The Wandering Earth II
流浪地球2
China, 2023, colour, 2.35:1, 173 mins.
Director: Guo Fan 郭帆.
Rating: 5/10.
Over-long, untidily-scripted prequel to the 2019 sci-fi blockbuster starts well but then fails to engage.
STORY
Earth, 2044. Scientists discovered that the Sun was expanding at the same time as it was rapidly degenerating: in 100 years it would completely engulf the Earth and in 300 years the Solar System would cease to exist. As a result, a United Earth Government was set up to find a solution and the Moving Mountain Project 移山计划 was finally selected: to build 10,000 Earth Engines to propel the planet away from the Solar System on a 2,500-year migration to find a new home. But as the cost and consequences rose, conflicts broke out, especially in Libreville, Gabon, one of the chosen sites for the MMP. UEG forces were sent to quell resistance but the project’s feasibility came into question. In 2044, 10 months before the first test of the project, the UEG’s headquarters in the US are attacked, and US representative Mike (Andy Friend), who favours the Digital Life Project as an alternative solution, proposes abandoning the MMP. This is successfully opposed by China representative Zhou Zhezhi (Li Xuejian), who points out there is only a 13-month window in which to complete the MMP’s feasibility tests. At the UEG Joint Research Base in Libreville, 1,428 pilots from 33 countries arrive, among them Liu Peiqiang (Wu Jing) and healthcare specialist Han Duoduo (Wang Zhi) who travel up together in the 90,000-kilometre-high Space Elevator to the Ark International Space Station (still under construction) orbiting Earth. During training they fall for each other. But on 12 Mar, just as the first batch of trainees is to take off for the Moon, the Ark’s whole control system is hacked and the research base on the ground is attacked by drones. On the Space Elevator three terrorists (Yi Seong-min, Vladimir Ershov, Tony Nicholson) steal the identities of Han Duoduo, Liu Peiqiang and Herbert (Kawawa Kadichi) and try to take over the shuttle they’re in. Liu Peiqiang helps to turn the tide against the terrorists but the Ark crashes down onto the research base. Thousands die and the MMP is seriously compromised. With only a seven-month window left, Zhou Zhezhi still proposes pushing ahead with the MMP, though support for the DLP is growing and the US threatens to pull out of the MMP. Four months later, on the Moon at the UEG Joint Research Base, IT technician Tu Hengyu (Liu Dehua) is woken from enforced sleep when a power transformer is knocked out due to solar activity. While he is awake he contacts his young daughter Tu Yaya (Wang Ruoxi) on Earth, though in fact she is just a digital image (part of the DLP) with a life of two minutes, following her death in a car crash. A new version of the Intelligent Quantum Computer 550 series, 550C, arrives on the Moon and Tu Hengyu asks his superior, Ma Zhao (Ning Li), if he can upgrade Tu Yaya to a full-life model, but Ma Zhao refuses. When a solar storm destroys 550C, with only three days until the first test of the engines on the Moon, Tu Hengyu tells Ma Zhao he can get 550A to do the job if Ma Zhao agrees to his demands about Tu Yaya’s upgrade. The test is a success, proving that the Moon can be shifted from its orbit; and a similar test on Earth also succeeds. The world rejoices and in 2046 the MMP forges ahead, guided by 550C. On 22 Jun 2058 the MMP is renamed the Wandering Earth Project 流浪地球计划 and the DLP is officially halted. But then Zhou Zhezhi’s UEG assistant, Hao Xiaoxi (Zhu Yanmanzi), reveals that a Chinese laboratory has received an anonymous numerical message – “205807” – that could presage another terrorist attack, as in 2044. Running the Wandering Earth Project is the latest Intelligent Quantum Computer upgrade, 550W, supervised by Ma Zhao and Tu Hengyu. Among those interviewed by 550W for a position on the international space station Navigator is Liu Peiqiang, so that his sick wife Han Duoduo and son Liu Qi (Liu Jiayun) will be ensured a place in an underground city when the Earth’s rotation is halted and the planet starts its migration.
