I have not seen it yet. Apparently, it was a mega-blockbuster in China and Netflix got the streaming rights, but I've seen no promotion on my Netflix.

I've seen bizarrely opposite reviews. Rotten has 74% for Critics and 54% for Audience.
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_wandering_earth

Here's the overly long trailer.
[video=youtube;_lsOwtKNsAA]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lsOwtKNsAA[/youtube]

It looks like kickass gaming fodder which surprised me that we haven't had anybody promoting it on our forum.

Without spoilers, I'd love to hear thoughts from anyone who saw it!

Without spoilers, I enjoyed this very much! One interesting thing, is that that this movie makes clear how the Chinese culturally regard themselves concerning deep space exploration, and they very much want to be in charge of any real epic deep space exploration. This would totally make a great Traveller adventure, by the way.

It combines the overwrought emotions, massive overuse of CGI, and endless death-defying escapes of Hollywood blockbusters with the big ideas of Cixin Liu.

It's a stupefying trainwreck. It's probably worth watching, though.

Just watched Shanghai Fortress (SF) on Netflix. No, it's not really related to The Wandering Earth (TWE). But TWE was a huge hit in China, and there was talk it was the start of a dynasty of Chinese SF megablockbusters. But SF was another $50 million Chinese science fiction film based on a popular book with several major stars as leads, and it completely flopped (opening day tanked and then the opening weekend just got worse and worse, and 3.3/10 on the Chinese rating site Douban compared to TWE's 8.5 or 7.9 after a bit of a scandal). So the wags are saying if TWE was the start of the dynasty, then SF is the end.

While I don't completely agree with the 5 point differential, that's mostly because I don't think the TWE was that great. SF is still clearly inferior. More than anything, it feels like a B movie, just one with the budget for a lot of CGI and lot of extras to run around as soldiers. There's less of a hard science edge than in TWE, the science in SF feels more like tech-skinned magic and the power source is handwavium. When it comes to the visuals, the mothership isn't particularly interesting to look at, and the alien bots just bounce around a lot. The human drones, ships, command center, and cannon are kind of meh. Though there is a decent scene or two with the shield or its generators in the background, and the damage to Shangai is fairly spectacular. The military elements are also poor. There's a little strategy, but the tactical level is just an overwhelming mass of CGI and endless repetitive fights. There's a "romance" that apparently rubbed a lot of the Chinse audience the wrong way, which I don't really understand. It was just unrequited love between a young soldier and of one his mentors -- he gave her a flower, that seems to be the extent of their relationship. What's to be upset about? Though it is poorly told; most of the context that would have given it more weight crammed is into a very lengthy denouement. The ending's okay, there's some pathos. Overall, it's more forgettable than terrible.

They spoil nearly all the visuals, if you care:

[video=youtube;MVpOhwE25fg]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVpOhwE25fg[/youtube]

Bummer about Shanghai Fortress. It looked like China's Independence Day.

Anything interesting about the aliens?

No. Generic mothership, "annihilators" that are balls that unfold into bouncy generic and artificial-looking robots (CGI artificial not mechanical artificial), and we learn literally nothing about the alien culture or even what they look like. Their annihilators appear to be mechanical through and through, but is that because the aliens are robots, or are these just drones? Don't know. Nobody even asks the question.

Quote from: Pat;1105542No. Generic mothership, "annihilators" that are balls that unfold into bouncy generic and artificial-looking robots (CGI artificial not mechanical artificial), and we learn literally nothing about the alien culture or even what they look like. Their annihilators appear to be mechanical through and through, but is that because the aliens are robots, or are these just drones? Don't know. Nobody even asks the question.

This was definitely part of the problem with Shanghai Fortress. This movie seemed much more like a video game than serious SF, and the relationship was a distraction from the main story line, instead of complementing the main story line. The Aliens were unsubtle, and relied unimaginatively and exclusively on massive overwhelming attacks against the human population. Zero attempts were made to convert the Shanghai Fortress into a Client State of the Alien Empire even though it was made abundantly clear at the beginning of the movie that every other fortress on earth had been destroyed and the human race was facing annihilation. Zero attempts were made by the Aliens of compelling the remaining human population in subjugated territories to persuade the Chinese to surrender or accept a peace agreement.

Any civilization that gets to the stage where it can conduct Interstellar colonization is going to have a host of available options for being successful when it sends out the conquering fleet. This movie broke my suspension of disbelief very early on, and was never able to recover from that.