Roland Emmerich
230 connections found
View:
Connections, in both directions
Armageddon (1998)
Directed by Michael Bay
influenced Moonfall (2022), White House Down (2013), Independence Day (1996)
Plot Characters Themes Music
Emmerich directs a script he co-wrote with Harald Kloser and Spenser Cohen and it comes close to camp, recalling ’90s disaster flicks like “Armageddon,” some high concept from “Interstellar,” some Emmerich DNA from “The Day After Tomorrow” and even call-backs to “2001: A Space Odyssey” and “Planet of the Apes.”
Along the way, the film samples liberally from Emmerich’s past projects, with a dash of Independence Day and plenty of The Day After Tomorrow to go along with 2012 ‘s conspiracy-friendly inspiration, and it’s hard to miss the overt similarities to some films he didn’t make, like 1998 meteor-disaster adventure Armageddon .
(Let’s also take this as a sign to continue making blockbusters where the actors actually have chemistry, people!) Wilson confronts the potential end of the world with a subtlety reminiscent of Bruce Willis in Armageddon: He’s tormented but not brooding, disheveled but not hopeless, brave but not a martyr.
Moonfall has moments that recall obvious sci-fi influences like The Matrix as well as his one-time competitors like Michael Bay's Armageddon and half-forgotten curiosities like Brian De Palma's Mission to Mars .
Additionally, the music by Harald Kloser (who’s also one of the film’s co-writers) may be a pastiche of warmed-over themes from “Armageddon” and “The Day After Tomorrow,” but it attempts to inject some tension and excitement into the film.
With them as they launch off on an “Armageddon” (1998)/“Don’t Look Up” (2021)-like mission is a nerdy extrovert with IBS (a very Rickey Gervais-esque John Bradley of “Game of Thrones,” bringing the much-needed comic relief).
The Tomorrow War (2021)
Directed by Chris McKay
influenced by Independence Day (1996), The Day After Tomorrow (2004)
Plot Themes
The Tomorrow War manages to combine the best bits of Edge Of Tomorrow , Arrival , Armageddon , Alien , Independence Day , and God knows what else in the kind of movie that Michael Bay or Roland Emmerich would’ve directed in their primes if they’d had more talent.
Here’s a high-concept sci-fi film attempting to channel the energy of Independence Day , complete with some decent star power and capable action direction.
Earth has been invaded by aliens, à la “Independence Day.” Said invasion is actually occurring in 2051, so the children of the next generation who haven’t been born yet have been sent back via wormhole in search of help with a last stand, à la “Terminator.”
When compared to the ultimate in this category, “Independence Day,” where the President literally gets in a plane (after a stirring St. Crispin’s Day-style speech) to fight the aliens, it is impossible not think about what prompted it.
If you’re a fan of the Alien movie franchise or Independence Day then The Tomorrow War will be right up your alley.
It’s reminiscent of the anti-fascist “Starship Troopers,” the father-daughter centered “Interstellar,” and the punch-the-air alien conflict driving “Independence Day.”
Die Hard (1988)
Directed by John McTiernan
influenced White House Down (2013), The Day After Tomorrow (2004)
Characters Plot
Among todays actors, someone like Bruce Willis could pull it off as well (and did so to a degree in the "Die Hard" films.)
Unlike so many '90s films, though, the form that WHD takes is not exactly " Die Hard in an X", with X referring in this case to the White House; it was this exact tack taken by this spring's Olympus Has Fallen , a cheaply-made rushed knock-off of WHD that, as it turns out, is almost precisely at the same quality level as the movie it was copying, though for different reasons.
Director Roland Emmerich takes a break from blowing up the entire world (and completely blowing Anonymous ) to direct this Die Hard knock-off without shame, and he’s perfectly suited to the material, transforming a concept that Olympus Has Fallen made gruff and violent into an over the top crowd-pleaser.
While there’s more than a little of a “Die Hard” vibe here (more than in “Die Hard 5,” actually), Emmerich and screenwriter James Vanderbilt wisely don’t try to turn Tatum into a junior Bruce Willis.
White House Down is yet another take on the old Die Hard formula, with more than a few nods to the fun Air Force One (1997) and to Emmerich's own Independence Day (1996).
With its Die Hard -in-the-White-House premise already taken out in a pre-emptive strike by Olympus Has Fallen earlier this year, White House Down suddenly had to do more than just rely on its high concept.
