Why you should watch... The Wandering Earth
From the mind behind 'The Three Body Problem', turned into one of the highest-grossing Chinese films of all time, and owner of some of the best 'grand scale' sci-fi visuals in media...
A brief preamble — For my inaugural post on You Should Watch, I felt compelled to revisit one of my all-time favorite science fiction stories. Straight from the mind of the author of The Three Body Problem, The Dark Forest, and Death’s End (adapted as “3 Body Problem” on Netflix). This film exemplifies for me why I wanted to start this micro-blog… a great story, made by talented creatives, given a limited distribution, and filled with more iconic visuals & earned moments than most of Hollywood’s output before or since…
Great sci-fi has always tested limits of some kind, in the stories it tells and the way it tells them.
Whether it was the limits of the film-making technology of the time & vision of the future, as in 2001: A Space Odyssey…
Whether it was the limits of the scope-of-genre & what counts as ‘science fiction’, as in Star Wars: A New Hope…
Whether it was the limits of people’s fear & what to expect in a genre-mashup, as in Alien…
Science Fiction is at its best when it pushes these limits aside, to (as our old friend Uatu might say) ponder the question ‘What if?’. Fundamentally, The Wandering Earth pushes more visual & narrative limits than most sci-fi of the last thirty years.
“…it’s not superheroes saving the world […] but mankind changing their destiny together…”
—Zhong Sheng, People’s Daily
(February 14, 2019)
When we think of the time that this film was released (the wayback year of… 2019), the market was saturated in a lot of ‘same but different’ stories, characters, and takes on often ‘well established’ premises.
In that same year, Men in Black: International showed us what happens when you try and take a movie that was a cult-classic, and give it ‘room to grow’… but forget what made the movie ‘magical’ to begin with. Terminator: Dark Fate showed us an attempt to refresh one of the ‘foundational’ sci-fi franchises of the last 40+ years with a strong ‘shake-up’… but caught more than just John Connor in the cross-fire… and Hellboy, much like it’s summer-release neighbor Men in Black: International, took us from the gritty-but-whimsical world that the character was known for, and made it more diluted, while also not treading new narrative ground for the titular character.
Then The Wandering Earth shows up… and as huge as its visuals are, and the scale of the story it tells… it does tread new ground by showing a glimpse of humanity coming together not to fight vague ‘external invaders’, and not to ‘rise up’ against some evil machination of our own design, nor to repel ‘monsters’ storming our cities…
But to save one another from something no single person or nation can… but still, in doing so, making the story a personal one, and one of earnest human connection.
“…’The Wandering Earth’ cured my winter depression…”
—Roger Ebert, RogerEbert.com
(February 15, 2019)
While yes, other movies do tell stories in this same vein (Roland Emmerich’s The Day After Tomorrow and 2012 being two examples), there’s a far greater sense of ‘individual over others’ for a good chunk of these films, compared to the greater sense of ‘all in on humanity’ that the story of The Wandering Earth tells.
You won’t find Russian billionaire’s, corrupt politicians, or science-averse lawmakers gladly throwing hundreds, thousands, millions, or even billions ‘to the wolves’ just to save ‘what’s left’ of humanity…
You find a planet united in a singular goal… save the population en masse, no matter the personal cost.
Even more so than the shots of the Earth’s atmosphere being sputtered away as it passes Jupiter… or the planetary engines igniting… or the futuristic city-sized machines that keep the ‘planet moving’… it’s the humanity putting humanity first aspect of story-telling that stands out to me as the grandest visual in The Wandering Earth (even amid a sea of truly cosmic scale imagery).
You should watch The Wandering Earth (2019) if you…
Love creative sci-fi that isn’t afraid of risks, being bold, and takes the phrase ‘go big or go home’ personally
Stories that tell human-level narratives, and ties them to cosmic-scale plot and action
Want to consume compelling stories from less published or prolific international sources
Have an affinity for stories that put hope and humanity at the center of a truly mega story
Enjoy ‘disaster movies’, but crave something that is wholly distinct in this genre
Where to Watch
Sci-Fi/Action • 2019 • 125mins • PG-13 • Chinese/普通话
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