The first five minutes for Roland Emmerich’s new sci-fi devastation spectacular, “Moonfall” are now available to watch and it whets our appetite for more.
The lyrics to Toto’s “Africa” are being discussed, as two astronauts from the Space Shuttle Endeavour are EVA, repairing what may or may not be the Hubble Space Telescope. Suddenly, a strange, black cloud engulfs the orbiter vehicle and poor astronaut Alan Marcus (Frank Fiola) is lost. Astronaut Jo Fowler (Halle Berry) is unconscious and only astronaut Brian Harper (Patrick Wilson) remains to witness probably the strangest event he has ever seen.
Emmerich has firmly cemented his reputation as the master of disaster with popular popcorn flicks like “Independence Day,” “2012” and “The Day After Tomorrow” and lest we forget, he also gave us “Stargate.” However, in his latest movie, it isn’t autocratic aliens posing as Egyptian gods threatening civilization through a wormhole connecting two worlds over hundreds of light years… This time something has caused the moon to be knocked out of orbit and now it’s on a direct collision course with Earth.
The film focuses on a former astronaut-now-NASA executive (Berry) who must team up with an astronaut from her past (Wilson) and a conspiracy theorist (John Bradley) to save Earth from this impending calamity. We’re not sure if it will rank on our list of the best sci-fi movies of all time, but we’re excited to see more.
Joining them are Michael Peña, Charlie Plummer, Kelly Yu, Eme Ikwuakor, Carolina Bartczak and Donald Sutherland.
Up until now, it hasn’t been clear exactly what caused the moon to suddenly hurtle toward Earth from the teaser trailer, it doesn’t appear to be an explosion of stockpiled radioactive waste. Instead, there might be some sort of giant tentacled beast involved? A ch’khalagu, from Romulan folklore perhaps?
However, in this new footage we do indeed see what looks like some kind of alien entity passing by and nearly destroying the Endeavour, before beginning to bury itself into the lunar surface. Sadly, we will have to wait until Feb. 2, 2022 to find out for sure.
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