Moonfall

  In director Roland Emmerich's new disasterpiece Moonfall, the moon comes so close to the earth that not only does it reach the stratosphere, it shears off a peak in the Rockies.

 Its gravity pulls off the tip of the Chrysler building and deposits it on the other side of the country (mostly intact, of course, so you can recognize it).

 Ladies and gentlemen, we have reached peak Emmerich; he's going to really struggle to top that.

 I'm struggling to find words to express just how dumb this movie is. Calling it an insult to your intelligence is an insult to insults to your intelligence.

 But it all comes to expectations in the end; It doesn't make sense to go watch the latest from one of the brains behind 2012 and Independence Day expecting anything but undiluted idiocy.

 I hadn't seen anything of his in more than a decade, but after watching Troll, which is pretty much a (very) slightly less dumb, Finnish version of a Roland Emmerich opus, I got curious what the man himself was up to. Spoilers: I didn't hate it!

 Things start out quietly enough: on a routine space shuttle mission, three astronauts run into an sentient inkblot of ferrofluid-like matter, which proceeds to attack them, blasting their electronics and leaving them stranded in the ionosphere. The astronauts are played by Halle Berry, Patrick Wilson, and an unknown black actor- guess one which one dies? In any case, Berry is left unconscious and Wilson heroically brings the shuttle back to earth only with manual controls.

 You'd think to a hero's welcome, but in the Emmerichverse organizations and institutions are evil and corrupt, there to make things harder for the heroic individuals who actually get shit done- so the NASA turns on him and makes him a scapegoat.

 Ten years or so later Brian (Wilson's character) is almost destitute and estranged from his wife and son, which sets up the overtly familiar (pun not intended) and deeply deeply shitty drama that will ensue. We're also introduced to KC, a conspiracy theorist (John Bradley) who, just like real-life conspiracy nuts, is a loveable, cuddly teddy bear of an Englishman (he even talks like a kid's show presenter).
 KC's pet project is Dyson Spheres and other superstructures, which seems like a weird and very wholesome subject for a conspiracy theorist these days, but there you go. He's been gathering data and has discovered that the moon is going off its orbit, setting it on a collision course with earth.

 (Trigger warning - besides all the enabling of conspiracy-mindset bullshit , which of course turns out to be 100% correct, there are a couple of instances of Elon Musk being mentioned in near-orgasmic tones; SpaceX has a small part in saving the earth.)

 The NASA has also noticed the moon's inconstancy, but they're trying to cover things up because that's what institutions are for, right? they quickly put together a mission to the moon to see what's up, and what's up is that the moon now has a huge hole. When probed, the black ferrofluid blob (which, by the way, is a very unimaginative shorthand for nanobots) comes out and kills everyone.

 At the thirty minute mark the movie finally kicks into gear when a giant wave hits LA. That's... actually pretty efficient for this sort of  thing! From there the movie starts splicing its raison d'etre (splosions and buildings breaking) into its boring exposition and drama, which is a definite improvement.
 Things end up with another space mission with our three intrepid protagonists going to the moon and into it. Because, you see it was actually hollow, a Dyson sphere all along! Complete with a captive white dwarf star to power it! KC was right! (Never mind that the smallest known white dwarf is roughly the size of the moon; that's actually one of this movie's lesser liberties with basic science and physics)

 Meanwhile in the B-story, Brian's son takes an overland trek amidst the moon-caused apocalypse as he escorts Halle Berry's character's son (ugh!) to get to an underground shelter in Colorado; incredibly stupid things keep happening all around them.

 You have to shut off your brain at one point, not just to enjoy this, but to survive it; plausibility was never, ever even a minor concern for Emmerich, nor was letting minor details like basic physics get in the way of whatever hare-brain scene he's conceived. This is, if I haven't made myself clear by now, a really fucking dumb movie. However, the mostly CGI mayhem can sometimes be beautiful, as shots of the moon flying close to the earth often are here, and when the protagonists finally get an explanation for the lunatic goings-on, it's an unexpectedly ambitious (if still pretty dumb) slice of sci-fi.

 I expected a piece of shit, in other words, and got one, but... it's a fun piece of shit. It helps that it wasn't as disaster-porny as it looked, and had some other elements to it. Aside from the first half hour and a couple of dead spots later the pacing runs at a clip, which doesn't do wonders for the storytelling, but since the movie is what it is, it's no loss; at least it keeps things moving.
Low expectations were met. Huzzah, bah humbug, etcetera!