Moonfall

 When I saw the first trailer back in 2022 of what seemed a disaster movie, I wanted to see it.

When I saw the second one, and it involved aliens... not so much anymore.

Because the premesis of the Moon being knocked out of orbit, and the images of it scrapping against earth looked awesome on the trailer for sure.  But heck, in the end I decided to watch it anyways.  So let's sit down for 2 hours of mixed feelings on what to expect...

It all begins when three astronauts are on a sattelite repair mission back in 2011, as they are attacked by an alien swarm, killing one of them before burrowing into the surface of the moon.  Ten years later, a conspiracy theorist, KC Houseman, believes the moon is actually a megastructure, and when he secretly accesses a research telescope, he discovers that the moon is veering away from it's orbit.  He tries to share this with Brian, at the time NASA also discovers the phenomena.

A global panic breaks out when the news goes viral on social media, and NASA sends a manned vessel to see what is happening.  But the same swarm attacks it, killing all astronauts and dropping the probe in a shaft that opens on the moon.  Natural disasters start occuring as the moon comes closer and closer to Earth, and Jo meets an old employee of NASA who tells her NASA covered things up as far back as Apollo 11 and 12, and they knew something was on the moon.

They want to bring an EMP to the moon, being forced to bring the retired Endeavour out of the museum, launching together with Brian and KC as a tsunami destroys the base they launched from.  They find out the moon is indeed a Dyson Sphere with a white dwarf at the center, and Brian comes into contact with the moon's AI.  It reveals to him that the moon is an old Interstellar Ark, which carried their ancestors who where running from the swarm, an awakened, malevolent AI system.

They manage to lure the AI away as Earth suffers more and more dramatic events, and KC sacrifices himself to make sure they are destroyed as the others return to Earth.  The moon's systems are restored, returning it to it's normal orbit, but now shed of it's rocky exterior.  KC is reconstructed in the system's AI environment, and is told things must now get started...

So yeah, beuh I guess.  This looked way cooler as I said in the beginning in it's first trailer, but soon I got a feel this was another attempt to do the second Independance Day movie "right", yet fails in this horribly.  Some special effects where nice, the tension of the Earth closing was fine, and it was a good movie up to and about when Endeavour launched.  After that, it quickly became a mess with goldike AI consciousnesses, morale lessons, and a total lack of doom lurking for a disaster / sci-fi movie.  You even just knew that even when KC died, he would return in some form of the other, so thick was the plotarmour of the main characters.

So nope, this was a huge let down for me.