In the future, the expanding Sun starts turning into a Red Giant, threatening to engulf Earth in 300 years, and then the entire rest of the Solar System. In order to save Earth, humanity unites and builds giant thrusters which start moving the Earth out of the Solar System. Liu Qi is one of the surviving 3.5 billion people living in underground cities, still bitter at his astronaut father Li Peiqiang who abandoned him as a kid in order to help coordinate Earth's evacuation from its nearby orbiting space station. Qi and his adoptive sister DuoDuo secretly leave to see the Earth's surface, now frozen while far away from the Sun, but their truck malfunctions on the trip. While passing by Jupiter, it was predicted that its gravity will catapult the Earth away, but it actually starts pulling it towards it. Earth's collision with Jupiter is prevented, though, thanks to Peiqiang's sacrifice: he flies the space station into Jupiter's atmosphere, causing an explosion which propels Earth outside of its orbit. The Earth then continues its journey towards Alpha Centauri.
A rare example of a Chinese science-fiction film, based on Liu Cixin's acclaimed eponymous novel, "The Wandering Earth" became one of the highest grossing films in Chinese cinemas during its premiere, yet leaves a rather mixed impression. Its sole concept is incredible and monumental: scientists create thrusters which enable a colossal migration of Earth outside of the Solar System towards the Alpha Centauri. While the '62 disaster film "Gorath" also had a similar idea of thrusters "moving" the Earth away from its orbit, it was done only a little bit, whereas here it involves a complete "evacuation" of Earth away from the Solar System. The problem is that the story shows only one small episode from this space journey—Earth passing by Jupiter—but completely ignores all the rest steps and perspectives, thereby not exploiting all the potentials of the imaginative concept. The story starts in medias res, with the frozen Earth already travelling, while the prologue just gives a short summary of how this all started, thereby narrowing its narrative. For instance, what happened when the Moon was left behind? What happened to all the animals? Have some of the animals been placed in underground cities to support the human population? Is life on surface possible around volcanoes which still generate heat? What happened when Earth passed by Mars? Or what will happen when the Earth travels 2,500 years to Alpha Centauri? All these elements were ignored, when the concept offered for a much more versatile storyline.
Another detriment is that all the characters are very bland and featureless, acting only as insects trying to frantically ensure its biological survival. Sadly, the majority of its running time is spent only on Liu Qi and his crew trying to fix a broken truck stranded on the frozen surface or on his father Peiqiang trying to fix a problem from his space station, yet watching this for two hours gets exhausting quickly, especially since the director's style is grey, lifeless and immotile. The image of a giant Jupiter seen through the clouds of a snow storm in the sky is impressive, and one wishes the movie had more of such moments. The themes of obedience, self-sacrifice and resilience of life have a few plus points, as well. The finale tends to become too melodramatic and syrupy for its own good, unable to somehow steer away from it, until the bizarre abrupt ending. Instead of showing a bigger picture of psychological and philosophical aspects of people faced with such a total disaster, as it was done in such a simple and effective way as in the animated series "Queen Millennia", "The Wandering Earth" wastes too much time on lessons of obedience or fixing technical stuff, yet still has several attractions, including very good visual effects and set designs.
Grade:++
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