Oblivion (2013)
Directed by Joseph Kosinski
influenced by Independence Day (1996), The Day After Tomorrow (2004)
Plot
You know a pictures derivative when a list of titles in the same genre technically constitutes a string of spoilers Blade Runner, Independence Day, The Matrix, Moon, Planet of the Apes, Star Wars, WALL-E, 2001.
So despite the fact that well-read sci-fi fanatics might get distracted while mentally ticking off familiar plot points (Independence Day, Moon) and visual references (2001: A Space Odyssey), the upside is that, derivative as Oblivion may be in many respects, it still manages to hold our attention by presenting compelling ideas about our concept of reality, and prodding our imaginations by avoiding simple answers and explanations.
, who proved with "Independence Day" that you can make an entire entertainment out of nothing but shameless references to past sci-fi hits.
Along the way, my mind turned to "Wall-E," "Moon," "Independence Day," and even "An Affair to Remember," to name only a few of the many other works Kosinski borrows from.
Cuz then you walk into Oblivion with no recollection of 2001: A Space Odyssey and Independence Day and 2012 and The Road Warrior and Planet of the Apes and the entire history of science fiction movies, and hence you’ll enjoy yourself ever so much more.
Focusing on duplicating a litany of big screen inspirations like Independence Day, Moon and, surprisingly, The English Patient, Kosinski doesn’t seem interested in carving out a unique voice for himself.
The Poseidon Adventure (1972)
Directed by Ronald Neame
influenced 2012 (2009), The Day After Tomorrow (2004), Moonfall (2022)
Plot
Inspired by popular pseudoscientific claims that the Mayan calendar predicts the world will end on Dec. 12, 2012, the film is a sort of disaster-genre greatest hits collection, gathering the tidal waves from "The Perfect Storm" and "The Poseidon Adventure," the temblors from "Earthquake," the volcanoes from "Volcano" and "Dante's Peak," the fireballs from "Armageddon," and other special-effects traumas into that paradoxical form of entertainment that allows viewers to escape their real-life woes by imagining something far, far worse.
He has become the modern day “Master of Disaster,” a title once bestowed on filmmaker Irwin Allen thanks to the success of his back-to-back blockbusters The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno.
Rumoured to cost some $260 million (U.S.) – figure most of it went for CGI – 2012 liberally lifts from the Irwin Allen playbook, especially The Poseidon Adventure, right down to the cruise ship turned turtle by a gigantic tsunami.
Even “master of disaster” Irwin Allen liked to shake up the status quo in such films as The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno, but Emmerich has no imagination: His A-listers live, his support players die.
When the ill-fated cruise ship of The Poseidon Adventure (1972)?a film Emmerich and co-writer Harald Kloser reference here more than once?was capsized by a tidal wave, my 10-year-old self may have understood that flesh-and-blood stuntmen, not actors, were hanging off those upside-down cocktail tables, but I still feared for them and, by extension, for the film's characters.
Emmerich is more of a kindred spirit to the late schlockmeister producer Irwin Allen ("The Swarm," "The Poseidon Adventure") than he is to Michael Moore, and "Day" is far more effective as a guilty-pleasure popcorn extravaganza than as any kind of a serious political statement.
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Directed by Stanley Kubrick
influenced Moonfall (2022), Independence Day (1996)
Plot Themes Visuals
Borrowing liberally from The War of the Worlds, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and seemingly every other sci-fi outing this side of Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, the picture somehow manages to recycle these reference points and come up with something that works on its own terms.
Emmerich directs a script he co-wrote with Harald Kloser and Spenser Cohen and it comes close to camp, recalling ’90s disaster flicks like “Armageddon,” some high concept from “Interstellar,” some Emmerich DNA from “The Day After Tomorrow” and even call-backs to “2001: A Space Odyssey” and “Planet of the Apes.”
Note the visual nods to wallpaper from The Shining (1980) and the white void from 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), then watch Room 237 (2012).
By the time the story reaches its out-there conclusion — involving aliens’ ability to channel our inner thoughts in order to communicate with us in terms we can understand — it’s become clear that the screenwriters have seen 2001: A Space Odyssey too many times.
Stylistically, “Moonfall” has roots in everything from “2001: A Space Odyssey,” the granddaddy of speculative science-fiction films, to the “Terminator” series, with its deadly, self-aware AI, and the look and piloting wizardry of the “Star Wars” films.
