This post has some spoilers for The Wandering Earth. For a spoiler-free experience, watch the movie first!
After seeing The Wandering Earth in theaters, I wasn't entirely surprised that Netflix picked up the international distribution rights. The Wandering Earth is an excellent science fiction story that offers a unique perspective that a Western audience rarely ever gets to see. Made in China, the film offers a collectivist portrayal of saving the world as opposed to the individualistic one often portrayed in Western media. Rather than a single hero (or team of heroes) trying to save the world, like in a Marvel film, this movie is about the team that faces the most adversity. Because this collectivist approach is so uncommon in Western media, I want to begin by exploring it before moving on to the science fiction itself.
While the film itself is about moving the Earth to Alpha Centauri by using engines, the film primarily follows two characters: Liu Peiqiang, an astronaut who effectively "steers" Earth, and his son Liu Qi, a troublemaker back on Earth. The characters are far apart from each other the entire movie, effectively following different plots, until the end when their stories converge. In both of their stories, albeit in Liu Peiqiang's this is more subtle, the characters are never acting alone. The inciting incident of the film is the cascading failure of all of the Earth engines, caused by increased gravity from Jupiter. Liu Qi's initial goal is to transport and energy core to the nearest engine to turn it back on. Along the way, he learns that almost all of the other engines have already been reactivated by other teams. When Liu Peiqiang believes that the AI in charge of the space station is deserting Earth, believing it can't be saved, he breaks free of his forced hibernation and attempts to take manual control of the station. While scaling the outside of the ship to reach the bridge, he notices that other astronauts had come to a similar conclusion, but were killed trying to stop the AI. In the film's climax, Lui Qi decides to use one of the engines to ignite Jupiter, launching Earth out of its gravitational pull. Liu Peiqiang is informed that this idea was already turned down, given its near-0% likelihood of success. When Lui Qi tries it anyways, his team isn't enough to successfully activate the engine. It isn't until Liu Peiqiang broadcasts a touching speech from his daughter requesting that the other teams come to help that they are finally able to succeed. The Wandering Earth's thesis remains quite clear: one person alone can't save the world, but everyone working together can.
Now I want to turn over to the science fiction side of things. Liu Cixin (sometimes published as Cixin Liu) is a brilliant science fiction author. This film was based on one of his short stories, although with the plot heavily altered. Unlike most science fiction authors, who are often writers and have their background in literature or sociology, Liu Cixin has an engineering background. This is a fact that clearly shows in The Wandering Earth, but he still isn't afraid to draw from existing works; he is heavily influenced by Arthur C. Clarke, and MOSS (the AI that runs the ship) is clearly inspired by HAL 9000. While I don't personally know the plausibility of moving the Earth using engines, Liu Cixin does and predicts exactly how it would have to work. He determines that engines around the equator would be important to stop the Earth from rotating and that the trip would take roughly 2500 years (most of which would be spent decelerating). One thing I certainly hadn't considered is that by moving the Earth away from the Sun, the Earth freezes over. He answers this by creating underground cities, and having maintenance crews come above ground every now and then to transport materials. 2500 years is a long time to go without sunlight. In retrospective, that would be like going from The Battle of Thermopylae to now, all underground, whole time needing to raise up generations just to work on the engines so the planet doesn't go off-course. With just a simple premise of "what if we tried to move the Earth", Liu Cixin was able to generate a society that has to overcome struggle for close to the length human civilization had existed.
But I suppose the true brilliance of the film is that it isn't exactly an impossible scenario. Provided climate change or nuclear winter don't take us out first, one day the Sun will make Earth inhospitable. Granted, this day is about 5 billion years into the future and by then who knows what kind of technology we'll have, but the question that still ought to be considered is: "what would we do if our home becomes jeopardized?" Earth has thus far been the only planet capable of developing complex life, and it serves as the home for our entire species. Thousands of years of human culture and landmarks would disappear if the planet were lost. If we had the means to save it, what cost would be too high to do so? Very philosophical questions, I know, but these are ideas that the movie seems to ask its audience to think about.
On that note, I'll conclude my review. To anyone who loves science fiction but hasn't seen it yet, please do! If you can't find a theater that shows it, fear not, it will be on Netflix after it leaves theaters. Don't let the fact that it's in Mandarin scare you off, the movie does come with subtitles (don't let that scare you off either). The CGI is absolutely beautiful, and it may be the only realism-based science fiction story coming out in 2019 — save Star Wars 9, since it did happen a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away *cue scrolling text*. As always, be sure to head over to my Twitter account for more technoculture and sci-fi nerding!
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