Film Review: The Wandering Earth

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD

RATING: 3/5.

You can access all of my latest book, film, and video game reviews at this link, as well as an ordered, categorized list of all my book reviews and ratings here: https://akarlin.com/films/

***

I am interested in China. I am not so much interested in films. But I am very interested in existential risks and post-apocalyptic settings – especially underground ones. So I was naturally excited to see WANDERING EARTH.

Problem: It’s not being shown in Russia. So far as I know, it wasn’t released in Europe at all. It only saw a limited international release confined to the US and Australia, forcing everyone else to stream it on Netflix. I am not going to subscribe to Netflix because I am not enough of a cuck to pay some Yankee grifters to watch otherwise freely available content that isn’t even American, so Pirate Bay it is. Still, its lack of international presence was rather remarkable for a movie that grossed $700 million, China’s second highest of all time. Doesn’t say much for Chinese soft power.

It is the middle of the 21st century, and the Earth is in a bit of a pickle. The Sun has decided to go into red giant mode a few billion years ahead of schedule. After some out of the box thinking, the world’s governments decide to build 10,000 “Earth Engines” that are to fuse away the Earth’s crust to propel the Earth away from the Sun. These Earth Engines are massive structures, higher than Mount Everest, and they are tended to – and provide power for – underground communities of 350,000 people each. Moreover, there are 2,000 even bigger “Torque Engines” arrayed along the equator. These were constructed to change the rotational speed of the Earth, creating massive tsunamis that killed off two thirds of the world’s surplus population.

Leaving side for now the more implausible aspects, I immediately found it difficult to see why they’d go to the trouble of constructing those Torque Engines when they could winnow the population much cheaper through a bioengineered plague, or some other, less capital-intensive method. Surely for the cost of those 2,000 Torque Engines they could have constructed an additional several thousand Earth Engines, enabling them to save all the world’s people instead of just 3.5 billion?

Also, in my own racist, autistic line of thinking, wouldn’t tsunamis actually mostly wipe out the capable, high IQ people capable of manufacturing and maintaining those Earth Engines in the first place? Much of Africa is rather high in elevation, while South America is shielded by mountains and the dense Amazonian rainforest. Meanwhile, the great bulk of the Chinese population lives in the flat, eastern third of the country.

Anyhow, this convoluted planetary evacuation scheme actually works, and the Earth begins to fly away from the fiery Sun… into the frying pan that is Jupiter. For as they pass in front of it, the gas giant happens to emit a “gravitational spike”, pulling in our hapless Terra into its gravitational well even as the resultant earthquakes disable most of the Earth Engines that would have been needed to correct course.

On Earth, our plucky heroes – Liu Qi, his adopted sister Han Duoduo, and some other sidekicks – fail to repair the Earth Engines in time and all hope is seemingly lost. In what is perhaps the film’s most (unintentionally) slapstick scene, a distraught soldier fires off his minigun in rage at Jupiter.

But as they say, when the going gets tough, the tough get going. The Earth is accompanied by an orbiting space station which holds a few thousand taikonauts and millions of sperm, eggs, and data banks. So, your classical generation ship, give or take. The ship’s on-board AI system “MOSS” calculates that the Earth is doomed and begins to steer the spaceship away from the doomed planet. But the Chinese hero, Liu Peiqiang – father of Liu Qi – refuses to accept the dying of the light, rebels against Chinese Hal 9000, and manages to get the better of it thanks in part to a heroic sacrifice by his Russian cosmonaut friend. Once Liu Peiqiang has manual control, he convinces the World Government to allow him to attempt an unconventional solution. He launches the spaceship in a kamikaze strike onto Jupiter’s surface, igniting the gas giant’s hydrogen surface and producing a blast wave that knocks the Earth back into empty space.


This is not really hard sci-fi. On the Mohs Scale Of Science Fiction Hardness, it is surely closer to Solaris (the Hollywood adaptation) than to Neal Stephenson’s Seveneves. According to one hard science estimate, you’d need to mine 95% of the Earth’s mass to generate the energy needed to get it to its post-solar destination, Proxima Centauri. The Sun’s untimely demise, Jupiter’s “gravitational spike”, and Torque Engines generating enough instant acceleration to generate democidal tsunamis on the planetary tsunamis is all patently absurd. The plot resolution device, the idea of igniting Jupiter’s hydrogen atmosphere, is even more fantastical. It is struck by hundreds of meteorites every decade, none of which have “ignited” it thus, and any kinetic force capable of pushing away an Earth accelerating into Jupiter would also completely and utterly disintegrate it, let alone leave any survivors on the surface (as happened to our heroes in the film). Nonetheless, there is at least the appearance of attention to Newtonian mechanics, which not something one can say for most Hollywood sci-fi movies.