These involve a primordial conflict, aliens, A.I., and the creation of the human species, and they’re brought to the screen with audaciously flimsy versions of key moments from the Stargate sequence in “2001: A Space Odyssey.”
Bloodshot (2020)
Directed by Dave Wilson
influenced by Universal Soldier (1992), Independence Day (1996)
Plot Themes
The most noticeable influence is “Universal Soldier,” a film that shares so many plot elements that “Bloodshot” can be classified as a blatant rip-off.
Wilson’s Bloodshot is a lame Universal Soldier ripoff starring an aged Vin Diesel as the title superhero.
Such a concept traverses much of the same territory as Universal Soldier and RoboCop , among others.
Bloodshot is based on a Valiant comic, but for less comic book literate viewers, it may remind you more of sci-fi films like Robocop or Universal Soldier .
Van Damme's biggest hit – debatably – was a cheerfully nonsensical load of rubbish called Universal Soldier , in which Van Damme starred alongside Dolph Lundgren as soldiers who had been killed in action, reanimated by some futuristic technology, to carry out nefarious missions under the cover of being, err, dead.
Hey, this critic’s pulse probably never broke 35 during the 109-minute runtime, and say what you want about the schlocky, soldiers-turned-cyborgs “Universal Soldier” (1992), but at least Dolph Lundgren stood opposite Jean-Claude Van Damme throughout the cheesy nonsense.
Pearl Harbor (2001)
Directed by Michael Bay
influenced Midway (2019), Moonfall (2022), Independence Day (1996)
Plot Themes Visuals
One return to form was Midway , although it suffered from low-quality CGI after being practically self-financed, yet it was easily better than Michael Bay’s abomination Pearl Harbor.
Midway pays tribute to fallen American heroes even as the film may also be a spiritual sequel to an earlier Pacific-set World War 2 film, Pearl Harbor .
Director Roland Emmerich thankfully relies on the (barely) competent special effects to make the battle scenes exciting but otherwise, there’s a bunch of second-rate aerial photography and copycat shots from Michael Bay’s “Pearl Harbor” (like a tired p.o.v.
Oh, it's not "Pearl Harbor" horrific, and most of the actors do their best with a wholly clunky script that plays like an homage to John Wayne "war pictures," but this "Midway" was made for the ADHD generation.
Both of these specimens of testosterone-fueled all-American derring-do (played by Brits who periodically struggle with their accents) are real historical figures, as are almost all of the characters in Midway , which attempts to dramatize the most famous naval battle of World War II by drawing equal inspiration from the monotonous historical reenactments of 1970’s Tora! Tora! Tora! , the butt-numbing soap-opera spectacle of 2001’s Pearl Harbor , and the Irwin Allen influences of Emmerich’s own disaster movies.
That’s not to say the script has to go into full-on weepy romance territory like Michael Bay’s “Pearl Harbor” (2001), but Moore is too big a star not to use her considerable talents.
Godzilla (2014)
Directed by Gareth Edwards
influenced by Godzilla (1998), Independence Day (1996), 2012 (2009)
Plot Visuals Characters
Before long I realized that it could not compare to “Independence Day”, another earth is in danger—what will we do type flick.
It'll absolutely leave your jaw dropped — assuming you've never seen a Transformers film, Independence Day, Armageddon, 2012, War of the Worlds, Cloverfield, Pacific Rim or any of the dozens of other ear-splitting effect fests that have offered pixelated spectacles of mass destruction since the dawn of CGI.
Although he’s the lead actor, Taylor-Johnson plays the role with resignation, as if Edwards didn’t want him to act like Will Smith from “Independence Day.”
This rebooted Godzilla owes a lot of its structure to Emmerich's outstanding Independence Day.
The story begins in the Philippines in 1999 (the year after the last Godzilla , directed by Roland Emmerich–a dreadful picture to which this one makes no reference).
Godzilla returns in an installment that's certainly better than Roland Emmerich's disastrous 1998 effort, with the movie's relatively subdued vibe ensuring that the film, at the outset, stands in sharp contrast to most contemporary blockbusters (which are, with few exceptions, overblown and oppressively frenetic).
Pacific Rim (2013)
Directed by Guillermo del Toro
influenced by Independence Day (1996), Godzilla (1998)
Plot Dialogue Themes Visuals
It would be too easy to write Pacific Rim off as a bad mash-up of the worst components of Roland Emmerich’s alien-invasion extravaganza Independence Day (1996) and Michael Bay’s insufferable Transformer movies had it been directed by someone other than del Toro, the Mexican-born fantasy-horror auteur whose sharply pronounced visual acumen and obsession with everything weird, surreal, and uncanny has made him one of the most fascinating filmmakers of the past decade.
