The wandering land is rich, beautiful and clumsy

We live in a fascinating time of rapid change for the model of the hit movie. American producers, eager to get their $ 200 million movies on the lucrative Chinese market, are increasingly looking for Chinese production partners, making filming in Chinese venues and adding characters and characters. Plots favorable to China for American films, including additional scenes reserved for Chinese haircuts. of movies. But simultaneously, China and other countries are moving towards the blockbuster model, creating home movies that do not require the participation of US partners.

And just as American films are trying to spill over into foreign markets, foreign blockbusters are coming to America. The wandering earth, described as China's first big-budget science-fiction thriller, has been quietly screened on AMC theaters in North America this weekend, and shows a new facet of Chinese cinema: a futuristic show-driven approach rather than on China's traditional grand historical epics. At the same time, The wandering earth It sounds like a return to some familiar times of American cinema. Although the distribution, setting and tone of the film are all Chinese, long-time science-fiction fans will see a lot of screens that will remind them of other movies, for better or for worse.

The film, based on a short story Three-body problem The author Cixin Liu exposes a crisis of unprecedented magnitude: the sun has become unstable and, in a hundred years, it will expand to consume the Earth. In the 300, the entire solar system will be gone. Earth's governments come together and unite to face the problem and come up with a new solution: they're throwing the planet with 10,000 gigantic jets and blowing it out of its orbit for a century-old journey to a new one country. 4.2 light years one way. The idea is to use Jupiter's gravitation well to save time, but a dysfunctional Earth Engine system leaves the planet caught in the gravity of Jupiter and gradually driven to destruction. A group of frantic workers must struggle to reactivate the jets and correct the course of the Earth.

The action takes place in two arenas simultaneously. On the icy surface of Earth, the self-proclaimed genius Liu Qi (Qu Chuxiao) and his adopted sister, Han Duoduo (Zhao Jinmai), embark on rescue efforts after their escape. Han is simply curious to see the surface of the planet – most of humanity now lives in overcrowded underground cities, and the surface is reserved for workers – but Liu Qi has a deeper grudge against his father, Astronaut Liu Peiqiang (longtime movie star Wu Martial Arts) Jing) and his grandfather (Ng Man-tat, that the Western public could recognize Stephen Chow Shaolin football). When Liu Qi was a child, his father moved to a newly built international space station designed to pbad the Earth as a guide and pioneer. Nowadays, Liu Qi feels that his father has abandoned him and that he wants to go out alone.

Meanwhile, on the space station, Liu Peiqiang is ironically one day at the end of his 17 years of service and his return to Earth and his family when the crisis erupted. The artificial intelligence of the station, MOSS, wants to put his staff in hibernation to save energy, but Liu Peiqiang realizes that the computer has a secret agenda, and he and a Russian cosmonaut have decided to challenge him .

The entire spatial plot may seem strangely familiar to the American public, who has an emotional touchstone when it comes to a quiet computer in the space that informs a desperate astronaut that He can not obey his orders, even when human lives are at stake, because he has his own orders. MOSS even looks like the HAL 9000's 2001: The Space OdysseyIt is represented in the form of red light on a chained panel, like a single red eye that does not blink and judge. But much of Liu Peiqiang's space adventure also takes place as a sequence of 2013 Oscar winner Alfonso Cuarón Gravity, with dizzying sequences of astronauts trying to navigate through clouds of debris and finding handshakes on a station in treacherous motion as it swept the space.

Meanwhile, half of the mission led by Earthside looks like nothing of the silly thriller of 2003 The core, about a team trying to make their way to the center of the Earth to redefine the core of the planet. Liu Qi and Han discover a few distinctive allies along the way, including the Chinese-Australian Tim (viral video star Mike Sui), but most of the time, the characters are drawn as bland and broad as in any other movie. American action, and a fair. many of them are killed during the trip without having ever developed enough personality for the public to feel the loss.

Just about anything The wandering earth can claim – vibrant action scenes without substance, a marked tendency to sticky sentimentality, an insinuating insistent score that demands an emotional response from the public at every moment – are known defects of the blockbusters of the past. But where the film really stands out, it's a great show. Director Frant Gwo gives the film an astonishing majesty, especially in the mobile Earth scenes wandering in the cosmos, wrapped in tiny blue jets leaving behind a strange spatial trail. His attention to detail is wonderful: in scenes where characters stand on the surface of the Earth and contemplate the malicious beauty of Jupiter, the swirling colors of the Great Red Spot are clearly visible in the reflections of their helmets.

As familiar as the plot is, this level of attention is not limited to functional special effects, but also to beauty. The wandering earth out. Not all CGI sequences are aesthetically flawless – footage like a vehicle chase through a frozen Shanghai sometimes looks brittle and false. But everything about Jupiter, the Earth seen from space and the sub-parcel of the space station is visually stunning. It's often a superbly rendered film, with intimidating visits to space that will look great on IMAX screens.

And while constant attempts to flee the destructive power of the changing weather have their own echoes in previous films, from Two days later at 2012, Gwo mainly keeps the action tight and propulsive. The wandering earth is often out of breath, although the action is sometimes a bit confusing when editing. Sometimes, especially on the surface scenes where everyone wears a combination of equal pressure, it's easy to lose sight of which character is where. It is often easy to feel that Gwo cares more about the collective rescue project than any individual character – a value that will work better for the Chinese audience than American viewers, who are looking for a unique hero.

But it is the quieter moments of the film that make up the film's strength, where Gwo takes the time to contemplate the gravity of Jupiter and gradually deepens its influence on the Earth's atmosphere. Or, Liu Qi looks, amazed, the gas giant narrating his house. In these icy scenes, the film recalls an older tradition of slower science fiction, clbadics on the epic scale as 1951. When worlds collide or 1956 Forbidden planet. The interludes are short, but they are a welcome respite from hunting and destruction.

The wandering earth sometimes becomes quite clumsy, with jokes about Tim's legacy, or Liu Qi's inexperienced driving and overwhelming arrogance, or with high-speed jokes around an incredibly long technical manual that no one has time to digest in the middle of an emergency. Sometimes the humor is even a little dry, as when MOSS reacts to Liu Peiqiang's repeated rebellions with a pbadive-aggressive message: "Will all violators immediately stop contact with the Earth?" But Gwo also finds the time to take a majesty and consider the problem on a global scale, rather than just focus on the few desperate observers who linked the potential destruction of the Earth to their own personal problems.

A bit like the Russian space blockbuster Salyut-7 was a fascinating look at the cultural differences between American films and their Russian counterparts, The wandering earth feels like a telling illustration of the similarities and differences between Chinese and American values. Gwo's film is full of images and moments that will be familiar to the American public, as well as concerns about the importance of family ties and the nobility of sacrifice. But it also puts the emphasis on global collective action, on the need for international cooperation and on the group's will in relation to the will of the individual.

None of these things will be intrinsically foreign to American viewers, who can live The wandering earth as a mix of the best sci-fi movies of the past, with less familiar faces in the lead roles. But as China embarks on the action blockbuster activity, it will be fascinating to see how China brings its own distinctive voice and talent to the global marketplace. The wandering earth it's like the kind of projects American filmmakers are making – accessible, emotionally focused and at least somewhat generic – to please any audience. But there is enough specific personality to indicate a future of more nationally influenced blockbusters. Once each country conducts potential international crossings, the strongest attraction can come from the most distinctive personal visions, with the most to say about the cultures from which they originate.