REVIEW
The Chinese, rather than Americans, again save the planet for a change in The Wandering Earth II 流浪地球2, a prequel to the 2019 sci-fi blockbuster that currently sits in the no. 5 spot of all-time top grossers in the Mainland with a very hunky RMB4.69 billion. Only the fourth full-length feature by Shandong-born director Guo Fan 郭帆, 42, who previously made the ambitious but failed fantasy Lee’s Adventure 李献计历险记 (2011) and the charming but unoriginal student romance My Old Classmate 同桌的妳 (2014), TWEII is a couple of notches down from the solid, if entertaining, original and suffers badly from the Prequel Curse, as well as from an untidy script, a way-over-long running time of almost three hours and a much colder, more dystopian feel. With some RMB3.76 billion after almost a month on release, it’s had to settle for second place behind CNY champ Full River Red 满江红 (RMB4.34 billion so far), a costume whodunit directed by Zhang Yimou 张艺谋 and starring wry comedian Shen Teng 沈腾. [Final tallies were RMB4.02 billion for TWEII and RMB4.54 billion for Full River.]
The best bit of TWEII is the first half-hour, a tour-de-force of spectacle and show-off VFX that’s a mini-movie of its own. After a recap of the background – to save Earth from being toasted by the Sun, a United Earth Government is planning to dislodge the planet from its orbit and migrate to another solar system – the story kicks off in 2044, 31 years before the first film, and sketches the problematic, not to say chaotic, birth of the entire enterprise, then called the Moving Mountain Project. Ten months before the first feasibility tests, terrorists attack a main base in Gabon, west Africa, after the control system is hacked into, destroying a massive Space Elevator which whisks shuttles on wires up to a space station 19,000 kilometres above Earth. Inbetween the breathlessly told narrative and eye-pounding VFX, there’s a charming romance between hero Liu Peiqiang (Wu Jing 吴京) and a Shanghai healthcare specialist, Han Duoduo (Wang Zhi 王智), who we already know ends up as his wife. Liu Peiqiang battles the terrorists on board a shuttle – in some traditional but okay fights – but the whole incident seriously imperils the MMP. Meanwhile, the US wants it dropped and a rival plan to save mankind, the Digital Life Project, in which the human race is digitised, given priority.
This opening half-hour is a very condensed but reasonably effective scramble, as long as the viewer doesn’t look for things like backgrounded characters or narrative coherency and just surrenders to the visual spectacle and frantic editing. But the film never really recovers after that. At the 45-minute mark, Hong Kong megastar Liu Dehua 刘德华 [Andy Lau] is introduced as an IT technician at a lunar base but his character is not especially likeable and his story not especially involving. As in the first film, the narrative fragments into competing strands, with Liu’s geeky character taking over from the more heroic Wu’s for long stretches and the finale strung between the two of them, thousands of miles apart on different planets.
Unfortunately, the Prequel Curse doesn’t make any of this any better. Just as the audience already knows the project will succeed, it also knows that Wu’s character survives, which drains most of the suspense from his selfless, “suicidal” mission at the end. Liu’s strand in the finale suffers badly from narrative incoherency – not helped by the whiplash editing that robs many of the elaborate VFX of any visual oomph – and begs the question whether the whole movie wouldn’t have been better released in two, more leisurely-paced parts of around two hours each, with characters given more depth and the plotting made more coherent.
This time, instead of the previous eight, there are only four writers credited, including Guo himself and three other returnees. Unlike the first film, which had no American characters on screen, TWEII directly plays up China-US rivalry in the United Earth Government, with China always winning. The film also bends over backwards to include short scenes from as many world capitals as it can, to give the film a genuinely international flavour – though the scenes are so token that they end up as just another distraction from the already fractured narrative. Less developed is the underlying theme of automation and AI taking over human life, as well as the rather vague Digital Life Project, which is seemingly preferred by the US and raises suspicions that the country is behind the anti-Moving Mountain Project terrorists. In fact, as a final “twist” reveals, it’s not – though those who remember the twist in the first film will have already solved the mystery in this one.
