Moonfall: an ancient-aliens disaster movie

Moonfall is a 2022 disaster film from Roland Emmerich, the director who has spent thirty years knocking down landmarks, and this time the landmark is the Moon. The premise is the best thing about it: the Moon is knocked out of orbit, and it turns out to be a hollow machine built by an ancient civilisation. It is an expensive B-movie, and once it stops pretending otherwise it becomes a lot of fun.

The idea behind it

Emmerich has said the film began with a book called Who Built the Moon?, which argues that our satellite is too neatly arranged to be natural. The film takes that idea literally. The Moon is a megastructure, a shell around a small star, built long ago to make the Earth and seed life on it. It is being pulled apart by a rogue machine its makers lost control of, and the only people who can do anything about it are a disgraced astronaut, a NASA deputy director and a conspiracy theorist.

That last character is the film’s real subject. K.C. Houseman is a man who believes something ridiculous, is proved right, and is not rewarded for it. The film is not clever enough to make much of that, but it is a more interesting engine than the usual scientist against politician setup, and John Bradley plays it with real feeling.

It is also, unmistakably, a Roland Emmerich film, which means the disaster set pieces are staged with real craft and the human story is held together with tape. You are here for the water, the quakes and the reveal, and the film knows it.

The story, spoiler-light

In 2011 a shuttle crew, Brian Harper, Jo Fowler and Alan Marcus, is attacked by something they cannot identify. Alan dies, Jo is knocked out, and the thing buries itself in the Moon. Brian brings the ship home, tells the truth about what happened, and is fired for it.

Ten years later, the Moon’s orbit begins to fail. K.C. spots it first, on a telescope he has no business using, and the film turns into a countdown. Jo, now near the top of NASA, leads an investigation, and the first crew sent to the surface does not come back. As the Moon descends, the Earth is hit by tides, quakes and a collapsing atmosphere, and the film cuts between the mission in orbit and a family trying to reach shelter on the ground.

Then the film does the thing it has been saving. Brian, Jo and K.C. reach the Moon, and it is not what anyone thought. I am not going to describe the inside of it beyond saying that the second half is a very different and much better film than the first. It is also, by any measure, nonsense. That is not a criticism of the experience, only of the physics.

What makes it science fiction

The megastructure is a real science fiction idea, the same one Arthur C. Clarke and Iain M. Banks played with, and the film handles the reveal with a straight face that mostly works. An ancient ark that made the Earth, a rogue artificial intelligence, a star in a shell: these are good ingredients, and the film is at its best when it stops explaining them.

It is not hard science fiction and makes no attempt to be. The physics is decorative. The astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson said the film breaks more laws of physics per minute than any science fiction film he has seen, which is a fair description and, for a certain kind of viewer, part of the appeal.

Where it sits in the genre is next to the other ancient-astronaut films, and a long way from the careful ones. It is a disaster movie first and a science fiction film second, and it is happiest when the Moon is doing something impossible to a coastline.

Who should watch it, and who should skip it

• Watch it if you enjoy Emmerich’s disaster films and want the biggest version of one.
• Watch it if the hollow Moon idea appeals. The reveal is the reason to sit through the first half.
• Watch it if you like a film that commits to its own silliness without apology.
• Skip it if you want coherent science. It has none, and it is not trying.
• Skip it if the first forty minutes drag for you. They are the weakest part of the film.
• Skip it if you need the characters to be well written. They are not.

Where to watch it

Moonfall is streaming on Amazon Prime Video, and it is available to buy or rent from the usual digital stores. Availability varies by country, so check your local catalogue with the link below. If you can watch it in 4K, do. A film whose whole point is scale is worth the bigger picture.

Watch Moonfall on Prime Video.

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The verdict

Moonfall is not a good film. It is about a hundred and fifty million dollars spent on a wonderful bad idea, and that is exactly what makes it worth watching. The first half is a slog of exposition and grief, the characters are sketched in a line each, and the science is beyond saving. Then the Moon opens, and for an hour the film becomes genuinely enjoyable: big, strange and completely sincere about a premise no serious film would touch.

Watch it as a late-night B-movie with a blockbuster budget. Do not watch it expecting Interstellar. If you can meet it halfway, it rewards you with one of the strangest big-budget final acts in years.

Frequently asked questions

Is Moonfall based on a book?

No. It is an original screenplay by Roland Emmerich, Harald Kloser and Spenser Cohen. Emmerich has said the hollow Moon idea came from the non-fiction book Who Built the Moon? by Christopher Knight and Alan Butler.

Is the science accurate?

No. The astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson has called it the worst offender for physics violations he has seen in a science fiction film. Treat that as part of the fun rather than a reason to worry.

How long is it, and where can I watch it?

Two hours and ten minutes. It is streaming on Amazon Prime Video and available to buy or rent on the usual digital stores.

Is there a sequel?

No. The film was a box-office disappointment, grossing about sixty-seven million dollars against a budget of about a hundred and fifty million, so there is no franchise here.