Goto

Collaborating Authors

 moonfall


The Wondrous, Gloriously Absurd Spectacle of "Moonfall"

The New Yorker

"Moonfall," Roland Emmerich's latest exercise in fantasy destruction, is the second major movie to come out recently in which a huge space body is hurtling toward Earth and risks destroying all human life. In the other, "Don't Look Up," the menace is a comet, but the real story is the corruption of American politics and culture that prevents a rational response and leads to catastrophe. Whether the comet represents climate change (as the makers of "Don't Look Up" assert) or the COVID-19 pandemic (as fits the movie best), the celestial body is nonetheless only a MacGuffin, a pretext to expose the human follies that are the movie's subject. But, in "Moonfall," Emmerich is interested--really, really interested--in the moon. His obvious enthusiasm for the gloriously absurd science-fiction reconception of the moon drives the directorial pleasure principle, and it's infectious.