With Wu’s character sidelined for much of the film, and not driving the action, and Liu cast in a downbeat, techie role, most of the acting colour comes from the supporting cast, led by a wonderfully phlegmatic performance by veteran Li Xuejian 李雪健 as China’s rep at the UEG. Inner Mongolia-born actress Zhu Yanmanzi 朱颜曼滋 (so good in superior high-school movie Puppy Love 小情书, 2017) is okay as his younger assistant and Wang Zhi 王智, aka Wang Zixuan 王紫瑄 (the school beauty in Goodbye Mr. Loser 夏洛特烦恼, 2015), is charming in the early scenes as the girl who captures the heart of our hero Liu Peiqiang. Nobody else make much of an impression among the big sets, big tech and big VFX.
Most of the key technicians are also returnees from the first film, including d.p. Liu Yin 刘寅, veteran Hong Kong editor Zhang Jiahui 张嘉辉 [Cheung Ka-fai], art director Gao Ang 郜昂, and composer A Kun 阿鲲, whose music is simply action wallpaper. As in the original, several of them also pop up in tiny roles. The film is dedicated to Hong Kong veteran Wu Mengda 吴孟达 [Ng Man-tat], who played Liu Peiqiang’s father in the original and who died, aged 69, of liver cancer on 27 Feb 2021. A third film is currently set for release in 2027.
CREDITS
Presented by CFC Pictures (CN), G! Film (Beijing) Studio (CN), Beijing Dengfeng International Culture Communication (CN), China Film (CN). Produced by G! Film (Beijing) Studio (CN), China Film (CN).
Script: Yang Zhixue, Gong Ge’er, Guo Fan, Ye Ruchang. Script supervisor: Wang Hongwei. Original short story: Liu Cixin. Photography: Liu Yin. Editing: Zhang Jiahui [Cheung Ka-fai]. Music: A Kun. Production design: Zhao Haoqiang. Art direction: Gao Ang. Sound: Wang Danrong, Zhu Yanfeng, Wu Zhaoming. Action: Yan Hua. Visual effects: Wei Ming, Ding Yanlai, Xu Jian.
Cast: Wu Jing (Liu Peiqiang), Liu Dehua [Andy Lau] (Tu Hengyu), Li Xuejian (Zhou Zhezhi, China representative at UEG), Sha Yi (Zhang Peng), Ning Li (Ma Zhao), Wang Zhi (Han Duoduo), Zhu Yanmanzi (Hao Xiaoxi), Andy Friend (Mike, US representative at UEG), Wang Ruoxi (Tu Yaya, Tu Hengyu’s daughter), Tong Liya (Tu Hengyu’s wife), Vatili Makarychev (Andrei Glazunov), Zhang Yi (Wang Zhijian), Kawawa Kadichi (Herbert), Yi Seong-min [Clara Lee], Vladimir Ershov, Tony Nicholson (Space Elevator terrorists), Hu Xianxu (young diplomat), Huo Qing (Chinese commander), Liu Yin (Zhou Zhezhi’s bodyguard), Guo Yiqian (wedding MC), Wu Enxuan (TV presenter), Wang Hongwei (Wang Hongwei), Kong Dashan (Chinese astronaut), Xu Jian (Xu Jian), Liu Jiayun (young Liu Qi), Ding Yanlai, Gao Ang, Yan Hua (engineers), Li Ren (Korean astronaut), Ang Cin (Thai astronaut), Wang Lei (Wang Sanshi), Wang Yitong (assistant scientist), Yang Hongtao (father in underground Chinese city), Zhao Yesuo (simultaneous translator), Li Luqi (young man), Huang Jiyuan (diving specialist), Zheng Chuyi (electrical specialist), Wu Jingyi (mother in underground Chinese city), Fu Jiahao (little fighter in departure hall), Valentin Volobuyev (Makarov), Li Yiran (Liu Peiqiang’s mother), Zhou Qiang (Liu Peiqiang’s father), Zhu Chaoyi (pilot), He Jinhelong (boy in underground Chinese city), He Jinhejin (girl in underground Chinese city).
Release: China, 22 Jan 2023.