There's No Space Force to Stop a Planetary Disaster in 'Moonfall.' How Will the Earth Survive?

"Moonfall," the latest movie from disaster picture director Roland Emmerich, has so many questions for the audience. Is our planetary defense system ready if the moon crashes into Earth? Should we listen to NASA scientists or the Pentagon when devising our outer-space defense strategy?

There's no Space Force in "Moonfall," and an efficiently run, space-oriented military branch might have helped the washed-up astronaut (Brian Harper, played by Patrick Wilson), the interplanetary conspiracy theorist (K.C. Houseman, played by John Bradley) and the put-upon NASA director (Jocinda Fowler, played by Halle Berry) who are left to clean up the mess when the moon diverts from its orbit and heads toward a messy collision with Earth.

Emmerich, who most recently made the excellent World War II movie "Midway," is best-known for epic disaster and action pictures like "Independence Day," "White House Down," "2012" and "The Day After Tomorrow." "Moonfall" seems like it's going to be a straight-up "keep the heavenly spheres from knocking heads" action movie for most of its running time, but it turns into something infinitely weirder in its last half-hour.

Related: Director Roland Emmerich Shares the Secrets Behind His WWII Epic 'Midway'

Emmerich has pioneered significant advances in cost-effective CGI technology over the past few years, and almost the entire epic adventure was shot on a soundstage in Montreal. The special effects are outstanding, and the action is usually edited together in a way that makes more sense than you'll get from the average Marvel movie fight scene.

Wilson and Berry play everything with a straight face. Their characters previously flew on the same space shuttle crew before astronaut Harper gets blamed for a space disaster and is shamed out of NASA. Fowler gets promoted when she isn't able to back up his story because she was knocked out from the disaster at the time. Was Harper a bad astronaut, or was there something more sinister going on?

The great Donald Sutherland briefly shows up as a crusty old NASA scientist who assures everyone that, yes, there are secrets and that the world's not ready to handle the truth.

"Moonfall" is loud, outrageous and carefully designed to appeal to audiences all over the world. The Chinese-Canadian actress Wenwen Yu plays the nanny to Fowler's young son and gets to kick some ass as moon debris rains down on Harper's boy, Sonny (Charlie Plummer), as the planet edges up to the brink of extinction.

Here you've got a self-contained two-hour entertainment that's not making obscure references to stories from other movies, nor is it setting anyone up for a possible future sequel. You do get rocket ships and lasers and heroes ignoring orders from superiors who have no idea what danger we're all really facing. "Moonfall" is a blast.

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