User reviews

Went in with big expectations as a fan of Liu Cixin's Three Body Problem. Have not read Wandering Earth, so can't compare, but perhaps reading it would have made the movie easier to follow. Outside of Wu Jing, the main characters in general were hard to like, especially his son Liu Qi and adopted daughter, Duoduo, both acting like petulant children. Expected high levels of cheesiness, but the jokes fell flat and the emotional tear jerking scenes were milked dry. While you should go into a sci-fi with an open-mind, temporarily suspending reality, this had hole after hole and jumped all over the place. At one point, one of the special force team members suddenly fell on his face - he froze to death for no apparent reason. Kind of summed up the movie. While I am sure the novel is as unique as anything Liu Cixin has written, the movie is a lesser version of Armegeddon, lacking the fun, character building (I know, I am talking about a Michael Bay movie) and star power. Did enjoy seeing a Chinese perspective and wasn't overly nationalistic like Wu Jing's former Wolf Warrior. Living in Shanghai, was also fun seeing the city and the rest of the country highlighted as it fell beneath natural disasters, joining NYC, Paris, London and the rest of the major cities that regularly are destroyed for popcorn munching sake. China continues to head in the right direction when it comes to great movie making and hope it continues. If anything, this has me heading out tomorrow to buy Wandering Earth, the novel.

Having raked in over $600m at the box office, The Wandering Earth is yet another massive blockbuster from China. However, like so many enormous Chinese blockbusters in recent years, it's all style and no substance, with excessive emphasis on special effects and incoherent fantasy that really impedes any attempts to craft a more elegant or majestic space opera.

And that's where I want to start, because from the beginning of this movie, you'll likely be reminded of a number of other films that go about telling sci-fi stories in a rather different way. The Wandering Earth is based on a novel of its own, so it's not in any way a Chinese remake, but the premise and key ideas explored in the film, particularly in the opening act, are hugely reminiscent of both Christopher Nolan's Interstellar and Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Now, both Interstellar and 2001 are absolute masterpieces of modern sci-fi, because they tell a fantasy story with a stunning sense of grandeur and majesty that can't be achieved in any other genre. In that, while both movies have a plot and characters of their own, it's almost as if space itself is their main component, with astonishing visual effects playing into an eye-opening and almost spiritual depiction of the final frontier.

The Wandering Earth, on the other hand, takes a far more simplistic and unfortunately dull approach to telling a sci-fi story. It does have the special effects to dazzle (although I talk more about that in a moment), but it feels so much more like a formulaic space adventure movie, rather than the majestic space opera that it's so desperately trying to be.

Its opening sequence depicts the ever-intensifying threat of celestial destruction, and throughout, the film relates personal difficulties and tragedies in tandem with the danger of space travel and colonisation. And yet, while all of those ingredients make the film ripe for the sort of emotionally hard-hitting and elegant watch that is a great space opera, it's all overwhelmed by its more basic blockbuster tendencies.

In that, the film's quartet of young leads takes a little of the grandeur out of the story, bringing it closer to something reminiscent of the YA genre, while the special effects are often totally over the top, with an excessively brash and chaotic depiction of the dangers and threats present in space, something that really isn't necessary, as proved by better films such as Interstellar and Gravity.

On top of that, its near future setting, although only in the late 2050s, feels light years away from the present we know today. Unlike Interstellar, whose near future is almost identical to the present day, The Wandering Earth is full of fantasy and sci-fi gibberish about the Earth of the future that's both fairly incomprehensible and difficult to relate to, further taking away from your ability to emotionally engross yourself in the story and feel the real power of what this story has to offer.

And I say that because, despite not thinking much of the movie, there are moments where the film really tries hard to be something more majestic and elegant than just another space adventure. Its fantasy and excessive special effects often make it feel more like Jupiter Ascending than Interstellar, but there are a few moments of emotional intrigue and pathos that do indicate its intentions, and briefly provide an engrossing and impressive respite from an otherwise both chaotic and formulaic movie.

Overall, then, I wasn't particularly taken by The Wandering Earth. Its ambition is clear from the start, and with a premise that's reminiscent of real greats of modern sci-fi, it should have been an elegant, moving and majestic watch. However, with a generic plot that's far heavier on brash special effects, fantasy mumbo jumbo and chaotic action, it really misses the mark when delivering a sci-fi that's a little more special to the normal fare.

I finally had the chance to sit down and watch the 2019 Chinese movie "The Wandering Earth" (aka "Liu lang di qui") here in 2020. I had heard about the movie, of course, but just never gotten around to actively sitting down to watch it.

So was the wait worth it? Oh yeah. This movie was definitely an epic Chinese production, and the movie was very enjoyable. Sure, you need to fully forget everything about realism, science and probability. This was without a doubt a very entertaining and enjoyable sci-fi adventure, but there was not an ounce of realism in the movie. But hey, hence the purpose of being a movie meant for entertainment and not enlightenment of facts.