Also, credit where it’s due. The temperature calculations are remarkably accurate. They are around extreme Antarctica levels (about -90C), whereas Earth’s steady state temperature at Jupiter’s orbit will be around -150C (at least according to Universe Sandbox 2). However, considering that the Sun is expanding, and that Earth is flying away from it and is still warmer than it should be, this figure is perfectly plausible. The cargo transport vehicles are bulky and overgrown with all sorts of manual controls. While this might seem strange to us in the context of a hi-tech 21st century civilization capable of constructing thousands of megastructures, I would argue that this is actually fridge brilliance (if probably unintentional). Vehicles will need to be extremely rugged and have redundant controls in a harsh, rapidly cooling planet that is gradually heading out of the protective blanket of the heliosphere.

It is very funny to observe the national stereotypes on display. As mentioned above, WANDERING EARTH was made for a Chinese audience, so I assume they didn’t take care to pander to foreign sensibilities and sensitivies. Liu Peiqiang’s Russian sidekick on the space station, Makarov, is a good-natured semi-alcoholic who considers his Chinese counterpart to be his brother, and the warm feelings are mutual. Although he died for the sake of their mission, it is Makarov’s secret vodka caches that allows Liu Peiqiang to defeat MOSS by converting one bottle into a Molotov cocktail and throwing it at the mainframe (after unsuccessfully trying to hack the mainframe).

Meanwhile, the foreign sidekick of the surface protagonists is a blonde Australian sexpat called Tim who insists that “she consented” when we first meet him in a jail cell. Though he is the stand-in for the English language teacher laowai archetype, he is not portrayed with any particular malice. China is not yet in the #MeToo era, and presumably, female claims about inappropriate sexual conduct are still taken with a pinch of salt. The Australian comes off as goofy layabout, not a rapist creep, and the entire thing is laughed off in a manner that I doubt will pass muster with Western SJWs in the Current Year.

There are no Africans or other non-Asian POCs. Thr  unspoken implication is that Whites and East Asians were the only two races capable of constructing the Earth Engines and the elaborate underground bunkers that would shelter humanity in its 2,500 year voyage to Proximate Centauri. That was a breath of fresh year after years of Hollywood regaling us with fables about NASA’s Black geniuses.


That said, I am disappointed to report that Hollywood has nothing to worry about. Fundamentally, this film is a reminder that characters matter. The world of WANDERING EARTH is more compelling than most. The plot might be largely nonsensical and ad hoc, but that’s par for the course. The CGI is astounding, featuring long, spectacular space scenes, and serene views of the ruined and frozen surface. What is even more remarkable is that its budget was a mere $50 million. Hollywood would have needed at least $250 million for comparable visual effects. But what distinguishes this from most Hollywood movies is that there are no memorable personalities, no character arcs, no cause for emotional investment into the fate of any of its protagonists. For all its other problems, this is something that Hollywood generally gets right. That is important, because so far as the creative arts are concerned, characterization comes before plot, while plot supersedes world-building. WANDERING EARTH gets it the other way round.

Liu Qi is the whiny, ungrateful son who endlessly castigates his father for “abandoning” him to serve humanity’s interests on the spaceship. His sister-in-law Han Duoduo is a bimbo who alternates between sleeping and hysterics, such as when she berates a surface worker crew for failing to save her grandfather-in-law from freezing to death (despite them having lost one of their own members in the attempt). As he dies, the old man thinks of how he saved Han Duoduo during the flooding from one of the tsunamis generated by the Torque Engines. This is a typical approach. Character deaths are accompanied by saccharine “reminiscence” scenes from their former lives, as if the directors were trying to add emotional poignancy to their demise. It doesn’t work because they don’t give sufficient cause to care about any of these people in the first place, so it just comes off as a cheap gimmick. In the end, Duoduo’s main purpose is to make an “inspirational” radio appeal to rally the rest of the surface repair crews to come fix the Earth Engine in Indonesia so that it could beam its energy ray up at  Jupiter to ignite its atmosphere. Incidentally, this turns out to be pointless, as the resultant beam doesn’t travel far enough anyway and basically annuls the meaning of all the previous hour of desperate struggles and sacrifices to restart the engines. Not when all it took was to kamikaze a spacecraft into Jupiter to correct Earth’s course.

For an example of a Western film that got this right, you can take a look at The Day After Tomorrow (2004). This also featured a niveous apocalypse and a harrowing quest for survival across frozen wastelands. While it was also an ultimately mediocre film, there was real drama and tragedy when members of the crew died. If WANDERING EARTH is at all representative of Chinese sci-fi films, they are going to have to step up their game before they will be able to compete with Hollywood in the West.

Comments

  1. Please keep off topic posts to the current Open Thread.

    You can find all my reviews here.

    My personal website also has (more or less) current lists of my book, film, and video game reviews.

  2. Jose Alan Guerrero says

    “Doesn’t say much for Chinese soft power.”

