Picture: "The Wandering Earth" is adapted from Liu Cixin's science fiction novel

There is a joke circulating on the Internet. Someone went to a friend's house to watch a movie. The friend asked if "Armageddon" would be good? The answer is good. My friend asked me which one to play? It turns out that there are many science fiction movies with the theme of "end of the world"...from climate change, alien invasion to the impact of foreign celestial bodies, there are all kinds of them, but the most thorough one is the one in the mainland movie "The Wandering Earth", where the sun is dying and swallowing up the planets around it, including the earth. How to deal with such an end of the world? \行光

The plot of the movie "The Wandering Earth" is very simple. Scientists discover that the sun is about to run out of hydrogen and turn into a red giant to swallow the earth, so they formulate a survival plan. Relevant parties are building 10,000 "planetary engines" on the earth, with the purpose of accelerating the earth to five thousandths. It is expected that it will take 2,500 years to move the earth into the orbit of another star 4.2 light-years away. When passing Jupiter, due to the failure of a large number of engines, the earth was in danger of colliding with Jupiter... The main line of the story is how father and son Liu Peiqiang and Liu Qi saved the earth from the crisis of destruction in space and on the ground.

Father and son save the world

The idea of ​​moving the earth was not pioneered in "The Wandering Earth". It was already proposed in the Japanese film "Gorath" more than 50 years ago, but moving a distance of several light years should have been proposed by Liu Cixin, the original author of the film.

What’s interesting is that although it is a “science” fantasy film, “The Wandering Earth” doesn’t pay much attention to the most critical “planetary engine”. We only know that it “burns stones”. On what principle does it generate such a huge amount of energy? The movie doesn't add much explanation, and it's troublesome to even create a fictional scientific theory name.

What the author is more concerned about is that if the earth is going to run away, what will happen to the moon? This issue is not mentioned at all in the movie (it is mentioned in the novel). In short, the stage for the entire home migration is for Liu Peiqiang and Liu Qi to stage a live drama of saving mankind.

This large father-son scene is full of clichéd details, such as the son’s incomprehension towards his father, his curiosity about the outside world (the ground), and the recurring plot of self-sacrifice to save the earth. These have all appeared in a large number of science fiction disaster films. As for the problems that may be faced by the great migration of mankind, such as what changes will happen to social organizations, in addition to drawing lots to move to underground cities (staying on the surface is a dead end), the human society presented in the movie is close to many dark science fiction movies and even the real world. They are all in a high-tech world, with some low-class marginalized people (that's why Liu Qi and his sister Duoduo can sneak up to the surface). In fact, there is not much ink on how the entire human society faces such extreme situations. The entire film focuses on the father and son. They are one day at a time, but they are the grassroots executors and small figures of the survival plan. The scientists and coalition government officials who coordinated the entire operation were completely absent. What best represents authority is the artificial intelligence system on the escort space station.

Deviation from the original work

Liu Peiqiang, played by Wu Jing, is an astronaut assigned to escort the space station. This space station will undoubtedly remind people of the spaceship in the movie fifty-one years ago, as well as the hibernating astronauts. In order to complete the mission, they did not hesitate to sacrifice human computers. Even the place of the accident was Jupiter... It looked like "2001: A Space Odyssey" was staged in the sky. Odyssey), the plot on the ground is somewhat similar to Armageddon. As for the visual stunts, the frozen earth may be the most novel, but space walks and the like are familiar. In fact, the original novel provides many ideas for visual spectacles, such as the wonders of the earth after it stops spinning, the extreme weather caused by a large number of engines, etc. It would be spectacular if it could be photographed, but it is a pity that the movie did not put more effort into this aspect.

Liu Cixin personally served as the producer this time, adapting his short story of the same name to the screen. In addition, "Crazy Alien" released at the same time was also derived from his novel, and it became an instant hit. "The Wandering Earth" looks closer to the original work than "Crazy Alien", but it is also very different from the spirit of the original work. The perspective of the original novel is the entire human society. It describes how humans will react in the face of disasters. Whether it is better to move the entire earth or build a spaceship to escape is the focus of debate. After the earth is on the road, some people will suspect that the solar helium explosion is a hoax to establish totalitarianism, thereby triggering a war. On the contrary, low-level errors such as a technical error and crashing into Jupiter did not occur. The original author did not have a named screenwriter, and the current movie version seems to have borrowed the framework of "The Wandering Earth" to tell a story about a simple little person fighting against a catastrophe. However, if it is adapted along the lines of the original work, it will become a profound work full of reflections on human nature, society, and ethics, and it may be difficult to achieve the current box office results.