Shanghai Fortress vs Wandering Earth

2019, Hua-Tao Teng (Love is Not Blind) -- Netflix
2019, Frant Gwo (Lee's Adventure) -- download/Netflix

*record scratch*

Of note, I had to kill the idea of doing three paragraphs on just the one movie, as so much of the two have merged together in my mind. Both are grand, sweeping, epic Chinese science fiction movies in the tradition of the Hollywood Blockbuster. Both are utterly ridiculous.

Oi. Where do I go on this one? How about the current immense funding of Hollywood movies by  Chinese corporations, under the auspices of building blockbusters that will do well in the "after market" ? How about how different the melodrama of one region of the world is from this part of the world ? How about the blatant, unapologetic rip-off of Independence Day 2 as if Shanghai Fortress was intentionally meant to be the sequel. How about the inherent low expectations of scifi mega-blockbusters? Just complaining about how bad it (they) was/were, considering I am the guy who still enjoys the Total Recall re-make, seems kind of weak.

But... Oh. Migawd. As mentioned, the premise of Shanghai Fortress really runs parallel to Independence Day 2, a movie that was significantly funded by China. In both movies, we pick up after Earth has successfully fought off an alien invasion, and has had the time and resources to create a defense force, both in people and in the latter movie, a proper force field. The movies are about this defense, in anticipation of a second major attack from the aliens. There is also something about the discovery of space-rocks beneath the city of Shanghai, which is a great power source, and probably what the aliens were coming here for in the first place. The problem is that all this setup happened in the first movie, the one that doesn't exist. The one we should probably have seen. But, ignoring that, we get our main characters, a cast of young, beautiful drone pilots, who are also repair engineers, who are also a military ground squad, who are also pilots of advanced warplanes, who are also... well, they are whoever the plot needs them to be when everyone else either dies or proves too incapable of saving the world. And then the aliens DO come back.

Conversely, The Wandering Earth. Woo-boy, the premise -- the mightily over-the-top idea of attaching rockets to the entire planet Earth and flying the whole thing through place to another solar system. Why? Because the sun is dying and if they don't, then we will freeze, along with the rest of the solar system. But its hard to get past this premise. For one, I highly doubt the surface of the Earth is that stable. We like to think of it as a big, solid rock, when in fact, when we factor in scale, its a rather fragile egg. Any rocket powerful enough to move the planet would just punch through the mantle. Also, move. They need them to MOVE THE PLANET! To get the planet to leave the solar system we would have to reach incredible velocity, or it would end up taking generations before reaching whatever next solar system we could settle into. And if we leave the sun behind for that long, wouldn't we just freeze anyway?

But no, let's ignore that and just focus on the movie itself. The Wandering Earth takes place in the final days before The Earth departs its current location and heads off into space. Generations have focused their resources on building the engines, as The Sun dies out and the planet gets colder. The Chosen Few have moved into secure facilities beneath each giant rocket. Yeah, that is where I want to be when they first test these gargantuan scale rockets -- right under them. Again, ignore that. Our cast are some minor functional staff, a young guy and his sister, she who has never seen the surface, tragic orphans being raised by their grampa. While he is conning a way so the two can go upstairs, drama happens when some of the rockets begin failing. And they get mixed up with it all.

Both movies are about young, beautiful, relatively inexperienced people ending up at the centre of situations that will either save the planet or doom it. Surprisingly enough, the movie with the most ridiculous premise (The Wandering Earth) has the most relatable characters, in that they are more down to earth, even if the situations they are in are astronomically big. Heh. Down to Earth. Meanwhile Shanghai Fortress gives us a cast of young heartthrobs who are supposed to be exemplary examples of youth raised under the Chinese flag. Apparently they are perfect at everything, despite tragic circumstances, despite being young. It reminded me of those 80s/90s TV shows where the main characters were always assigned the task to fix anything, even if it was outside their wheelhouse; why are you sending the pilot to fix the space station, instead of an actual engineer?!? At least in tWE, the kids just end up there, and have to just make do.

I am actually rather surprised at myself in that while watching each movie, tWE staggered me at how silly the idea was, with SF being an acceptably by-the-books alien invasion story, yet when I think back to them, the former just feels so much better thought through. I can actually accept the mega silly choices they make in tWE vs the just-for-the-optics choices they make in SF.

As these mega blockbuster movies continue to be made, and as China tries to create its very own "aftermarket" in the rest of the world, I wonder what kind of features we are going to start seeing over here. When will we get our first (American) traditional superhero movie? Will we get a Too Fast franchise heist actioner? What will we get?