THE WANDERING EARTH

The wandering earth is a new Chinese Sci-Fi blockbuster. In their attempt to take on Hollywood's social dominance, the Chinese film industry has thrown vast amounts of money into this. The visual effects are spectacular. But it's still awful.

The premise is - the sun is about to go nova. The governments of the world unite and decide to take the earth somewhere else. Alpha Centauri, I think. They create vast underground cities which can only house half of the world's population. Then they fit the planet with massive "earth engines" and fly it into space.

That's really all you need to know about that. It sets the scene for for some amazing effects.

But the actual story - and where it fails so awfully - is about a teenage boy who hates his father (one of the scientists in charge of all this world-wandering) because he thinks Dad left Mum to die. The sister/daughter is also there - but mostly just for the screaming. The characterisation is dreadful. Was the father / son conflict resolved? I didn't care enough to watch to the end.

Which brings me to my point. No matter how epic your production, no matter how many yuen you spend, stories should be about relationships. If you lose sight of that, your story will just go wandering off and readers won't care enough to finish it.

People first, people!