This Review Reveals Minor Details About the Plot.
Lynching in Zero Gravity
Plot Overview
There's a sci-fi cum historical fiction backstory
(“This planet has suffered five extinctions”) to this
action movie (“This is going to be the sixth,”) which
can be seen in part from other
movies I've reviewed. First came an ancient ark-type survival resulting
in blacks being enslaved to the other races. Technology freed them but when
their AI machinery
replacement became self-aware, it didn't cotton to being the slave of
inferior biologicals, so it went to war with them. Some proto-humans
escaped through Mare
Crisum into the moon's interior, but what goes around comes around
(Prov. 26.27.) In a bid to kill two
birds with one stone, the killer AI has sent the moon, reservoir of a superior
technology, spiraling (“The moon's orbit has shifted”)
into the earth, with its seeded life now matured.
With the tides rising and the rats deserting
the ship, three unlikely figures commandeer a crippled STC-62 space
shuttle from Vandenberg AFB
to mount a fools' errand to an ever closer moon. Brian Harper (Patrick
Wilson,) an astronaut discredited for reporting a “space
anomaly” to excuse his human error on a satellite repair mission,
gets to fly again. Jocinda ‘Jo’ Fowler (Halle Berry) his
former “space-wife,” now promoted to head of NASA
from a seriously shrinking field of candidates, gets to join him again
in space. And hanger-on megastructuralist K.C. Houseman
(John Bradley) gets his moment of glory.
Ideology
African-American Jo's black
husband Doug Davidson (Eme Ikwuakor) is a bemedaled military man with
launch codes in charge of the nuclear option. The commander on a
preliminary lunar recon mission
is colored as well. You've come a long way, baby. At one time back
on earth, his kind were being lynched. Can't lynch him up here in
zero gravity. Fact is nobody could even tighten a rope around his
neck once his helmet is secured.
As we watch him competently complete
a check list, a swarm of nanobots coalesces outside the window
and sends out ropes to penetrate the space capsule with their fag
ends. We watch in horror as a rope breaches his faceplate. As
was back in the day on earth, there is no stopping it and no rescue,
just the audience's sympathy in this case. Unless one is a student
of proverbs, and then there's not even that. (Prov. 30:21-22) “The earth is
disquieted, and … it cannot bear: for a servant when he
reigneth.” Human servants were manageable, not like their machine
servant replacements. The movie presents uppity blacks as part of
the problem. It's as novelist Bruce Zimmerman has written:
I looked down at the patch of garden. “When do you expect your first bumper crop?”“Go ahead and joke, but don't come running to me for tomatoes when the food trucks stop running.” Hank tossed the hoe to the side and flexed his fingers. “Jesus … farming is hard work.”
“Farming is what you do with tractors,” I said. “What you're doing is gardening.” (209)
Without technology (tractors) a manual hard labor force (slaves) would be required. “Tractors” proved treacherous, but who was set up to do farming? Said Hank, “I've got to put something on these hands. Sh!t! Three blisters already. Maybe what I ought to do instead of a garden is stock up on some canned food” (Zimmerman 216.)
“Moonfall” focuses on a poor nobody, KC Houseman, one step ahead of eviction, working as a counterman at a cheap diner during the day and as a janitor at an astrology research facility at night. His unauthorized telephone use at the latter nets him the distinction of being the first to spot the moon's departure from orbit. He's the one who comes up with the last-chance scheme to go fix the moon. And when the shuttle that shanghais him has to shut off its electronics to hide from the AI, he plots an intercept course to the perambulatory moon using a slide rule. It's an instance of, (Eccl. 9:13-15) “This wisdom have I seen also under the sun, and it seemed great unto me: There was a little city, and few men within it; and there came a great king against it, and besieged it, and built great bulwarks against it: Now there was found in it a poor wise man, and he by his wisdom delivered the city; yet no man remembered that same poor man.” Money talks, but he had no money. He had no creds either, except for a phony doctor title. His wisdom saved the planet, but he's not much accounted for. He's a little like the flyboys described by Peter Marshall:
The Battle of Britain, in the last war, which lasted from August 8 to October 31, 1940, cost the Germans 2,375 planes destroyed in daylight alone, and many more at night. It cost the British 375 pilots killed and 358 wounded. A handful of RAF fliers had saved Britain, and perhaps the world from destruction. You will remember what Winston Churchill said of his people: “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few!” That victory was achieved, you see, not by the top-ranking generals the brass hats the big shots but by young men—a team—playing and fighting—and dying together. (57–58)
As the titled eclipse the wise so do the rich. Zimmerman writes, “What kills me is that if what's-his-name, Donald Trump, if he did this, if he put the Seven Altars package together … Sh!t! Everybody'd call him a financial genius. Brilliant. Shrewd. Need a guy like that in the White House. But when it's Russell Axton … unh-unh. Everybody all of a sudden says, hey, what's the catch? Who is he screwing?” (235.) (Eccl. 9:16) “Then said I, Wisdom is better than strength: nevertheless the poor man's wisdom is despised, and his words are not heard.”
(Eccl. 9:17) “The words of wise men are heard in quiet more than the cry of him that ruleth among fools.” When Brian's teenage son Sonny (Charlie Plummer) gets busted behind the wheel, Brian can't get heard well at his bond hearing for all the shouting back and forth. He does better with a quiet word with the judge afterwards.
(Eccl. 9:18) “Wisdom is better than weapons of war: but one sinner destroyeth much good.” Brian does better to outwit the leader of some highwaymen trying to block his motorized flight, rather than to shoot it out against their superior firepower.
Production Values
“” (2022) was directed by Roland Emmerich. Its writers were Roland Emmerich, Harald Kloser and Spenser Cohen. It stars Halle Berry, Patrick Wilson, John Bradley and Michael Peña. Bradley did great as a mama's boy, pure genius, and cat person. The leads did well and had a good supporting cast.
It's rated PG–13 for violence, disaster action, language and drug use. This movie is banned in my city of Eugene, Oregon, as are all ‘noose displays.’ I simply crossed the city line to Springfield to watch it where it isn't banned. What ever happened to free speech? There goes my Goya collection. English is spoken in the film with some Mandarin Chinese from an exchange student thrown in. It was filmed in Montréal, Québec, Canada. This is a busy movie with iffy science. The CGI looked realistic except in places. Much of it was shrouded in darkness. It has a running time of 2 hours.
Review Conclusion w/a Christian's Recommendation
The most horrifying scene is where the thick, black nanobot rope comes crawling for the pinned darkie. Man! Sensitive viewers beware. I recommend destroying your ticket stub after the fact to keep yourself out of trouble with your maid, your girlfriend, the FBI, or whomever. This was a pretty lively disaster flick without much buildup. There's family drama and snarky humor in it as well. Individual characters are heroic, their society not so much.
Movie Ratings
Action factor: Edge of your seat action-packed. Suitability for Children: Suitable for children 13+ years with guidance. Special effects: Well done special effects. Video Occasion: Good for Groups. Suspense: Keeps you on the edge of your seat. Overall movie rating: Three stars out of five.
Works Cited
Scripture quoted from the King James Version. Pub. 1611, rev. 1769. Print. Software.
Marshall, Catherine. Sermons and prayers of Peter Marshall. Mr. Jones, Meet the Master. Copyright 1949, 1950 by Fleming H. Revell Company. New York: Fleming H. Revell Company, 37th printing. Print.
Zimmerman, Bruce. Thicker Than Water. Copyright © 1991 by Bruce Zimmerman. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, First Edition. Print.
bibles.n7nz.org