Hacker Cinema
The Wandering Earth
流浪地球
2019 · Film · 126 min
Directed by Frant Guo Fan
When the Sun begins to expand in such a way that it will inevitably engulf and destroy the Earth in a hundred years, united mankind finds a way to avoid extinction by propelling the planet out of the Solar System using gigantic engines, moving it to a new home located four light years away, an epic journey that will last thousands of years.
9 positive8 negative1 mixed6 neutralfrom 24 commenters
Where to watch
No streaming data for this title.
27 comments on Hacker News
> The Wandering Earth
That's a movie you watch while drinking, take a shot every time you see something absurd
It can be summed up as "Ken Meets Jesus", "Ken Goes to Space", "Ken is a bumbling moron", "Ken's first friend". "Ken's White Savior moment"
This appears to be the norm for US based scifi now. Glad I'm watching movies like The Wandering Earth and Alienoid instead.
It had a good premise. But it also fell apart immediately. Like, they only sent 3 people, 2 whom died on this UBER CRITICAL SAVE THE PLANET idea?
And Ryan Gosling's character is a fucking moron. You're supposed to be a molecular biologist, and you're basically a reddit-gag line?
Edit: lol -4 , like seriously, its a pretty bad show. I listed movies I compare it to. But no I get shit like "You must be fun at parties." Personal attacks, sigh.
Adrian Tchaikovsky is really good at these alien ecosystems kind of thing (his Children of * range being quite good). This was a terrific short story. One thing I am curious about is whether there is a different kind of science fiction out there. The driving thread through all of modern English sci-fi is "we shouldn't go out there and do anything; we are the bad that ruins a delicate thing". That's a cool story but somewhat overly tropey at this point I think. This short story, the Avatar series, they have this ecological moralizing. AT is creative enough that the novel ideas (single species life-cycle planet) carry the tale even though the moral thread is the same as the Avatar movie: corporations destroy ecosystems they don't understand in the resource pursuit.
I enjoy the "what if we're the baddies" just as much as anyone else. But are there big stories with these exciting concepts where we aren't the baddies in the Anglosphere?
A thing I enjoy about other cultures is seeing what is unusually different about them. In the Three Body Problem, spoilers to follow for the series, humanity aren't The Bad Guys With Agency. We aren't even The Big Bad or The Big Good. We're sort of just other participants in this universe. The dual vector foil is employed by someone else, the guys who want space back from the pocket dimension to reboot the universe are just someone else, everything is someone else. We are bit part players in this play.
This goes on even to a few movies. The Wandering Earth movie (somewhat different from the short story) has this part at the end (obvious spoilers to follow) where the heroes accomplish the task and reboot their Earth Engine after conquering all odds - only for the camera to zoom out and show numerous other teams also having done the same. This wasn't the only struggle won. Cool alternative tale where it isn't so much One Team Saves The World or One Team Ruins The World.
Wandering Earth
Flavors of Youth
House of Flying Daggers
Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon
Quite a lot more if you include Hong Kong, but a lot of those films were developed under British rule.
and it isn't more ridiculous than the wandering earth movie today. at least rocks hurling through space do exist.
that it and many other shows were so much more unrealistic a decade after star trek is really the weird thing. like for example jason of space command with james doohan. it's absolutely cringe
The only movie I've ever seen that's worse than Battlefield Earth is Wandering Earth. Evidence, of course, than any movie whose title ends with "Earth" is bound to be hot garbage.
There kind of is already: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wandering_Earth
The premise is that humans turned the Earth into a planet-scale space vessel to escape the sun's expansion and rehome into a different solar system. Basically involved de-orbiting the Earth and coming up with a way to fling it out of the solar system whatnot.
The sci-fi parts are quite interesting, though I'd recommend the book instead of the movie (which is really a mediocre Chinese take on the Hollywood blockbuster...)
> Also who wants to live in a planet in perpetual darkness?
I'd guess in that case people would be living underground in artificially lit environments...
This idea has already been explored by sci-fi. One instance that comes to mind is Wandering Earth where the premise is that people turned the Earth into a planet scale space vessel to escape the sun's expansion and "rehome" the Earth. I'd suggest reading the book rather than watching the movie based on it though.
I think people expect movies to make sense. If a character dies in the third scene and is alive in the fourth without any explanation, it's bad story telling. If rain falls up instead of down for no reason, that's also jarring. If a man is shipwrecked on an uninhabited island and uses a table saw to build himself a shelter, with no explanation of where the table saw came from or where he plugged it in, that's similarly problematic.
