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Plot

The sun's transformation into a red giant leads all of the world's nations to band together to complete a project that will save the planet and the human species. Wandering Earth is the name given to the project, which entails the construction of ten thousand nuclear fusion engines capable of stopping the Earth's rotation around the sun and propelling it out of the solar system. Because the tsunamis created by the disruption of the rotation hit the still-inhabited coasts, the maneuver succeeds at a cost of billions of human lives.
The Earth manages to break free from its orbit and begin its journey, but the planet is enveloped in frost as a result of its separation from the Sun, and the surviving population seeks refuge in hundreds of specially designed underground cities.
The Earth is planned to accelerate further in the vicinity of Jupiter, taking advantage of the massive planet's gravitational slingshot. However, something goes wrong, and severe earthquakes occur on Earth as a result of a gravitational peak, destroying underground cities and thrust engines.
Due to a lack of thrust from the engines, the Earth is subjected to even more Jovian attraction, and instead of orbiting around the gas giant to benefit from its gravity, it is doomed to collide with it.
Several maintenance teams go out on the freezing surface to try to restart the engines all across the world, in the hopes of providing the necessary thrust to escape Jupiter's gravity.
Despite the reactivations, the push appears to be insufficient, since the Earth has approached the Roche limit and is dangerously near proximity, and Jupiter has already begun sucking the Earth's atmosphere. When it appears that all hope is lost, one of the Chinese teams tries to ignite the "atmosphere channel" that has been built between Earth and Jupiter using the fusion engine and, generating a shock wave capable of propelling the Earth out of Jovian gravity.

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Review

• Too blockbuster...: A blockbuster is a high-budget film that intends to be extremely successful and flood the market in order to recoup production costs as quickly as possible. As a result, large sums of money are invested in the hopes of achieving significant profits. This confidence in investing, on the other hand, is not based on wishful thinking, but rather on thorough research.
  To maximize box office, trailers must explicitly persuade consumers to visit cinemas by setting clear expectations for them. In this way, a target audience is selected because not everyone enjoys science fiction in this situation. That's when the blockbuster mechanism kicks in, and that's where The Wondering Earth oversteps its bounds.
  Frant Gwo presents archetypes from a variety of genres, rejecting the idea of a one-size-fits-all target audience and instead of conducting a trawl that allows him to have a highly broad audience in the theater. There are escape moments reminiscent of Total Recall and disasters reminiscent of The Day After Tomorrow, as well as intimate scenes reminiscent of Gravity or relating to the father-son relationship. There is, in short, something for everyone.
  Economically, the film was able to establish itself in the sci-fi genre in a particularly unfriendly environment, such as China, which has yet to accept even Star Wars. This picture, on the other hand, has taken off because it is a hybrid of genres rather than just sci-fi. Although including so many diverse cues isn't always a terrible idea, it becomes problematic when they don't converge. They're all little stand-alone realities that serve only to pervert the film, robbing it of its actual essence.

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• Good Picture but bad screenplay: The picture is practically immaculate in terms of packaging, with a lot of money spent on costumes, sets, and other props (actor Wu Jing, who plays the father, even supported the production with his own money when the budget on hand was almost gone). The actual effects on the set are generally great, with some drops and unevenness in the first portion (the CGI in some parts on the ice surface is not at all realistic), and the spectacle is undeniably present.
  Although the film manages to reconnect some of the narrative threads and create moments of pathos in the third act, revealing an attempt to make something more epic and ambitious, that would not be limited to making yet another sci-fi action movie, the final result is partly undermined by two-dimensional characters and excesses of implausibility in the action scenes.
  There are up to six credited screenwriters, albeit there could have been a few less because the pool of characters in the field is limited to stereotypes (the heroic but absent father, the rebellious son, the sister to protect, the self-sacrificing friend, etc.) Moreover, some of the conversations we hear are truly awful at points, with clumsy attempts to create some funny moments that may have played better with Chinese audiences.

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Conclusion

This is a film that caught my attention because of its scientific subject matter, which I find to be really fascinating. But apart from this, it was a disappointment.
The Wandering Earth isn't a particularly fantastic blockbuster, and it's even worse as a film. Despite this, the film's ambition is admirable, as it attempted to bypass the very strong territorial limits that divide Eastern and Western filmmaking. As a result, this is an important first product that could lead to future open marketplaces. The objective is that a product with such an Oriental intent but such a Western execution will act as a battering ram for Mandarin and Japanese films in Europe. Although the project was not particularly successful, it nonetheless represents China's important endeavor at reconciliation. The danger is that the two diverse cinematographies may become overly contaminated, losing their individual characteristics. "One day the ice will melt," we may all hope.

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Rating

My personal vote is:

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5/10

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