At one point, the squadron’s stern leader (Idris Elba, commanding in a stock role) delivers a pep talk virtually identical to Bill Pullman’s inspirational speech in Independence Day .
“Independence Day,” another Roland Emmerich joint).
There's plenty of strategic talk and grim pronouncements counteracted by inspiring speeches of the "Independence Day" variety, but the real stars of "Pacific Rim" are the set pieces.
Then there’s a kendo sparring match straight out of The Matrix and its kung-fu forerunners, a cheer-inducing pre-battle speech with echoes of Independence Day (“Today, we are canceling the apocalypse!”), and a finale in which a bomb must be placed in the aliens’ lair/cavern/alternate dimension.
See if you can catch those Independence Day and/or Deep Blue Sea moments and you’ll know the sort of “borrowing” I’m referring to.
Emmerich is apparently a big James Cameron fan, since huge chunks of Moonfall are ripped off from The Abyss (with a little Terminator-flavored “AI strikes back against its human creators” concept).
In Moonfall , the voyage to the moon is reasonably interesting, even if it shamelessly borrows from The Abyss and Contact , so what happens on earth is more of a distraction.
Moonfall cribs from the best with beats clearly inspired by The Terminator , The Abyss , and others as the story grows from silly to inane, and while its Elon Musk love is disturbing and its “Karen” joke already outdated there’s still plenty to have fun with here.
Elements of 2001: A Space Odyssey , The Abyss , the Terminator franchise, and so many other massive science fiction stalwarts crash into one another with freewheeling abandon.
Simply take a pinch of Contact, a dash of The Abyss, a tablespoon of Independence Day, and a cup of Armageddon, mix them all together and the result is Moonfall.
More than two hours of cobbled together bits of everything from The Abyss to the Terminator series, 2001 , The Core , Prometheus , Transformers: Dark of the Moon , Melancholia and Armageddon , all packaged in a blur of second-rate CGI and pseudo-science that attempts to quote Carl Sagan, but has more in common with the conspiracy theories of David Icke.
The plot sounds like a combination of “Independence Day,” “Armageddon” and “Transformers,” and in many ways, this film tries to replicate the formula that made those three pictures massively successful.
Nevertheless, for a film based on an outdated board game, “Battleship” delivers a nice balance of action and humor that reminded me a lot of another alien invasion movie, “Independence Day.” It’s probably more on par with the first “ Transformers ” than the Roland Emmerich sci-fi classic, but the sheer fact that it's entertaining at all makes “Battleship” more of a hit than a miss.
Simply put, if you have a hankering for a mindless two-hours plus of a movie that combines elements of that along with familiar bits of the "Transformers" films and "Independence Day," you could do far worse than what's offered here.
The script by Erich and Jon Hoeber get away with setting a naval battle at Pearl Harbor by teaming up the Japanese and the Americans against a shared enemy, but they still err just a little too much on humanizing the inhuman villains-- we can deal with either anonymously evil aliens (Independence Day style) or oddly sympathetic ones (District 9 style), but not some middling combination of the two.
There are small moments where the movie achieves the kind of dopey fun Roland Emmerich delivered in Independence Day.
Whereas a movie like Independence Day (in all its cheese) told a globe-hopping story with enough time to take a breath and get to know the people being blown up, Battleship spends over two hours (over two hours!) doing exactly one thing: lobbing explosives back and forth.
Arrival (2016)
Directed by Denis Villeneuve
influenced by Independence Day (1996)
Plot Themes Visuals
They don't start firing lasers like "War of the Worlds" or blowing up the White House like "Independence Day."
Scripted by Eric Heisserer based on Story of Your Life, by short-fiction writer Ted Chiang, Arrival is more or less the anti-Independence Day.
But unlike your typical "Independence Day" fare, "Arrival" is more focused on the suspense and nuance of an actual alien encounter.
That's what Arrival tries to capture, in its own low-key, non-Independence Day kind of way.
Beginning conventionally in the vein of an Independence Day or The Day The Earth Stood Still, the film opens with the sudden arrival of twelve mysterious alien spaceships in various locations around the world.
While sci-fi fans might flock to see the thing thinking that it’s some alien invasion epic like an Independence Day, this is more strange and even cerebral, and is less about ‘Them’ than ‘Us’, and how powerful our words can be – especially when misinterpreted.
