Author: 观复·钧天

  I am someone who usually prefers peace and quiet, so even sitting in a cinema for a pulse-pounding science-fiction film is a rare experience for me. Big-budget science fiction has long seemed to belong to Hollywood, and saving the Earth is one of its familiar themes. I never expected China’s first homegrown science-fiction blockbuster to be this good: its logic holds together, and the story feels reasonably complete. Much of the credit must first go to the excellent framework provided by Liu Cixin’s novel.

  Once humanity begins to think of itself as the master of this planet, one problem follows another. People killing one another is only the most immediate problem. Species extinction and humanity’s domination of the biosphere run deeper. Only when the planet on which we depend can no longer support us do we realize that all our previous efforts have come to nothing. From a philosophical perspective, saving the Earth means saving humanity itself—if we still have a soul to save.

  That is where the story begins. Earth breaks free of the solar system and starts to wander. Here, “wandering” is an extraordinarily vivid word: helpless and terrifying at once. A makeshift team joins the effort to save the planet. In a rescue mission that seems almost futile, its members must violate human institutions and even “the law” before finally pulling Earth back from the brink of destruction. It is a beautiful ideal, one that reveals both the compassion and the resolve of the author and the filmmaking team.

  The traditional Chinese system of knowledge did not contain the methodology of experimental science in its modern sense; the modern natural sciences were introduced largely from the West. Today, nine years of compulsory education may place mathematics, physics, and chemistry near the center of the curriculum, but learning science and developing a scientific outlook are very different things. A gulf remains between reason and emotion.

  Long before our ancestors understood science, imagination gave us myths from the Classic of Mountains and Seas: Nüwa repairing the sky, Kuafu chasing the Sun, and Jingwei filling the sea. Myth explains the unknown origins of nature; science fiction opens the door to future civilizations. These stories are still told with delight in China today. Yet myth cannot simply evolve into modern science fiction, because the latter must be supported by scientific knowledge and logic.

  As an important starting point for industrial-scale Chinese science-fiction cinema, The Wandering Earth is far more accomplished than expected. Many shots stand alongside those in Hollywood blockbusters, the plot moves briskly, and the relationships between the characters are clear. Its main weakness is a lack of emotional connection between those characters. Confrontation outweighs communication, and calculation outweighs human warmth: there is blood but too little flesh, feeling but too little intimacy, despite a few genuinely moving scenes. The film avoids narrow-mindedness, but its tense passages could use more humor. The more intense a scene becomes, the more it can benefit from a measured touch of comedy—provided the jokes are actually funny.

  China was a latecomer to space exploration and to the science-fiction publishing and film industries, but that has changed dramatically in recent years. This film has been described as the beginning of a new era in Chinese filmmaking, one entry in a series of ambitious and expensive productions. Before The Wandering Earth, a project of this kind lay beyond the technical and financial reach of most Chinese filmmakers. It was a test for the industry itself.

  Saving the Earth is an ideal. In my view, the greatest difference between an ideal and a goal is whether it can be achieved with ease. From that perspective, saving the planet is humanity’s greatest ideal precisely because it is so difficult—and because we are still willing to try.