The Randomguy's

How Moonfall was able to be clever and dumb at the same time is a pure miracle

We humans are always been fascinated by the wonders of the stars, every day and night, we look up and wonder... what it's like out there? Why are we here? Are we the only being that developed civilization in the vast universe? With our imagination, legends and stories were told through generations about the stars and the signs. And as one of the biggest start we see daily, there are tons of stories around the moon. We do like to speculate how such big stuff can circulate the planet Earth without crashing into us or drifting to space. What the hack is the moon? In Moonfall, the question was answered.

It all started from 10 years ago, when astronaut Harper, Marcus and Fowler performing regular maintenance for a satellite, they were attacked by some unknown alien technology. Marcus died from the incident, and Harper was to blame as this was eventually considered as a human error by the court to hide the secretes of the moon. Ten years later, a Dr, Houseman discovered that the orbit of the moon was changing, which supported his conspiracy theory that the Moon is actually an artificial Megastructure, he got Harper to help and the two would join now NASA deputy director Fowler on the quest to prevent the tragedy of Moon falling from the sky.

I have to admitted the first scene of the alien attacking feels like some top quality content, and the plots before the whole world-saving stuff were very well-written. You can easily understand the dynamics of the people, their desire, and the reason behind their actions. When the bad news hit, you'd see very different reactions from the characters. Some just ditched their responsibility and fled to seek protection, some stayed and tried to come up with solutions, while some only wanted to take advantage of the situation. The dark emotions and harsh realities were executed well, you could feel the immense pressure even through the screen. However, the movie has a big problem, which is that it couldn't decide it wants to be clever or dumb. And the solution? Let's be very clever and really dumb at the same time. In fact, let's play clever and dumb right next to each other so people will notice how clever and how stupid we can be. That's what this film feels like to me, especially on the dialogs. Sometimes the characters could speak as if they've mastered the whole Shakespeare collection but sometimes they just don't know what they're talking about. Some jokes were good, but some jokes really shouldn't exist in this world. But the most ridiculous event was probably that the big three simply just took a decommissioned shuttle and flied to space on their own, no assistance required. It's not like they were using a state-of-the-art aircraft, it was probably from the cold war period, but somehow it only took 3 men who don't really know their stuff to take off. Also, the stepdad kind of died for no good reason other than convenience. In the plot he was trying to save his family, but when Harper's son do the same thing, he was saved by teenage romance. That really work?

To sum it up, Moonfall is an OK movie. The character designs were great and the story itself was full of potential. However, how the main characters deal with challenges were way too easy, making the dark and deep setup didn't really work. And let's not get started on the jokes. I'd say it's a guilty pleasure film, probably best to consume it with a group of friends and popcorns.