WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Moonfall, now in theaters.
Seeing as Roland Emmerich specializes in disaster movies, it wasn't a surprise Moonfall would have earthquakes, atmospheric decay, snowstorms, tidal waves and such. It was par the course for a director who created movies such as The Day After Tomorrow, 2012 and 10,000 BC.
Apart from being a pastiche of those, Moonfall also painted an apocalypse akin to another tentpole Emmerich oversaw in Independence Day. However, this wasn't the only cosmic end-of-days scenario the director drew from, as he stole a huge chunk of the finale from Michael Bay's Armageddon. Unfortunately, as he remixed both space flicks, he made the imitation even worse.
In Independence Day, Will Smith's Steven and Jeff Goldblum's David piloted an alien vessel into the Mothership, faking credentials and diving into a cavern to the control room. There, they tricked the alien overlords by uploading a virus, which caused the ship to explode while they raced out, crash landing on Earth and allowing humanity to defeat the other scouting vessels.
Moonfall had a similar beat of subterfuge, with Patrick Wilson's Harper, Halle Berry's Jo and John Bradley's K.C. cutting power to their lander and dropping into the heart of the moon. The visual style in which they explored the alien megastructure was similar to Independence Day, especially as they met an 'alien' overlord too. In this case, it was a friendly A.I. who helped make humanity eons before and who wanted to aid them in defeating the evil nanotech swarm bent on dropping the moon to Earth.
While Independence Day had no choice, as infiltrating was the only way to breach the Mothership's shield, Moonfall took a nonsensical route. The A.I. inside didn't need to depend on mankind; it could have just opened the core and let the swarm in, as it had ships inside with guns ready to fire. The plot forced the humans to enter so Harper could bond with the A.I. and become an alien-human hybrid, luring the swarm to follow his ship. He then mentally connected with the core's fleet and fired on the swarm, but the core's operator could have done this by itself with its home advantage.
In Armageddon, Bruce Willis' Harry duped Ben Affleck's A.J. when the time came to blow an asteroid up that was going to destroy Earth. A.J. drew the short straw, but Harry attacked him and threw him into the shuttle's airlock. It was quite emotional, as he wanted A.J. to marry his daughter, Grace, letting him know he did consider A.J. a son. Harry blew the rock up, thus crafting a very powerful ending about the sacrifices parents make.
Moonfall, however, botched K.C.'s switcharoo. He was the purest character in the film, breaking rules to let the world know the moon was crashing down. He stood in stark contrast to Harper, who didn't believe him and was willing to sleep while the planet died. Not to mention, Jo ignored Harper's testimony years before when he claimed the swarm existed after a spacewalk. She let his career and marriage fail, coming off totally reactive. Thus, seeing as both were NASA vets who made mistakes, them using a special bomb against the swarm would have been an apt redemption, giving their families back home a second chance.
Unfortunately, the sacrificial lamb was K.C., wh0 had to learn everything on the fly, as he was just a conspiracy theorist working in fast food. He ran into the rover and ejected the lander with the bomb because he wanted to be the hero. K.C. asked the vets to tell his mom, Elaine, and all the haters that he was a savior as he blew the swarm up, allowing Harper and Jo to fly out of the core. This didn't resonate at all, as it killed the one guy who found all the clues and inspired the older heads to take action. The fact that he left an elderly mother back home made it tough to digest as well because he earned a second chance more than the others. Sadly, K.C. being a genius who remembered how to detonate the bomb among astronauts who couldn't figure out the trigger felt like a weak excuse.
See how remixing Independence Day and Armageddon falls flat in Moonfall, now in theaters.
Source: Trendz OH
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