    However last year and this year too, some Chinese tv series have doing great internationally, though only in Asian countries, still that says much because Asia used to be glued mostly to South Korean series, however Chinese series such as Story of Yanxi Palace, Meteor Garden (2018 version), A love so Beautiful or Put your head on my shoulder were succesful in countries like Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines or Thailand; Personally i like most by far Yanxi Palace, which happened to be the most googled tv show in 2018 !.

  3. Other Side says

    I doubt this movie is based on ” three body problem ” because the movie plot doesn’t have anything even remotely in common with any of 3 books of Three Body Problem series .

    I don’t want to spoil things but in books it’s about invasion of Alpha Centauri species on Earth because their planet surrounded by 3 stars will eventually be pulled apart by gravitational forces ( aka 3 body problem ) … the plot itself goes over a period of time of over 1000 years ,from time of Chinese Cultural revolution to far in future … anyway no moving Earth anywhere .

  4. yakushimaru says

    The comparison to The Day After Tomorrow is understandable. But I’d rather see it compared to Interstellar which I think Wandering Earth fell short. I think those movies are less about the End of Ordinary Life but rather about Turning Your Eyes to the Night Sky, and yet, not like Star Wars, or a BBC documentary.

    Personally, I really want to watch more movies of this kind.

  5. yakushimaru says

    Wandering Earth is based on a short story of the same name, not the Three Bodies series.

    AK: Thanks.

  6. Other Side says

    I suspected as much ( didn’t read wondering earth,but this blog and 3BP plots simply don’t add up ),mister Karlin needs to change that sentence .

  7. yakushimaru says

    In three bodies, Liu got a sage in an australian aborigine. So, his non-PC is, as you guys might say, more folksy, I guess.

  8. yakushimaru says

    this line of scifi subgenre, I might call, drama on the stage of modern theory of cosmology. given liu’s self admitted lack of knowledge in hard sci, one can easily see that his is not very hard scifi, even though he clearly stated that he wants to write hard scifi. but i think the hardness scale is misleading. what he really enjoys writing and I for one love to read is this kind of drama on this kind of stage.

  9. So it’s not only Man vs Asteroid (Armageddon!!), but Man vs several problems, each of which would give a Kardashev Type II Civilization pause. That’s exhausting!

    Anyone remember WANDERING MOON, I mean Space 1999? Those non-gothic corridors and clean environments… and nothing beats the elegant and comfy Eagle Space Transporter!

    Non space-trucker space diversity is best diversity, but I can’t remember anyone from the Indian subcontinent. And no “Mr Chekovs” either.

  10. anonymous says

    This is not really hard sci-fi. On the Mohs Scale Of Science Fiction Hardness, it is surely closer to Solaris (the Hollywood adaptation) than to Neal Stephenson’s Seveneves.

    https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MohsScaleOfScienceFictionHardness

    Are there, in your opinion, any really “hard” science fiction movies made by Hollywood?
    Hard here means the science is actual science, not technobabble, and the technology is something that is possible to build.
    Surely is possible to make great story without FTL, time travel, wizards and vampires.

    Anything else than The Martian?

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Martian_(film)

    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/cd/The_Martian_film_poster.jpg

  11. bob sykes says

    I was unable to get more than 15 minutes into this film. It is worse than any 1950s scifi film, which at least have camp value. And then there is the bondage scene in “The Thing.” However, I did like “Red Sea.”

  12. yakushimaru says

    imho, one paricular genius of liu is to realize that a set of uniquely moving stories can be had WITHOUT faster-than-light travel. in the sense that space travel is different from columbus and columbus is different from traveling to state capital.

    it’s not really about doing a series of exercises in physics or engineering 101 etc. imho, it’s more about being sentimental facing the strange universe. but even liu himself views his stories from the lens of hard or soft scifi.

  13. Anonymoose says

    privet. how form comment account here ?

  14. Gaius Gracchus says

    It was OK. I couldn’t recommend it to anyone. It does indeed show the state of CGI and FX today, which would be impressive if the story and characters were better.

    There were several propaganda aspects about collective sacrifice and world government and the folly of individualsm, but they felt more Confucian and historic Chinese more than specific to modern China.

    The review is more than fair.

  15. Abelard Lindsey says

    The Chinese film industry IS finally becoming a serious and worthy competitor to Hollywood. I have no problem with this.

  16. Abelard Lindsey says

    I remember this show from my geeky childhood. Even though the basic scenario itself was fanciful, I thought a lot of the episodes were good and the graphics were very good for the time. What I liked most about “Space 1999” was its depiction of the eerie emptiness of space (like 2001 Space Odyssey).

    BTW, Joan Collins was in one of these episodes (one I watched on youtube last winter). She was smokin hot!

  17. Anonymoose says

    joking with the bad english btw.