Regardless of one's critical opinions of individual films, it's hard to deny the balls-out, ultra-visceral, stylistically audacious approaches of "Apocalypto" and "300" injected some fresh excitement into a long-dormant and generally derided genre.
An amalgamation of much better movies, riffing on offerings as diverse as Quest for Fire, Apocalypto, The Ten Commandments, and any number of creaky ancient myths, Emmerich has finally hit the Monterey Jack-pot.
Emmerich's version of the Pleistocene epoch has just about everything - woolly mammoths, a sabre-toothed tiger, feathered dinosaurs with jaws like white pointers and a tribe of extras who look as if they have wandered across from Mel Gibson's Apocalypto.
If those evil folk sound suspiciously like refugees from Mel Gibson's "Apocalypto," that's not the only movie "10,000 BC" plunders.
Emmerich borrows from BRAVEHEART and APOCALYPTO, so such conjecture has a basis in what turns up on screen.
D'Leh's heroic journey begins after his love, Evolet (Camilla Belle), is kidnapped along with numerous other tribespeople by the slave raiders of a far-off civilization, ruled -- as in "300" and the quite similar "Apocalypto" -- by sophisticates whose superior learning, technology and architectural ingenuity are equated with cruelty, idolatry and sexual perversity (the steps of their Cyclopean pyramids are rife with Mandarin-nailed eunuchs).
Many moons ago, the first mutant Poe Dameron… whoops, sorry, make that Apocalypse (Oscar Issac) was inexplicably blindsided by a bunch of slaves he thought were under his thumb who buries him for all time — cue Stargate theme — right up until someone foolishly unearths his tomb in Egypt and provides exactly the right ingredients to bring him back to life.
Isaac’s bellowing “all-powerful” Apocalypse, who strode the Earth in 3,600 B.C., appears to have been borrowed from the deliberately camp 1994 mashup of sci-fi, ancient Egypt and transgender daring that was “Stargate.”
But here’s an entry that starts more like “Stargate” or “The Fifth Element” than “Captain America: Civil War.” It’s here we meet our main baddie: the eponymous blue meanie, played by the usually charismatic Oscar Isaac, trapped in makeup and a suit that make him look and act like a block of painted granite that talks (occasionally, a bit).
This messy sequel (technically still a prequel) goes back further to ancient Egypt, where a proto uber-mutant’s Temple of Doom- style-meets- Stargate regeneration is stalled, only to resume in 1983.
Emmerich borrows from BRAVEHEART and APOCALYPTO, so such conjecture has a basis in what turns up on screen.
Strait easily is the worst actor ever tasked to give the “Braveheart” morale speech — by now so easy a caveman could do it.
It’s like Apocalypto meets Stargate (the movie, not the TV show) with bits of Jurassic Park and Braveheart thrown in, cuz those were great movies, right?
Stealing cues from “Apocalypto,” “Braveheart,” and his own “Stargate” (not to mention numerous other films), Emmerich has assembled a funky bouillabaisse of derivative material glued together by the CG sequences, which imagine a land populated with grazing mammoths, fierce saber-tooth tigers, and massive ostrich-like creatures that allow Emmerich a chance to rip-off the Velociraptor attack from “Jurassic Park.”
Unfortunately, visual effects and far-out ideas aren’t enough to overcome a film overflowing with banal dialogue spoken in an unconvincing accent (supposedly a mix of Standard English and Arabic), a bland love story that borrows from "Apocalypto" and "Last of the Mohicans," a dully self-doubting hero unwilling to “heed the call” and become a leader in the "Braveheart" mold, not one, but two plot-propelling prophecies short on logic, a thumbs-down worthy supernatural turn, and one too many unanswered questions about the pyramid builders and where they came from.
A much-loved actor who shall remain nameless gets a choice cameo wherein he Explains Much that recalls his even choicer cameo wherein he Explains Even More in Oliver Stone’s “JFK” (1991).
And the 86-year-old Donald Sutherland shows up for about two minutes to reprise his JFK role, 30 years later, as the guy who explains the whole conspiracy and then exits the movie.
Fragmented-family problems ensue, along with the gravity problems, plus tidal waves; moon chunks hurling into mountains and skyscrapers; and, because the plot depends on a massive government conspiracy to hide the truth, a brief cameo from Donald Sutherland in “JFK” mode.