Stories that rely on magic or nonexistent technology to tell a story are fine, as long as the rules governing the magic or technology are applied consistently. Stuff that's just blatantly wrong or contradictory I find distracting. Some people aren't bothered by that, and anything science-fictiony is generally operating far enough outside the realm of ordinary experience that most people won't notice incongruities.
An interesting case is the movie The Wandering Earth, which I watched recently. A plot point relies on unexplained "gravity fluctuations" while attempting a gravity slingshot causing catastrophic failure of a bunch of important machines. This is nonsense, and made it hard for me to take the movie seriously. Later, though, I realized there's a (probably unintentional) sensible interpretation. The machines failed for an unrelated reason, but the world government can't bring themselves to say that they screwed up so they make up a story that doesn't make sense and everyone knows is a lie, but no one is willing to say so because they're afraid to or want to be "good citizens". This could be interpreted as a commentary on modern China (which is where the movie was made), while retaining plausible deniability.
I haven't read Cixin Liu's short story that The Wandering Earth is based on; I don't know if the gravity fluctuations are present in the original or are given a plausible explanation.
The stories that are told maybe more individualistic but that is the nature of the story. However the backdrop usually implies a lot of pulling together e.g. You dont get a space habitat built as one person, or even as one nation.
Also, was your introduction to wandering earth the movie? If so I suggest reading the trilogy.
When I think about sci-fi and people pulling together for an earth-scale thing I immediately think about The Wandering Earth by Liu Cixin. Culturally interesting that its a chinese movie whereas in my mind a lot of western sci-fi is more individualistic.
This movie might interest you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wandering_Earth
"In the year 2061, after countless wildfires, volcano eruptions, changes of global temperatures, sea level drops, species extinctions, vanishing cities and protests, the aging Sun is about to turn into a red giant and threaten to engulf the Earth's orbit within 100 years, forcing the nations of the world to put aside their own politics and to consolidate into the United Earth Government to initiate a project to migrate the earth out of the Solar System to the Alpha Centauri system 4.2 light-years away, thus preserving further human civilization, known as the Wandering Earth project."
What people find "believable" or "realistic" will vary.
Within the genre of Science Fiction there is a sub-genre of Hard Science Fiction in which it's considered more important that it could actually work. Fire Upon The Deep probably wouldn't generally be considered at all Hard because it has Faster-than-Light travel, which is one of the things you generally would rule out of Hard SF because of how conservation rules in Physics work, if you can do FtL then you can do time travel (because space and time being the same kind of thing), and then what's your story?
"The Martian" a novel subsequently made into a movie is pretty realistic, turns out the setup (a storm on Mars separates Mark from the rest of the crew) is the least realistic part of that entire story.
If that's a bit too realistic, some of Liu Cixin's shorts are pretty wild while remaining down to earth about what's practical. "The Wandering Earth" for example.
Greg Egan is very Hard, but you may find you think Greg's technically possible stuff seems harder to believe than faster-than-light travel which isn't possible at all. The Clockwork Rocket couldn't happen here, but it's set in a universe with a different dimensional symmetry, the Amalgam stuff is set in this universe, but with a society far more advanced than ours.
But then if it turns out "realistic"/ "believable" counts like Star Wars style laser blasters and stuff then I dunno, lots of things, maybe you'd like Ann Leckie's Imperial Radch stuff, (or indeed Iain M Banks' Culture novels) which aren't Hard at all.
I put off reading The Three Body Problem because I wanted to make sure I was good and ready to be amazed.
I've read Cixin Liu's short stories and thoroughly enjoyed them. He comes up with some amazing ideas. I even really liked the movie based on Wandering Earth, despite how it converted the story to more action.
I barely made it through 3BP and I don't have much excitement for the sequels. The story just did not grip me at all.
The Wandering Earth was one of the worst movies I have ever seen. Poor writing, no plot, bad science, melodramatic acting, and propagandistic messages throughout.
I have been waiting for the 3 body problem film. Last I checked it was delayed, with just the trailer released.
Will check out the wandering earth. Thanks.
The entire series is amazing. In addition, he has a collection of short stories 'The Wandering Earth'. If you want to see a movie loosely based upon the ideas of one of those shorts stories, look up the movie 'The Wandering Earth' on Netflix.
Just to give some background, I watched that movie not realizing what it was based off of, just knowing it was a chinese sci-fi. And I remember being amazed at how big the ideas were and thinking China must have a culture of exceptional sci-fi writers. Afterwards I did some research and realized who it was.