  18. Review this one:

  19. Anonymoose says

    Are all Indian action films filled with so much slo mo ridiculous fights and obnoxious stunts

  20. Vishnugupta says

    Stupid movie like 99.9% of Bollywood movies.

    Though the theme is interesting about a single Sikh regiment that fought to the last man and killed many Afghans instead of surrendering during the Anglo Afghan wars.

    Any war the British Empire fought with Muslim countries was generally enthusiastically supported by Hindus/Sikhs given our 1000+ year long conflict with these scum.

    In other British Empire wars Indian troops were basically poorly paid mercenaries and behaved exactly as would be expected.

    Enough defected during WW2 to form entire regiments allied to Nazi Germany and Japan.

  21. Anonymoose says

    Since you are Indian, I’d like to know what is your opinion on that annoying woke Muzzie comedian Hasan Minhaj.

  22. Vishnugupta says

    Not very well known. From what I gather he is the leftist establishment’s chimp who takes potshots at Modi etc..

    We have genuinely funny much more popular comedy shows where we ask Muslims on the street questions like who went into space first Yuri Gagarin or Muhammad on a winged horse from the Al Aqsa mosque..and laugh at them squirming.

    Well the right just won a landslide victory last month in India so it would be fair to say that India is well on its way to being liberated from the liberals..

  23. This one

    Gerry Anderson liked to have his Moonbases (and secret UK-based underground bases) full of competent babes that were at ease living in the #TechnoPatriarchy. Good times.

  24. Brabantian says

    Above AK writes [sic]:

    I would argue that this is actually fridge brilliance (if probably unintentional)

    At first I chuckled over what I thought was one of the those ‘sounds-like’ unconscious typos … but then I found ‘fridge brilliance’ is actually a thing, indeed involving refrigerators

    https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FridgeBrilliance

    You watch a movie and something about it just seems off, you don’t like it. One night, as you get up for a midnight snack, you open the refrigerator door and the light dawns on you, “This is the real purpose behind this plot!”

    Has nothing to do with the light that comes on inside your fridge when you open the door.

  25. Mitleser says

    Does Gravity count?

  26. Swarthy Greek says

    Liu worked as an engineer, not as a physician, so his lack of knowledge in “hard” physics is not really his fault. The three Body Problem trilogy is way too complicated and long to be adapted on the big screen ,but a big budget series format could end up being a successful adaptation.

  27. sudden death says

    Remember having read somewhere that science fiction in general under commies in China was some sort of cultural taboo, if not outright banned, but certainly not encouraged or desired trend? Looks like that has changed completely?

  28. Bies Podkrakowski says

    A bit. They butchered orbital mechanics for plot’s sake like Khorne berserkers on warp crack.

  29. Outland comes to mined, I mean mind.

    It’s a drug bust story. Using the visuals from Alien.

    Although the writer didn’t get how “artificial gravity” works. The Sheriff’s detention area lacks “artificial gravity” which makes no sense at all. We are on Io!!

    But shotguns adequately work in vacuum. Good!

    Space is quintessentially boring! Nothing happens there. Unless you are an AI that can slow down its time perception.

  30. yakushimaru says

    hey man, my english that bad? 🙂

    i haven’t been writing much in English for some time. but i did have good GRE and toefl scores, you know. 🙂

  31. anonymous coward says

    “Three Bodies” was unironically the worst book I’ve ever read.

  32. Abelard Lindsey says

    Yep. That was the one. Joan Collins looked damn fine in that! She was around 40 at the time. She was around 50 when she became famous from being in “Dynasty”.

  33. As Arnie would say: “Relax!”

  34. While the Sun going red giant is indeed a few billion years out, the sterilization of planet Earth will begin as soon as 500 million years from now. Long time for humans, not very long in geological terms.

    The process begins with carbon dioxide getting trapped in rocks to the point where there is not enough of it to support photosynthesis, and plant life dies. So hard science plot about solar expansion would probably revolve around everybody driving around in SUVs and burning as much coal/oil/natural gas as possible to keep the last remaining conifers alive (plants with different photosynthetic chemistry that can function in low CO2 environments). Also, everybody is a carnivore. This probably won’t be a very politically correct film.

  35. Mitleser says

    This is not really hard sci-fi. On the Mohs Scale Of Science Fiction Hardness, it is surely closer to Solaris (the Hollywood adaptation) than to Neal Stephenson’s Seveneves. According to one hard science estimate, you’d need to mine 95% of the Earth’s mass to generate the energy needed to get it to its post-solar destination, Proxima Centauri. The Sun’s untimely demise, Jupiter’s “gravitational spike”, and Torque Engines generating enough instant acceleration to generate democidal tsunamis on the planetary tsunamis is all patently absurd.

    Nonetheless, there is at least the appearance of attention to Newtonian mechanics, which not something one can say for most Hollywood sci-fi movies.

