I have also read The Three Body Problem Trilogy, a series of books written by Cixin Liu, who also wrote the short story The Wandering Earth is based on. (For the record, I actually started reading The Three Body Problem before I met 老婆 and convinced her to start reading it. She has not yet finished them.) The Three Body Problem and this movie share a number of similarities. They are good in both general quality and that they follow the rules of sci-fi. They are epic space tales involving enormous times scales. They lean heavily to the hard sci-fi side of the scale. (The Wandering Earth is softer than The Three Body Problem, but still much harder than the typical Hollywood fair.) They have a huge cast of characters which barely get developed. Both feature Alpha Centari and Jupiter, as well as, an AI which alternates between ally and antagonist. (老婆, this is No Spoiler Tags. It's your fault for reading this.[Yes, I wrote this entire paragraph just to be a dick to my wife. I love you,老婆.] )
All of this is to say that what I have to say about China in this piece does not come from a place of total ignorance. My feelings about China are mixed. I have serious problems with the way the Chinese Communist Party suppresses free thought, abuses human rights, and uses their military to bully their neighbors. I do not see China as a threat to the United States, at least, not in anyway I care about. My interactions with the Chinese people have been overwhelmingly positive and collectively they seem to have only two major character flaws, which I will discuss later.
The Wandering Earth is set about 50 years in the future (It is after the 2044 Shanghai Olympics. Presumably, China is the only country on Earth foolish enough to host the Olympics by then.) with the sun about to explode. So, humanity does the only logical thing and packs up their mobile home, the entire fucking planet, and starts moving to the next star over. On the way out of the solar system, Earth needs to get a gravity assist from Jupiter, which is when things go wrong and plot ensues.
A core element of Vulcan and Chinese philosophy is that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one. (The downside of this collectivism is that the Chinese are completely intolerant of any criticism or humor directed towards them from the outside. This is character flaw number one.) With their lengthy history, the Chinese also seem to be able to think and plan on very long timelines. These ideas permeate this movie time and time again, as character after character sacrifice themselves for the good of the mission. An element of The Wandering Earth Project involves wiping out half of humanity before we even get our planet moving, something everyone on Earth, apparently, just accepts. #ThanosDidNothingWrong (Oddly, this is the first time this blog has recognized the MCU.) Two of the characters make plans for a fishing trip that their descendants will take in 2,500 years. If these elements of Chinese thought become universal, there's a chance humanity will be around long enough to take that fishing trip.
One thing that impressed me about this movie is the budget: $48 million. That's a big budget in China, but it barely buys a rom-com in America. Justice League had six times the budget and it looked six times worse. There were places were the imperfect CGI showed through, but Hollywood would struggle to match the visual quality of The Wandering Earth at any price under $200 million. Prices in China are ridiculously cheep from an American prospective and this movie is just another example. I have seen some Chinese movies from the recent past with awful visual effects, but The Wandering Earth proves that China has closed the gap with Hollywood very well.
There is one thing I absolutely hated about this movie: the subtitles. This isn't a complaint about subtitles in general. I prefer them to dubbing as it preserves the emotion of the original performance. I hate the actual physical subtitles used in this film. The subtitles were in both English and Chinese characters with more of the screen real estate devoted to the Chinese. The font size was tiny, apparently to make enough room for both languages without covering too much of the screen. I am a fast reader and I frequently struggled with how quickly the long lines of complicated text would flash by. Worst of all, they were in white with only the thinnest of black outlines. A horrible decision for a film which takes place primarily on an ice planet. It was like a picture of snowman in a blizzard with a tiny novel you have to read on it as you drive by at 40 MPH. They were easily the worst subtitles I have ever seen.
Here's the part that might get me death threats. (Possibly, from my wife.) I am about to explain the second character flaw that seems so prevalent in China. The Chinese have no qualms about being openly racist to anyone who is not Han Chinese. And it shows in this movie. The movie centers around an international organization working together for the good of humanity. Hollywood would use this opportunity to build a diverse cast representing all of the G20. (Okay, yes, the Americans would be the most awesome heroes who would tell everyone else to steep aside while the white guy or Will Smith saves the day. But, that's not the point right now.) The Wandering Earth had exactly one and a half non-Chinese characters in non-background roles. This was especially noticeable given the size of the cast list. These two were a Russian and a half Australian. The Russian endangered the entire human race by building a sill on the space station humanity needed to survive. The Australian was a moron, comic relief character. It's also subtly implied that he is a rapist. Neither character does anything that could be considered important to the plot. In the fourth act of the movie, it appears that all hope is lost and the Earth will be destroyed, but luckily the Chinese are smart enough to make a new plan to save us all. We see Americans, French, Japanese, Koreans, Indians, Indonesians, Russians, Brits and more giving into despair as their feeble minds and weak wills are crushed. (The Israelis also had the idea, but only the Chinese had the will, courage and determination to try.) Then, when all hope seems lost again, it is a middle school Chinese girl who proves that she has larger testicles than all of the non-Chinese men on the planet combined by delivering a speech that would make the President from Independence Day cry, rallying the rest of the planet to help the Chinese save the world. None of this is subtle or an accident. This is the subtext the film makers want you to see.
Now, that I've told you how much I enjoyed this openly racist film with dreadful subtitles, as well as, express my love for China and my Chinese wife, here's an enjoyable openly racist song about loving a Chinese girl with could be better subtitles.
[Update] My wife has now read this and translated it to her mother. Based on their responses and having some more time to think about what I wrote, I want to make a few clarifications.
1. I am currently neither murdered nor divorced.
2. My wife and mother-in-law generally agree with what I wrote. Their biggest complaint is with the comment about Mandarin being the primary language at my house. But I talk less than the average man and they are two women, so you do the math. (Why not throw some sexism on top of all this racism?)
3. Hollywood has a very racist past and a somewhat racist present. The writing and casting choices in this movie with regard to race are more like Hollywood of thirty years ago than today. Making the one minority in film a rapist would not fly in modern Hollywood.
4. In the piece above, I attribute several personality traits to the Chinese people, some positive and some negative. Making sweeping generalizations about entire groups is the definition of racism. Their are 1.4 billion people in China, some of them will fit this description to a T, others will follow it loosely and some are the complete opposite. These traits are common, not universal.
5. Finally, a bonus song I think everyone should hear.
Update 2: I recently rewatched this movie with 老婆 and she pointed out some details I missed the first time through that changed my view of this movie a little. She noticed that throughout the movie there are subtle hints that many other people are also struggling to save humanity. There is a line about other astronauts breaking out on the space station, the engines around the world are re-ignited, and the aforementioned line about the Israilis having the idea to ignite Jupiter, as well as other hints. It's some pretty neat storytelling that adds a lot of depth to the world, but I still contend that the movie portarys the Chinese as the only ones with the abilites and bravey to get the job done.
Also, Netflix fixed the subtitle problem from the theatrical release.
I'll leave you with this Because Science video about what it would actually take to move the Earth with current rocket tech.