Cixin Liu is the author and he's so good at big ideas. I can't recommend his stuff enough.
edit:
link
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=the+wandering+earth+cixin+liu
There is a Chinese science fiction movie that is about this (although instead of slightly shifting the earth’s orbit, they make earth a spaceship itself) called The Wandering Earth. I believe it is on Netflix. The subtitles for the theatrical release were not the best I’ve ever seen but it was a fun movie.
If you haven't done it, check out wandering earth on netflix, it's based off of a short story by him.
I didn't know that going in and about halfway through I remember thinking China must have a lot of amazing Chinese sci-fi writers because the ideas in the movie reminded me of the vastness of Liu Cixin. Then afterwards I look up more info and find out it's based off of a short story of his.
Of course it is, lol. Great movie.
China has been pushing that propaganda for years. See the movie "Transformers: Age of Extinction", and also the Chinese made "The Wandering Earth", in which Chinese people speak mandarin to white people, and those white people understand just fine.
Honestly English being THE international language is certainly a reflection of the power of English speaking nations. It's no wonder China fancy having that.
About The Wandering Earth, I didn't watch the film except the trailer, but many years ago one of my classmate in school read the book, so I still vaguely remember the story.
In my memory, it's an epic, big, huge and vast story, and Cool. But it's just that, cool and empty. The story itself I think is targeting high schoolers, so the storyline does not run very deep and logical. And it's very hard to build an inspiring story on such shallow background.
I'm expecting this movie at the same level with something like The Avengers: A fine movie, but in the end, nothing new. No new thinking, no enlightenment, you'll probably learn nothing from it if you're already a Scifi fan. Good for time killing, not a good for sink yourself in.
However, Scifi in China is really a dead desert, the level of success Liu has reached as a Chinese scifi author could inspire other authors to create better stories in the future. Maybe himself could write some better stories when he's world view got deeper[0].
[0] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/06/24/liu-cixins-war-of-the-worlds
The recent renaissance in Chinese (and Chinese-American) Science Fiction has been incredible, and as the article mentions, much of this work is a tool of "subtle dissent". I've been surprised as to how much Mainland authors have been "getting away" with. An excellent example is Hao Jingfang's "Folding Beijing", which is a wonderful critique of contemporary (Chinese) society. Ken Liu's translation is freely available here: https://uncannymagazine.com/article/folding-beijing-2/
Translating monumental works like The Wandering Earth or even the full trilogy of the Three-Body Problem to the screen is already a tremendously challenging undertaking. Adding on top of that institutional problems within the Chinese film industry, the desire to cash in and popularize these works with spectacular but superficial treatments (e.g. "The Wandering Earth" movie), and the heightened level of censorship that movies must undergo, and I don't have much hope for film adaptations of these books.
The best Chinese/Chinese-American production I've seen of late is the "Good Hunting" episode of "Love, Death & Robots" on Netflix, based on the short story of the same name by Ken Liu. Although the story is in part anti-colonial, I seriously doubt the story would have survived intact and be as well made if it were made in the Mainland. ("Good Hunting": http://strangehorizons.com/fund_drives/2012/special-issue-hunting1-f.shtml)
The Wandering Earth is China’s _The Core_ but not as fun. Maybe similar to that movie where they restart the Sun with a fission bomb :)
The Wandering Earth is a terrible film. If my wife wasn’t Chinese and really wanted to see it through I would have stopped it 30 minutes into it and that is something I’ve only done a few times ever.
The Three-Body Problem Is a pretty good book at times and could translate well with a big budget. Looking forward to seeing it.
It's a bummer this is happening in a major way internationally too. Wandering Earth was maybe the worst movie I've seen in 10 years, yet China is falling over itself saying it's the best "Sci-Fi" ever made. Once Asia only churns out Michael Bay garbage, it'll all be over.
"Wandering earth" is wildly popular right now. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7605074/
Time to watch some Chinese Sci-Fi instead, with Chinese hero and Russian sidekick
I think the cheat/steal method of describing China is becoming outdated. Cheat/steal is a viable technique to quickly catch up if you don't mind being a bad actor in a game theory setting. Then you have to surpass.
In AI they seem to be at the late stages of stealing. The top two films in the global box office last weekend were both Chinese (The Wandering Earth, $172m and Crazy Alien, $77m). Chinese blockbusters seem to just flip American tropes (The Chinese coming to save the day Rambo style).