    The cargo transport vehicles are bulky and overgrown with all sorts of manual controls. While this might seem strange to us in the context of a hi-tech 21st century civilization capable of constructing thousands of megastructures, I would argue that this is actually fridge brilliance (if probably unintentional). Vehicles will need to be extremely rugged and have redundant controls in a harsh, rapidly cooling planet that is gradually heading out of the protective blanket of the heliosphere.

    That really reminds me of The Expanse series, human-made engines that generate far more energy than they should according to physical laws, but also attention to Newtonian mechanics and functional (vehicle) designs. It is also partially set in Jupiter’s space.

  36. Vishnugupta says

    Jupiter’s Hydrogen being ignited to save a drifting Earth sounds pretty silly as a climax of this plot. Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the cosmos,there are nebulae primarily containing hydrogen that stretch for light years with hundreds of stars within them and it obviously doesn’t ignite because you need an oxidizer to achieve combustion. This is junior school chemistry.

    Still will watch tomorrow…

  37. Anonymoose says

    How does a Kamikaze strike igniting hydrogen on Jupiter work. Can some chemist or astrophysicist explain. Let alone a hydrogen explosion that creates a blast wave strong enough to change earth’s orbit. Just how tf does that work?

  38. Anonymoose says

    Jupiter doesn’t have any oxygen so how does ignition work? So how do you even ignite hydrogen in the first place?

  39. SIMPLEPseudonymicHandle says

    But what distinguishes this from most Hollywood movies is that there are no memorable personalities, no character arcs, no cause for emotional investment into the fate of any of its protagonists.

    The same goes for The Three Body problem as well.

  40. Yevardian says

    Did you really like this film for what it was? Or just find it interesting from a meta-perspective?
    I only saw it because a friend of mine has a Chinese wife, I thought it was absolutely terrible, actually one of the worst films I’ve seen in a long while.

  41. Yevardian says

    I just don’t understand how any intelligent person could like this movie. This movie makes “Kin Dza-Dza” look like fucking “2001”.
    Have you even seen the classics like “Stalker”, “Letters from a Dead Man” or “Solyaris”? Or do you just dismiss them ‘sovok crap’ like so much else?

    Did you even see that Russian film “The Ugly Swans” from a few years back? Although it wasn’t amazing, it was certainly far better than “The Martian” and a million times better than this.

    Tbh I don’t think you’ve reviewed a single Russian author (and no, Kholmorgorov does not fucking count) or film since you started blogging.

    ..Ok, felt good getting my gerard2 out.

  42. Anonymous says

    Everything in the story do not not have sense but regarding hydrogen – story events starts with particular ball of “burning” hydrogen “burn” much of it hydrogen. nebulas are so extremely sparse so calling it “contain” something is a stretch.

    I heard lot of praise about Expense “realism”, and conceptually it what I would like (single fantastic thing in otherwise realistically depicted world) but I could not handle even half of first episode-
    ” zero g” – hmmm – (5 seconds later) “magnetic boots” – here we go again – ships and drones
    accelerating toward “station” – mmmm – cringe speeches on market from Xena – nope

  43. (impressive imagery and special effects no doubt)

    Most sci-fi movies have problems when it comes to hard science but often not noticed.

    A good example is the Death Star in Star War. Even if it has the power output of the sun, it can’t blow up a planet in a split second as in the movie; but one needs 1st yr college level physics and astronomical data to understand why.

    But the problem with ‘Wandering Earth’ is too obvious

    The plot in Wondering Earth involves installing 1000s of huge rocket engines to push the Earth into another star system and the journey is said to take 2000 yrs at 0.5%(?) of speed of light.

    That’s taking the earth as a huge rocket. Now unless if the tech involves complete annihilation of mass to power ‘photon rocket engine'(which is still science fiction more than anything else), it needs to eject huge amount of mass into outer space over 2000 yrs; that’s exactly how rockets work:exchange of momentum. Even if one can ignore the energy source and the mass ejected are magma from deep inside the earth, it’ll still need to empty a significant (>50% I guess) amount of earth mass into outer space and the Earth crust will certainly collapse.

    Earth’s mass=5.9 x 10^24 kg–For comparision, china mines something like 3 billion tons(or 3×10^12 kg)of coal/yr

    A better plot would be mining the astroids bell to make gigantic space arks to move to another star system
    Death star math;it’ll take 580,000 second if the Death star has the output of the sun
    http://zzwave.com/plaboard/1551995959_kingdomcome.JPG

  44. The movie was interesting mostly to try to understand why it was so popular. Red Sea was the kind of movie that Americans would have made into the 80’s in the vein of Top Gun or Delta Force, but now China makes those kind of movies. Anyway, the ignition of Jupiter’s hydrogen was explained as Jupiter’s gravity sucked away some 20-30% of the Earth’s atmosphere so that’s what provided the oxidizer to the hydrogen.

