng Man Tat is a revelation) is the cuddliest socialist of them all, reminiscing about a time in the past when he didn’t care about money, only his wife’s cooking. And like a good old comrade, Granddad isn’t above the tried-and-true Chinese method of getting a relative out of a jam: offering a bribe to a local official. Still, the movie also accommodates China’s broadening world view, as a cast of international extras chatter away in Russian, English, French, and Japanese, and we get to see futuristic representations of Paris, Sulawesi, and other locales.
In other areas, The Wandering Earth shows off its Chinese roots with idiosyncratic touches. Every so often characters dip into unspoken inner monologues that carry the wistfulness and rhythm of traditional Chinese verse. Whenever a character sacrifices himself or herself, you can count on a heartfelt, noble speech that would fit right into a martial arts sword epic. Even an automated safety message is recited in declamatory poetic fashion. As is the case with a lot of Chinese cinema, the humor tends toward coarseness, especially when a bleach-haired Mike Sui shows up as comic relief, going bug-eyed when a comrade barfs into his helmet. The special effects are also charmingly ramshackle, with most of the CGI on the level of a cut scene from a video game. Chinese studios may have money to burn, but the gap between their ambitions and their ability to convincingly display what they envision is still a long ways off from the polished, antiseptic joys of American blockbusters, and for that we should be thankful.
Juggling its noisy mash-ups of influences and cliches, attempting to mythologize on a Hollywood scale (replete with holiday-themed ending, although the holiday in this case is Chinese New Year), and negotiating the fascinating tension between trying to connect with Chinese audiences while still appealing to ticket buyers around the world, The Wandering Earth often loses track of the soulfulness that animated Liu Cixin’s original story. Look hard enough and you’ll find it, though. The film is at its most engrossing when it decides to happily go bonkers and stop worrying about how realistic everything should be, especially when the Earth closes in on Jupiter. As the giant planet’s red eye looms in our sky like a surreal portrait of doom, we’re reminded of what’s best about science fiction: its ability to take reality and turn it on its head. Liu Cixin’s story is poetry hidden behind prose — the Wandering Earth movie piles on plenty of prosaic happenings, but the poetry is never completely lost.