I was really surprised with the epic feel that there was to this movie. This easily outdid a lot of Hollywood produced movies. And I was really enjoying the CGI, the props, the sets, the costumes, etc. While the movie failed to have a single ounce of realism in it, it more than made up for that in terms of visuals and pure eye candy.

The storyline was fully and wholeheartedly unrealistic, but it was entertaining. "The Wandering Earth" is a very, very predictable movie, and you knew exactly what would happen a long time before it transpired on the screen. But this overly predictable formula really wasn't a hindrance to the movie.

"The Wandering Earth" also had a good ensemble of casted actors and actresses, whom portrayed their respective characters quite well. And that definitely also contributed a great deal to the overall enjoyment of the movie.

All in all, "The Wandering Earth" was an all-round pleasing movie, and I was more than entertained with it. I am rating it a seven out of ten stars.

The Wandering Earth is an overly ambitious, laughably implausible, thoroughly confusing, clumsily edited mess. The plot runs amok with too many hollow characters making stupid decisions without reason. Action sequences were so badly shot and edited it was hard to figure out what was going on. The CGI varied from passable to worse than a 90's video game. Acting was stilted and expressionless. Dialog was rambling and inefficient with an overuse of weird computer voices to explain what was going on. By the end I couldn't care less about the characters and fell sleep. The filmmaker's intention to build a sci-fi epic were noble but lacked the budget, talent and experience to pull it off. 3/10.

"If you drive unsafe your family will cry", this is a line from the movie, I bet the original Chinese text was far better then this translation, but that's what we have to deal with. In stead of doing a decent job the translation is terrible, so with this movie you got the choice, go with the terrible dubbed English language or go for the far more terrible subtitles. So it is possible I watched a masterpiece, but never know because of the translation.

For the movie, the cgi is not bad, not great, but good enough. The actors, well I couldn't care if they live or die. The action, well, remember "Armageddon", there all the action scenes were great, but made no sense at all so unrealistic were they, This is the same, totally unbelievable actions but you should not care one bit of that. About stealing from other movies, it seams this movie has bits of every disaster movie from the last decades in it. Plot holes are also to many to name, if you are sensitive for that you definitely should not watch. Bottom line, if you want a brainless flick with much action and cgi, then this movie is for you.

Moving earth like a space ship is so dumb! 1) An asteroid that hits the earth and kills all the dinosaurs, didn't budge the earth from it's orbit. 2) The moon creation even that suggests that 4.5b years ago an object the size of Mars collided with the earth to create the moon. Yet it didn't budge the earth from it's orbit around the Sun. 3) The Mass of the earth is 6,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 kg. the force required to move that object 1meter per second is Force = Mass * Acceleration. or 6 * 10^24 newtons. So to change the speed of the earth by a nearly useless 1m/s or 2.25 MPH, would require the energy of 142 million megatons of TNT. Over 10,000 times the total amount of all the worlds nuclear weapons. Or in other words if we detonated every single nuke in the world in the same place at the time that would be enough to budge the earth .000225 MPH or 14 inches per hour. 4) Even if there was an energy source that abundant to move the earth to Jupiter much less another star light years away, we would simply not need a star at all. We could just set the earth to a further orbit from the sun, and use all that propulsion energy to substitute for the sun. 5) Lets be ridiculously generous and say the earth could reach Jupiter in 1 year 365,000,000 miles away, that would very roughly equate to a speed of 41,000 mph (which is way faster than the 14" per hour all the nukes in the world could move the earth). To travel to our next nearest star (alpha centauri) is 25 trillion miles away, that would take 70,000 years, or if we used the 14" per hour speed it would take 17,580 billion earth years. 6) The Hiroshima nuclear blast was 20ktons of TNT. So imagine what 700,000 of those would do to the surface and atmosphere of the Earth. And that's to move 14" an hour.

Surprisingly entertaining big budget Chinese sci fi movie. Had me crying at times. Good cinematography and effects. If you like Roland Emmerich films, you'll like this.

1. Background settings have great imagination. Very romantic in some way. (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) 2. Visual effects is wonderful (and made by Chinese, not easy) (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) 3. Plot not good. The director didn't handle to tell the story well. Rhythm is weird. Plot is not mind-catching. (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) 4. Ideas are too narrow. The main roles take family relation more seriously than human survival. And they didn't respect rules. (⭐⭐⭐) 5. Emotional expressions not natural. Lines are awkward. Too much 'tear points' but got little touching. (⭐⭐⭐⭐)

I'm baffled by this film and the positive reviews. Despite the fact that it's packed with big set-piece moments, it's dull and hollow. The characters are cardboard cutouts and virtually every element is derivative of American blockbusters. It's Armageddon, Interstellar, Gravity, 2001, and 2012 all mashed up into a barely coherent pastiche.