  45. I’d disagree.

    Rss Bjp are reformist cucks and so are you.

    Arms control, caste reservation and Ban on Sati are the three liberal planks.

    They will not be touched

  46. anonymous coward says

    The Chinese have to problem with personality when they stick to chinesey topics like e.g. wuxia silliness about secret societies or rehashing the Journey to the West.

    Seems like soulless quality only comes out when the Chinese are trying to ape western norms and western plots.

    Maybe this is more a reflection of what ‘the West’ is like than something Chinese.

  47. Mitleser says

    I just don’t understand how any intelligent person could like this movie. This movie makes “Kin Dza-Dza” look like fucking “2001”.

    Reminder that 2001 series did turn Jupiter into a star and sacrificed American Hal 9000 so that a Sovok spaceship could escape the ignition.

  48. I was going to reply seriously, but since you here just to troll me as usual:

    Tbh I don’t think you’ve reviewed a single Russian author (and no, Kholmorgorov does *not* fucking count) or film since you started blogging.

    Have you even seen the classics like “Stalker”, “Letters from a Dead Man” or “Solyaris”?

    https://akarlin.com/films/film-notes/
    Stalker (1979) ★★★★★ Though this is generally an inane genre, this is one of the best “existentialist” movies. It is amazing how much hidden (and not so much) ideological subversion the USSR let Tarkovsky get away with.

  49. Ok, thanks. I somehow missed that.

  50. The movie was popular because special effect movies are popular in China. But they were all American previously, and always a hero saving the world.

    The Wandering Earth has no bad guy or evil to fight, no hero to save you. Just the world changing and ordinary people who could fail at their mission doing what they can to find a way out. The message is pretty Chinese at the core.

    This movie was seen as the first attempt to fight for a market reserved for Hollywood. Finally move away from “fringe” movies and aim for the big market.

  51. Anonymoose says

    You should review “And quiet flows the Don”

  52. Anonymoose says

    I know this is of topic but what do you think of this ‘utu’ commenter. Looking through his comments he comes across as a mentally ill retard.

    AK: I don’t disagree.

  53. You call yourself an intellectual,

    Why do you react lol to a man wanting to undo the anglo damage to Hindu Dharma.

  54. Why shouldn’t I LOL? it was a powerful take. Based AF.

  55. It doesn’t. It would be like igniting coal in space.

    You can’t even fuse Jupiter’s hydrogen because there isn’t enough mass to attain the required pressure. It would be a slow-motion process in any case, several million years until the things gets going. Unlike this:

    https://youtu.be/0zKqAbfxFsQ?t=103

    It was a good scene though. Also, Captain Tatiana “Tanya” Orlova is the greatest.

  56. You mean “Soviet” spaceship?

    Those Soviets are old-school “No AI on my ship!” (to paraphrase Commander Adama)

  57. Anonymoose says

    You should take over India and annoint yourself the Thuggee high priest of all Hindustan. Then reinstate sati, chase all dalits out of India and hang anyone not shitting within their designated streets. Retrieve the Sankara stones and sacrifice any anglos and muzzies to Kali Ma as they rightly deserve.

    “The British in India will be slaughtered. Then we will
    overrun the Muslims. Then the Hebrew God will fall,
    and then the Christian God will be cast down and
    forgotten. Soon, Kali Ma will rule the world.”

  58. Anonymous says

    Not quite. The igniting of the atmosphere was because Earth’s own oxygen atmosphere was intermixed with it. Not all of Jupiter ignited; only the part that mixed with Earth’s. Furthermore, the suicide kamakazi only worked because it ran into the Earth’s fusion beam, blowing it up, else it wouldn’t have kamakazied successfully. Overall, I’d rate it as hard science fantasy – aesthetically hard sci fi, but complete fantasy in reality.

  59. I didn’t set the idea that the torque engines were designed to winnow the population – I assumed the idea was just to keep the planet from spinning so they only had to put earth engines on one side.

    My take on Wandering Earth:

    https://twitter.com/dpinsen/status/1097357822147379200?s=21

  60. The greatest pair of tits in space.

  61. When the pungent aroma of the streets reaches one’s delicate, princely nostrils, believing that reality is an illusion the mind may dispel seems wise.

  62. Jason Liu says

    I’m just glad they’ve begun to see the path to cultural soft power: Flashy, retarded movies. May this be the first of many.

  63. Vishnugupta says

    If you are so keen on reinstating Sati which btw was never very widespread even in vedic times you should start with the women of your own family.

    Since you are a Jat a singularly uncouth and low IQ caste who basically lost most seats in Haryana (their home state) despite being a near majority (LOL!) I know you have a chip on your dumb shoulders against the BJP.

