The Curator of Schlock #396 by Jeff Shuster

Moonfall

This movie is a disaster. I mean this is a disaster movie. 

I was waiting at a bowling alley after dark. I was disguised as the owner, waiting for a fentanyl delivery. I heard a knock at the back and opened it to see a pizza delivery man holding a large box. 

“One extra large with fennel sausage,” he said, smirking as he opened up the box to reveal bags of colorful pill. I was told that pushers make the pills look like candy, easier to get the attention of children. — To be continued.

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Tonight’s movie is 2022’s Moonfall from director Roland Emmerich. According to Webster’s dictionary, the definition of schlock is “of low quality or value.” With a budget of around 140 million, Moonfall can’t be schlock, right? I mean the movie features the moon leaving and entering the Earth’s orbit because it’s not really a moon, but a “megastructure.” Inside this megastructure is a dwarf star that gives the moon power and all those craters on the outside are kind of like the thin candy shell hiding the chocolatey Dyson sphere within.

The movie begins with astronauts Brian Harper (Patrick Wilson) and Jocinda Fowler (Halle Barry) up in space repairing a satellite when they get attacked by a bunch of nano robots. Another astronaut gets killed and Harper gets the blame even though he managed to save Jocinda by landing a severely damaged space shuttle to Earth.

Ten years go by.

NASA has fired him because he keeps claiming he was attacked by an alien force. Brian’s wife and son have left him. And he can’t pay the rent.

We’re then introduced to Dr. K.C. Houseman (John Bradley), a man obsessed with the moon and discovers it moving away from the Earth’s orbit. He tries to convince Brian with his research, but after getting rebuffed, K.C. posts his findings on the Internet. Meanwhile, back at NASA, the bigwigs finally learn that the moon is leaving Earth’s orbit. NASA sends a crew of astronauts to investigate, but the swarm of nano-robots makes quick work of NASA’s finest.

Panic ensues.

The head of NASA throws in the towel. He turns complete control of the agency over to Jocinda.

Naturally, she recruits Brian and K.C. The tides are shifting and sea water is submerging all the coastal cities. We need the moon back! They get an old space shuttle out of a museum and the three of them launch into space with it. On the way to the moon, they have a tussle with the nano-robot cloud, but smashing their smartphones makes the cloud go away. It seems the cloud only attacks people if there’s electronics present.

They do a deep dive into a crater in the moon, narrowly escaping the nano-robot cloud. It’s here that Brian talks to a computer hologram of his son and learns that our ancestors come from outer space.

I lost some brain cells watching this movie. 

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Jeff Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, episode 284, episode 441, episode 442, episode 443, episode 444, episode 450, episode 477, episode 491, episode 492, episode 493, episode 495, and episode 496) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.