Review of The Wandering Earth II (2023) by Thazari — 10 Feb 2023

Watched it in Chinese theatres. It is a visually stunning movie and the audio is great. I like the overarching theme of humanity coming together and doing whatever it takes to survive. Everyone is a hero and willing to make sacrifices to ensure humanity's survival. I find the criticism of some that this is Chinese propaganda unwarranted, it's not just China saving the world, it's people from all nationalities and backgrounds putting aside their differences for once and saving the world together. All of that is great. As is fact that the story resolves over several decades throughout several big megaprojects.

I have several gripes with the movie however which result in a low score.

First, the film's pacing is hyperactive, making it very difficult to follow the rather complex story. I love a complicated plot, but the movie felt like one long Youtube trailer played at 150% speed jumping from one action scene to the next, without much in the way of a long term overarching plot that slowly stacks up the pieces and accumulates into a satisfying delayed payoff. It feels very much tailored to the Tik-tok generation that has no attention span and needs constant gratification by leading them through a series of hard to follow shaky-cam action scenes and explosions. There is no meaningful dialogue or character building whatsoever.

Second, it's a science fiction movie and it seems to try to get the science part right, but then has lots of implausible things going on such as the moon suddenly heading for a collision with Earth, after they have spent months or even years pushing it away from Earth. It'd need the same amount of force as they have been pumping into it over all this time to decelerate it, and then some more, to make it crash down somehow. There are several other cases besides this such as automated drone missiles needing a manual detonation, that were really throwing me off.

I couldn't put my finger on the third negative point I'm about to raise for a while, but after thinking through it again over the night I realized that my biggest problem with this movie is that it is rather dystopian and I end up hating humanity rather than cheering for their triumph. There is a global government that supposedly does what it needs to do in order for humanity to survive, but at the same time oppressing the people of Earth and forcing the same people into a life not worth living.

We are told early on that there is tech available to upload or at least preserve people in digital form and the government is withholding it from the people. While at the same time, the people are rendered unemployed due to AI and automation, half are left to die from radiation sickness and other calamities, and the heroic ones are constantly sent to their deaths on strings of dangerous and end-of-life missions.

The Earth itself is seen as being destroyed due to the megaprojects, climate change, the Earth being moved around and problems with the sun and most natural life is mentioned to be extinct at some point.

If the people are left to die and suffer on such massive scale and Earth is so thoroughly ruined, then what's the point of carrying it all to Proxima Centauri?

Just upload everyone and put them on the oversized USB-sticks, get the DNA of all people and plants and animals, launch all of humanity to Proxima at a fraction of the cost, and let the AI build a paradise for us. Recreating physical bodies from DNA should be a non-issue at the rest of the tech level that is being displayed throughout the movie.

We are told that the government is afraid of the upload tech because they fear that people will just want to live digitally and not do anything in the physical world, well if it is such a big motivator why not use it as a reward for all the people that do the actual heavy lifting, like you know, risking their lives and dying by the hundreds to save the rest of humanity? It'd be perfect for ensuring the people's loyalty to the state as well so it'd be in the state's own self-interest to push this tech forward and roll it out to the masses.