    I suggest you leave the complicated thinking to us Brahmins and other upper castes and stick with your traditional occupations of drinking country made liquor and supplying low IQ cannon fodder to the Indian army. Basically your castes contribution to Hindu Dharma is the supply of regiment after regiment of useful idiots.

    Top tip: Books need to be read not eaten.

    Do you even know what arms control is you dimwit?Sorry I am not going to explain nuclear submarine and ICBM design and operation to a Jat. The scriptures are very clear on this ,knowledge in the hands of an idiot is very dangerous.

    In the west they now have movies claiming Negress put a man on the moon!!

    This happens because Negroes and low IQ white trash( European equivalent of Jat) now study space technology and think a Negress doing redundant ballistics calculations has as much of a contribution to Apollo 11 as Werner Von Braun

    Such misappropriation of achievement is not possible in Hindu dharma.

    1500 years ago Aryabhata proved the earth is a sphere and orbits the sun which he postulated was a star. No one goes around claiming this great Brahmin or the ones before him who created the modern decimal number system were Jats/Shudras.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aryabhata

    It is us his Brahmin descendants that to this day honor his achievements and will put an Indian in space around 2022.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Human_Spaceflight_Programme

    Jats as idiot Hindus but proud Hindus nevertheless will on that day get stone drunk,wear shiny shirts and perform bhangra dance on the national highway 8 which passes through Haryana to celebrate.

  64. DB Cooper says

    Don’t be delusional. Indians including Brahmins are good at nothing except bragging. Build some toilets first before you talk about space program. Have a cup of cow piss.

  65. Vishnugupta says

    The only good thing about the current situation in Anglo countries is that low IQ white trash like you die poor and lonely with nothing but their hands for risk free sexual gratification and the internet for company. Pathetic!

    Go fuck yourself !

  66. DB Cooper says

    Oops sorry, you guys are also good at raping. So yes, go fuck yourself you filthy slum dog.

  67. Vishnugupta says

    Oops sorry I think I touched a raw nerve.

    Your women are also known for running away with Negroes after filing no fault divorces against losers like you and taking away most of your financial assets and getting you to pay child support too..

    Really among whites there is no greater degenerate sub race than the Anglo.

    So sad lonely life looser.

  68. DB Cooper says

    I think I see you in the clip.

  69. Vishnugupta says

    Aww…did I touch another raw nerve you poor loser.

    There are many porn sites where Anglo women fuck Negroes while constantly degrading their men folk..

    On a good day I think you would be bright enough to use the search function on such sites.

    The sad thing is it is much closer to reality for Anglos than anyone else. Though losers like you deserve it and then go on to entertain people both on and offline with their impotent rage there are also many decent Anglos in this world who I feel genuinely sorry for.

  70. DB Cooper says

    Seems like you are obsessed with interracial porn. Is that your thing? Anyway Indians including Brahmins are dumb fuck, on average. This is why India is a shithole.

  71. Vishnugupta says

    Not at all but there are few more powerful symbols of societal degeneration than this sort of disgusting porn degrading the native menfolk being filmed hosted and being freely available in any country.

    BTW just glancing at your previous comments it would appear you are in fact Han Chinese.

    Any reason you are using an Anglo instead of a Han Chinese pseudonym ?

    Whatever India is it seems to consume a considerable part of your free time assuming you have a job and a life outside forums and blogs.

  72. DB Cooper says

    India is not a shithole? Not at all? Just google “India is a shithole” and see for yourself. Now go fuck yourself and drink some cow piss you degenerated human scum.

  73. DB Cooper says
  74. Vishnugupta says

    Aww little Han banana boy with identity issues is upset…lol.

    Do you have any idea how pathetic you come across you little freak.

  75. DB Cooper says

    Not bragging anymore you piece of shit?

  76. Vishnugupta says

    Han Chinese societies can be completely pitiless on life losers like you. No social benefits for the loser.

    Add in severe self esteem/identity issues and we are left with a frustrated young man with rather limited life prospects who tries to feel important by taking on an Anglo pseudonym “DB Cooper” and commenting on the big issues of the world. Pathetic!

    But overall it is good for Han Chinese civilization,losers like you need to be weeded out for the good of society.

  77. reiner Tor says

    This is a seriously retarded conversation.

  78. anonymous coward says

    You should review “And quiet flows the Don”

    Please don’t, Karlin’s “powerful” americanized takes on great Russian literature will give me an aneurysm.

  79. Only the very best people comment on this blog.

  80. Anonymous says

    It’s the original post that sets the high IQ threshold. Btw, I hear there’s a new Pokemon movie. Any chance you will enlighten us with a review?

  81. Spisarevski says

    The Expanse is much harder sci-fi and the only recent sci-fi series from Hollywood that I can recommend.

    human-made engines that generate far more energy than they should according to physical laws

    Everything seemed like what you could expect from fusion drives, which is what the humans are using.