There is only the thinnest veneer of characterization and it's incredibly cliche. There is a rebellious kid who misses his father, a wacky weird side-character with funny hair, a father who had to leave his son, an army guy bound to duty, a comedic genius computer guy. Except none of these characters have chemistry.

The premise is so absurd there is little point in explaining it.

I'm confused how something like this got green-lit because it isn't even good as propaganda. It is surprisingly devoid of culture. Sure, there are Chinese flags, and Chinese people everywhere, and they celebrate Chinese New Year, but it hardly 'sells' Chinese culture (fashion, music, art). In fact, it just waters down Chinese culture to make it internationally palatable.

Everything feels like it's from a checklist, as if they know they have to hit certain notes to imitate a masterpiece, but don't know how to string it together. The CGI effects aren't even good. It's just an assault on the eyes of how much stuff they can cram on the screen.

The sound design and sound mixing is also terrible. There is a lack of sound effects and music needed to add depth to the world. It sounds empty and cheap. The music itself is terribly derivative of an American blockbuster.

The high user review scores are disappointing because it sets the bar very low for Chinese blockbusters.

This is the equal to any US blockbuster in years and I believe that most of the negative reviews are simply an offshoot of the Chinese equivalent of whitewashing. The hero's and decision makers are all Chinese and this is simply growing pains of the Chinese movie making industry and not unlike all movies made in western countries made for decades before the awakening of the globalist world view that has plagued the US in the 21st century. This is an excellent movie and those that say it's not are looking for tiny nits to pick.

Though there are issues like the acting,the stunning visuals makes it worth checking out.The plot is no masterpiece,but it's good enough.Honestly I didn't expect this film would be so great,but it's definitely the best Chinese sci-fi ever.

My Chinese friends got me into watching this and expected it to be some mindblowing piece. We both left the movie theater wishing we didn't watch it. It was not all that bad, they have beautiful casts, great cinematography, but that was it. Their storyline was weak, doesn't make any sense at times. There was no character development, no climax moment, no big twist and turn. Often times it was predictable and the jokes werent that funny at all, maybe it was funny to other Chinese audience. Yeah ok great explosion, nice suit yadi yadi but i can barely finish the movie if it makes no sense at all. Don't waste your time, it was overhyped!

"As with so many other sci-fi films, we're left asking the question of whether a grand story and beautiful visual effects are sufficient to create a great movie. And as with too many, the answer is "not really"."

The movie is groundbreaking for China in that the special effects are impressive and that it shows they can do sci-fi in design. Sadly, aside from that, there's not much to like about the movie.

To put into context first, Wandering Earth cannot be compared to a Marvel or DC Comics movie nor to most sci-fi movies: they are completely different genres and are much less likely to involve human cooperation. At it's core Wandering Earth is a 'doomsday' or 'disaster' movie. It should be compared to movies like: The Day After Tomorrow; Armageddon; Deep Impact; Outbreak; Contagion; etc.

In that context, Wandering Earth has a very basic, standard plot. The characters are similar, except exaggerated and over the top. Together, aside from the usual interdepartment and/or international disagreements and eventual cooperation that can be found in such disaster movies, the plot and characters sum up to: "Young, handsome rebel who hates his dad (unreasonably) and acts selfishly in all but the final moments ends up a hero".

The acting is weak. Character motivations are vague and often elaborated on only at the moment of death or near death (eg. through flashbacks), so there is no bonding with the characters on the way there. The main character swings back and forth between wanting to sacrifice all humanity to selfishly save his own friends and family (which would be very temporary) and wanting to sacrifice other people's lives to save all humanity. There is zero chance of ever feeling any connection or sympathy with that character. Potentially moving/touching moments are ruined by the way-too-obvious comedic relief characters (eg. watch someone important die, then laugh because the guy with white hair did something silly). The 'action' arc is "intro - climax - climax - climax - climax - climax - climax - conclusion" to the point that the climax just feels like it's dragging on and on.

Worst of all: There is an amazing sci-fi premise that is pulled off spectactularly with the special effects, but it amounts to nothing. It is the backdrop for just another disaster movie.

If I had been told China would be making mid-budget sci-fi movies 5-10 years ago I would have laughed. If I had been told Netflix would have made a good movie a week ago, I would have doubted it. Propaganda level seems significantly lower than the new Star Wars. Writing is better too. No fancy camera angles, slightly poor CGI (I could swear there was a frame rate drop at one point in one of the more involved CGI scenes) but no over-arching political message and the plot is fairly solid. Due to (okay) dubbing I had to rewind some scenes to understand what exactly was going on as I took my eyes off the screen but all in all this was a great movie. I had expected some sort of Netflix/Chinese propaganda beast though I watched the full two hours intently.

