Ben Kenigsburg

<h1>“The Wandering Earth,” directed by Frant Gwo, arrived with stratospheric anticipation. Described as China’s first space blockbuster, it is already a hit in its home country and, on a more limited scale, in the United States, where it opened earlier this month. It certainly proves that the Chinese film industry can hold its own at the multiplex: It is just as awash in murky computer imagery, stupefying exposition and manipulative sentimentality as the average Hollywood tentpole.</h1>

Although the film is based on a story by Liu Cixin, it draws on a barely digested stew of planetary-cataclysm movies, with the eco-catastrophe and invasion films of Roland Emmerich serving as the most obvious spiritual guides. (Even a Chinese New Year setting correlates to the July 4 timing of Emmerich’s “Independence Day.”)

In this case, the disaster — the first one, anyway — is that the sun is going to engulf the planet, so the multilingual United Earth Government has concocted a plan to send Earth out of the solar system using 10,000 propulsive engines, with Jupiter’s gravity providing the final oomph. But a slightly incorrect trajectory could cause a collision and end civilization, a crisis that is well underway. (Humans live in underground cities, having survived by lottery, and Earth’s surface is frozen.)

Those affected include all of humanity, but in particular a brash young man (Qu Chuxiao) raised by his grandfather (Ng Man-tat) after his father (Wu Jing) left to help navigate from an international space station controlled by a heartless HAL-esque computer. As the calamities — earthquakes, rescues, communication failures and a last-minute celestial chemistry experiment — compound, the only shock of the new is that it’s the same as the old.

Not rated. In Mandarin, English, Russian, French, Japanese and Korean, with English subtitles.

This article originally appeared in <a id="97f4dbb9-bc72-47fb-a9e7-832af5054d16" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/17/movies/the-wandering-earth-review.html">The New York Times</a>.

'The Wandering Earth' review: Planetary disaster goes global

Although the film is based on a story by Liu Cixin, it draws on a barely digested stew of planetary-cataclysm movies, with the eco-catastrophe and invasion films of Roland Emmerich serving as the most obvious spiritual guides.

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Ben Kenigsburg

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'The Wandering Earth' review: Planetary disaster goes global