  82. Ask the sun.

  83. Daniel Chieh says

    The very best stable genii.

  84. Jim Christian says

    Anatoly, it’s good to be a good writer. You just saved my life, or a couple of hours or so anyway. Your writeup is so concise, I get the picture without having to watch the picture. Only thing I’d ask is whether they did it in 4K on Netflix? Might be worth looking in on for that for a minute, but to watch this rag, you’d want that two hours of your life back. Kinda like the people that watch an MLB home team loss.

  85. Jatt Sikh.

  86. Yes read Karninama

    https://www.sikhiwiki.org/index.php/History_of_Guru_Nanak%27s_travel_to_Mecca

    Vishnugupta read

    https://www.patreon.com/posts/purpose-of-dasam-23957882

    &

    Sri Gurpratap Suraj Prakash Granth, Guru Gobind Singh Ji Katha, Ain Dooja, Adiaaie (chapter), 23

    ਆਯੁਧ ਬਿੱਦਯਾ ਕੋ ਅੱਭਯਾਸਹੁ ! । ਬਨਹੁ ਬੀਰ ਅਰਿ ਸਮੁਖ ਬਿਨਾਸ਼ਹੁ ! ।
    ਜਗਤ ਪਦਾਰਥ ਸਗਰ ਪਾਵਹੁ । ਭੋਗਹੁ ਆਪ ਭਿ ਅਵਰ ਭੁਗਾਵਹੁ ।੧੪।
    Practise the science of war (Ayudh Bidiya), become warriors and destroy whoever steps to you ! Distribute the goods of the world around, enjoy them and make others enjoy them as well.
    ਮਰਹੁ ਜੁੱਧ ਮਹਿਂ ਸੁਰਗ ਸਿਧਾਰਹੁ । ਸਹਿਕਾਮੀ ਸੁਖ ਸਕਲ ਬਿਹਾਰਹੁ ।
    ਨਿਹਕਾਮੀ ਹੁਇ ਮੁਝ ਮੋ ਮੇਲ । ਪਰਹਿ ਨ ਜਨਮ ਮਰਨ ਕੋ ਗੈਲ ।੧੫।
    In war if you shall die you will go to heaven. Those who do [good] action for their own good [sehkami], they will [still] receive great happiness. The ones who do [good] without any desire, they will be united with Me, they will not be placed in the birth and death cycle [reincarnation] again.
    ਕਰੋ ਸ਼ਨਾਨ ਨਾਮ ਅਰੁ ਦਾਨ । ਪ੍ਰੇਮ ਸਮੇਤ ਲਹਹੁ ਕੱਲਯਾਨ ।
    ਬਿਦਤ ਖਾਲਸਾ ਪੰਥ ਭਵਿੱਖਯ । ਅਵਨੀ ਰਾਜ ਕਰਹਿਂ ਮਿਲਿ ਸਿੱਖਯ ।੧੬।
    Bathe, recite the Name and give charity. The Khalsa Panth will expand in great numbers, all the Sikhs will get together and organize a Kingdom [raj] for the whole world.
    ਦਿਨ ਪ੍ਰਤਿ ਤੁਰਕ ਨਾਸ਼ ਕੋ ਪ੍ਰਾਪਤਿ । ਬਚਹਿਂ ਜਿ, ਰੰਕ ਹੋਹਿਂ ਲਹਿਂ ਆਪਤਿ ।
    ਕੀਨੇ ਗਨ ਅਪਰਾਧ ਬਿਸਾਲਾ । ਤਿਨ ਕੋ ਫਲ ਹ੍ਵੈ ਹੈ ਇਨ ਕਾਲਾ ।੧੭।
    Day by day the Turks will be destroyed, those who remain will be extremely poor and will demise. They have committed great crimes [against humanity], and for these great crimes they shall be rewarded with death.
    ਅੰਗ ਸੰਗ ਮੁਝਕੋ ਨਿਤ ਜਾਨਹੁਂ । ਸਦਾ ਸਹਾਇਕ ਅਪਨੋ ਮਾਨਹੁਂ ।
    ਨਿਤ ਪ੍ਰਤਿ ਗੁਰਬਾਣੀ ਅੱਭਯਾਸਹੁ । ਕੈ ਸ਼ਸਤ੍ਰਨਿ ਸਨ ਸ਼ੱਤ੍ਰੁ ਬਿਨਾਸ਼ਹੁ ।੧੮।
    Recognize my presence by your side at all times, I am constantly protecting you [My Khalsa]. Always recite Gurbani, or take weapons and destroy the enemies.

    https://www.manglacharan.com/post/guru-gobind-singh-ji-giving-sermon-to-sangat-suraj-prakash

    ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕਾਖਾਲਸਾ।।ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕੀਫਤਿਹ।।