Moonfall: Tropalicious good fun.

As the result of our family friendly football tipping competition, I got to pick the movie we'd all go and see. The thing was, even if it was the worst movie ever made, the family agreed to come.

I'm not sure I got the best end of the bargain, as I paid for the tickets. Hey, I thought this was your treat? Nah, they said, you picked the movie, you pay.

At the time the only movie showing I thought looked even remotely interesting was Moonfall. Hey, I said, it'll be great I said. What's not to love about a sprawling science fiction epic with disaster movie overtones.

We bellied up to the ticket office, and I bought the tickets, no way I was buying the popcorn, you guys are on your own, it'd cost more than the movie! We found our seats and we settled in to watch the movie.

 

There was the usual half an hour of ads and teasers for other films "coming soon," none of which I thought were that interesting and instantly forgot them.

 

The movie started to roll with the instantly recognisable audio from the launch of Apollo 11. Now, I am old enough to have a memory of watching the moon landing on our old family black and white TV. I was 7. It was one of those moments in life that fires the imagination, not just a sputter little ember, but a huge conflagration of imagination, and possibilities. Here was a man, in a white suit, jumping down onto the surface of somewhere no one else had ever been.

 

I was lucky enough to have met Sir Edmund Hillary at Auckland airport when I was a lad. My father climbed with him or so the family legend went. They were obviously friendly and seemed to know each other reasonably well, based on their conversation, so I have no reason to doubt that the legend had some truth.

 

The achievement of Hillary and Tensing Norgay seemed equal to me. Doing something that no one had ever done.

 

Apologies for those who haven't seen the movie, and I want to know why not? The following has spoilers. That's the nature of this kind of thing. You gotta refer to the material, OK. Sheesh.

 

As my son's crunched on popcorn, the moon slowly appeared out of the earths striking  blue atmosphere. A waxing crescent, looming as a subtle presence in the background as the camera tilts right side up and astronauts on the good ole Space Shuttle heave into view, doing a repair on some random satellite, and incongruously Toto are singing about Africa in the background. I guess if you are going to listen to anything in space, why not Toto. That gives room for a whole other series of debates, I'm sure.

 

After a moment of inexplicable radio interference, enter stage left, a very strange, dark, fractal space anomaly that's not there to pick up pizza. Based on how brutally it barges through I figure it needs to go to the bathroom. But that is a whole other area.

 

The poor old space shuttle has a few moments of existential crisis but gets itself under control with some judicial human help, and apart from Marcus, who seems to have floated off into gravity assisted oblivion, we might be OK. Except, for the long shot of the moon, that pans in, and shows the gasping audience our fractal anomaly burrowing down into a crater.

 

Now, the problem here, or perhaps the fulcrum for the fun that follows, is the start of a mixing of sci-fi tropes that, seriously, don't really go together, but at the same time, in the disturbed genius hands of the writers, actually does. 

 

What follows is a series of vignettes of human dysfunctionality that is somehow masterfully stitched together against the reality of a moon that has shifted from its orbit. The traditional disaster movie scenario kicks in, and the impending doom of the earth begins to drive the motivations of the characters. 

 

In true disaster movie fashion, the roads become clogged with people who want to get out of the cities that are going to explode as fragments of the moon rain down in flaming judgment. I am never sure how any of these people figure that getting out of a city is going to save their lives? They end up toast on some gridlocked highway, screaming at the person in front of them, and using their car horn as if it will someone make the situation better.

 

Of course, our heroes, intrepid or otherwise, must work against ever worsening odds, with ever deepening improbability to engineer a finale that sits well with the overall “Oh, come on,” factor of the film.

 

What we end up with is rollicking good fun, even if there's a whole bunch of scrambled tropes on the highway toast.

 

I copped flack after the end credits rolled, and my family started to analyse the enjoyable nonsense of what I thought was a fun film. Ah well, you can’t have everything.