I'm a sucker for big, operatic sci-fi shit. The sillier the better, really - maybe it’s a sign of the times. The Wandering Earth aspires to be big, operatic sci-fi shit, and it’s definitely big and sci-fi. As China’s first space blockbuster, it’s broken records in its home country, and it’s managed to score an IMAX 3D release in North America - or at least here in Montréal. But while it’s decidedly not silly, it doesn’t entirely achieve its more serious goals, either.

The Wandering Earth’s core idea is certainly novel and exciting. In a nutshell: the sun is expanding, much earlier than expected, and Earth will be swallowed up if nothing’s done about it. What to do, then, but unite the world’s population to build ten thousand enormous “Earth Engines” to propel Earth itself away from the Sun, on a 2500-year journey towards Alpha Centauri. Humanity will hide in underground cities beneath the engines, continuously mining fuel for them, while a space station will travel ahead of the Earth, monitoring for dangers and keeping everything under control.

While a few practicalities are addressed - the halt of the Earth’s spin, for example, causes tsunamis that wipe out half the population - none of this makes a lick of sense. The criticism criminals at CinemaSins would have a field day. But ultimately, it doesn’t matter - the setup is over and done with so quickly, there’s no time to get too worked up. As far as big sci-fi ideas go, it’s a compelling one, full of desperation and hope, and it conjures up powerful imagery of our little blue marble floating through space on a hundred-generation mission.

Unfortunately for humanity, Starship Earth doesn’t even get out of the solar system before catastrophic issues arise. Jupiter’s gravity well begins to pull Earth in, the gravitational stress causing earthquakes, shutting down thousands of Earth Engines, and sucking away the atmosphere (just go with it), and it’s this issue that takes up the bulk of The Wandering Earth’s running time. Can the Engines be reignited? How will the Earth escape? And will the people fixing the problem survive?

It’s in the characters, predictably, that The Wandering Earth begins to fall apart. The story nominally follows young-adult Liu Qi and his adopted tsunami-survivor sister Han Duoduo on Earth, and Qi’s astronaut father Liu Peiqiang in space. The relationships between the core characters are clear enough, and there are even a few effective moments between them, but as the film progresses, it introduces character after character after character, attempting to give nearly all of them big emotional moments they haven't earned. That just doesn’t work in a story as concept- and plot-driven as this one, and the story gets confused and choppy as a result. 

The other character to consider is that of the human race itself. Coming from state-owned monopoly China Film Group Corporation, the movie acts as a demonstration of cooperation and trust, with the worlds’ nations coming together in multiple instances. One such scene - a few people can’t push a thing, but a hundred people can - is about as crystal-clear a metaphor as you can get. Right-wingers will decry this as communism - and I mean, that’s what it is - but it’s communism in its most basic, idealised form. There’s a hint at subversion in MOSS, the HAL-like AI that controls the space station, acts on behalf of the United Earth Government, and makes a heel turn partway through, but when all the dust clears, it’s the message of unity that prevails.

What about the sci-fi shit? The Wandering Earth certainly has its share of unique imagery to share with you. A frozen Shanghai, Jupiter siphoning off Earth’s atmosphere, and the mighty Earth Engines themselves are impressive sights, for sure, but despite tonnes of CGI imagery and sci-fi production design, this movie leans more on grandiose stakes than on cool sci-fi shit. Though its 2001: A Space Odyssey influences are strongly visible, in practice it occupies an uncomfortable spot between that film’s ambition and something like Geostorm. It makes absolutely zero sense at times, especially in the frantic and bonkers third act, and it doesn’t really ever surpass the initial “wow” moment of seeing Earth being driven like a goddamn spaceship.

The Wandering Earth is based on a Hugo-winning novella by Liu Cixin, and one can almost see the novella watching the movie. Its core conceit would definitely work better on paper, where its world and future history could be explored in minute detail and sweeping rhetoric. Perhaps that’s why the film’s best moments are the ones that connect not so much to individual characters, but to the planet as a whole. Any time the movie paints sweeping strokes, it’s terrific. The finer details? Not so much.

The idea behind this movie is immense and powerful, as with any story about a desperate, insane plan to save the planet through science and engineering (including the real ones currently under development). Its highs are extremely high, and given our current climate crisis, somewhat immediate, but its lows are dull and/or bewildering. Perhaps it’s one of those movies that would work better both in shorter or longer forms. We’ll see - given its success, it’ll probably get a sequel. That, I suspect - generations into the long dark journey, away from immediate danger but in the middle of an untested societal structure - is where the real compelling drama of the scenario would unfold.