(Remember the character Sutherland played in that excellent scene in Oliver Stone’s 1991 drama “JFK”?
I suspect that Emmerich wanted the scene to play with the furious momentum of the actor’s famous sequence in JFK (1992), where Sutherland expounds on the many factors that led to Kennedy’s assassination.
At one point, Donald Sutherland shows up at an unlikely location, blurts out some helpful information about a government coverup faster than you can say "JFK" and disappears almost as quickly.
Battle: Los Angeles (2011)
Directed by Jonathan Liebesman
influenced by Independence Day (1996)
Dialogue Plot Themes
“The Dark Knight’s” Aaron Eckhart maintains a stern upper lip and has to spout a number of cheesy lines without any of the humor that worked so well coming out of Will Smith’s mouth in the similar and superior “Independence Day.”
We’ve seen enough war films (‘Black Hawk Down,’ ‘Saving Private Ryan‘), and we’ve seen our share of alien films (‘Independence Day,’ ‘Starship Troopers,’ ‘District 9‘), and when you combine both of those elements in one film, we’ve also seen plenty of that as well.
The Recipe: One part War of the Worlds, one part generic stoic army guy movie from 1957 set during WWII, one part Independence Day, one part goofy dialogue that makes it seem like the screenwriter watched Airplane!
It's more Hurt Locker than Independence Day.
The script for “Battle: Los Angeles,” by Christopher Bertolini, uses every “save the earth from aliens” cliché it can lay its hand on, like “War of the World” (the bad one with Tom Cruise, not the good one with Gene Barry) and, especially, “Independence Day.” Aaron Eckhart must have known, while making “Battle: Los Angeles,” that he is the star of nonsensical sci-fi drama that relies more on the (well-done) special effects than on good writing.
Rather, Battle: Los Angeles follows the playbook of Independence Day and Godzilla, as filtered through the more manageable budget of the likewise shaky-cam Cloverfield: monsters come to your town and take heavy artillery, as Soldiers and Relatable Innocent Civilians duck for cover.
Moonfall has moments that recall obvious sci-fi influences like The Matrix as well as his one-time competitors like Michael Bay's Armageddon and half-forgotten curiosities like Brian De Palma's Mission to Mars .
But as it blasts into space — cue the strikingly topsy-turvy image of a shuttle struggling to rise amid cascading water — the increasingly, entertainingly ludicrous story seems to draw as much inspiration from “Gravity,” “Prometheus,” “The Terminator” and “Mission to Mars,” to say nothing of Emmerich’s own past space operas like “Independence Day” and “Stargate.”
The filmmaker, working with a script he co-wrote with Harald Kloser and Spenser Cohen, also gets to flex his penchant for wild conspiracy theories, and ends up churning out a film that feels heavily indebted to Brian De Palma's somewhat forgotten 2000 sci-fi movie "Mission to Mars."
Barring a third-act expository info-dump (which, incidentally, positions this madness as Emmerich’s mega riff on De Palma’s misunderstood Mission to Mars ) Moonfall just never stops.
Emmerich directs a script he co-wrote with Harald Kloser and Spenser Cohen and it comes close to camp, recalling ’90s disaster flicks like “Armageddon,” some high concept from “Interstellar,” some Emmerich DNA from “The Day After Tomorrow” and even call-backs to “2001: A Space Odyssey” and “Planet of the Apes.”
Wilson is an actor ideally suited to a role like this: a combo of spacefaring machismo and soft-hearted dad vibes, he feels like an off-brand attempt at recapturing the McConaughy magic of Interstellar , and though that’s typically meant as an insult, oftentimes (at least when it comes to soda and beer) it works just as well.
It’s like the silliest parts of Contact and Interstellar slammed into each other, but without either of their scientific foundations.
There is a surprising swerve into 2001/Interstellar territory in the third act that perks things up, but otherwise way too many of the 130 minutes are devoted to the thinly drawn familial dynamics of characters played by Patrick Wilson, Halle Berry, John Bradley, Michael Pena, and Charlie Plummer.
Without even getting into Emmerich's (he co-wrote the script with Spenser Cohen and Harald Kloser) "Interstellar"-like final act or his depiction of A.I. as a big black blob, there's little to recommend here outside of campy, accidental laughs.
Moonfall has quite a few things in common, visually and thematically, with films like Robert Zemeckis’ Contact and Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar , which looked at our place in the universe with wonder, awe, and a posture of serious inquiry.