"Woke" western directors might want to pay attention to this one. I can only fault small things. The plot kind of feels like someone hit fast forward but that is expected in a book to movie title.

I'm 12 minutes off the ending, so I can't spoil that for you, but everything leading up to it was great Sci-Fi. Hopefully the last 12 minutes and 44 seconds deliver on that too.

I'd give it a 9.5 out of 10 but it means closer to 10 than 9 so it gets a 10/10. Good movie, worth watching.

Note: For Mandarin-speaking viewers or those with a Chinese cultural background, this review does NOT pertain to you. From what I've seen, this movie will probably rank between 8 and 10 for you. You should see it.

Below is my review for other audiences ... maybe I missed things because of subtitling / translation issues, be forewarned ... it's rough.

I saw this movie in IMAX 3D; I was surprised to see it playing in that format given that it's a Chinese movie with subtitles. But as a sci-fi fan, I had to check it out!

The effects and overall story were pretty good. But what ends up on the screen is a bit of a mess. There's almost no character development and the characters didn't seem that likable. The storyline was poorly delivered as well. Most of the time, I was able to figure out what was happening only after it had happened. Maybe this was bad subtitling ... but even if it is, this is what to expect if you don't speak Mandarin.

The crazy thing is that the overall explanation of what's going on (the premise) is presented at the end ... which also made no sense. It would have made the film a lot more believable and interesting if they put it at the beginning. It's just another crazy thing about this movie.

And when I say "believable", I'm ignoring the gaping error in the story that the sun is inexplicably about to turn into a red giant. This won't happen for another 5 billion years.

I've seen asian-made sci-fi movies that are great. Despite the "big-budget" feel, this isn't one of them. But - I didn't dislike it either -- it's just "good", so maybe worth a watch if you're a sci-fi fan.

Other than that, it's nice to see that the Chinese film industry is ramping up on big-budget sci-fi. The special effects were really good. I hope it's a trend that will continue.

I wanted to like it, I really did. The cinematography was fantastic and the sci-fi element was fantastic to say the least. However, the emotions and character development were non existent. The characters were shallow and did not lend any type of connection to their plight. As always with Chinese movies, many scenes were so cliche and cringe worthy. I walked out of the cinema 3/4 of the way through. That's how horrible this movie was...

Being a fan of Liu Cixin (three body trilogy) I wanted to like this movie but I found it impossible to do so. Bad acting, bad script, bad jokes, confusing plot, people who make stupid decisions because they love their family more than humanity, incorrect science, annoying characters, trying to make you cry about ten times at the end when I don't care about anyone in their stupid family. I'm still going to read the book though because I don't think it can be this bad. It is encouraging to see China try big movies like this but still a long way to go.

I wanted to see some scifi with my love and we checked that movie. We watched it in Chinese with subtitles on Netflix.

Well, it is really entertaining, much better than we expected. The CGI was completely believable and the mix of cgi and decor was excellent.

The only problem with us were the Chinese names that we had problems to remember otherwise it it refreshing to see a movie where it is not only the Americans who save the world. Felt like a breath of fresh air.

Throw your physics out of the window for two hours and you will have a great time.

'The Wandering Earth' is the result of a unique idea masterfully executed. Written, directed and produced by Frant Gwo, his vision materialized into an awesome action adventure drama.

From the opening scene to the final scene, the film grips you and never lets go. There never really is a dull moment and the action and excitement never ceases. The visuals are incredible and the set designs impressive. The stunning score is a perfect accompaniment to this spectacular film. I enjoyed the characters, and was well acted by a reasonably young cast.

'The Wandering Earth' is gripping, action-packed and fast paced and contains (in my opinion) elements of 'Interstellar', '2001: A Space Odyssey', 'Armageddon', and a bit of 'Gravity'.

I would not file this under the sci-fi genre. It's a fantasy movie. Outrageous concept - even for sci-fi, predictable and boring plot (trying to fit every possible scenario seen a thousand times in other similar movies, hence the long duration), unlikable characters, mediocre CGI, cheesy music, bad editing (many action scenes are incomprehensible). It's one of those (many) cases where Asian cinema tries Hollywood in a really bad way resulting in a product so ridiculous even for Hollywood standards.

The film is easily accessible and emotionally resonant for general audiences, and Wu Jing is on his way of becoming one of the most popular movie stars in China like Bruce Lee or Jackie Chan. Nevertheless, in strict filmmaking terms, this Sci-Fi is far from perfect. The pace is almost constant, and could have been much improved if a narrative focus were chosen. The plot and character development fail as well to a large extent due to the lack of buildup and suspense. The space scenes look fake, compared with those in Gravity or Martian. Casting is also a problem in the sense that most of the young actors are amateurish. The film could have been a masterpiece should the director be a more professional one like Alfonso Cuaron or Ridley Scott.