The complete and disastrous failure of Moonfall, the new apocalyptic sci-fi action flick from Roland Emmerich, is worth taking a moment to ruminate on. Once upon a time, Emmerich was the king of big-budget spectacle (or at least a crown prince in The Court of King Bay
Can't speak to the others, but the reason Midway bombed (I wrote a popular, well-reviewed, history book on the exact same topic, covering all the events from Pearl Harbor to Midway that the movie covered, so I know what I am talking about here) was that it was written by a "screenwriter" who knew nothing about the topic, who did no research (he could have just read Gordon Prange's book, let alone mine or my friend Jon Parshall's book and gotten things better) and who didn't know that The Pointed End Goes In Front. The only thing Emmerich appeared to know about the topic was that a movie (even worse than this one) was done on the topic back in 1975. The actual Dick Best (who was a friend of mine) who is the story's central character was the polar opposite of the caricature in the movie. In fact, throughout the movie, the screenwriter managed to confuse the words "character" and "caricature." And even the audience who went were able to get the phoniness of the entire thing - the bad CGI was as bad as the writing and the terrible casting (even people who know nothing about airplanes know that airplanes don't bounce off the ocean when they hit it). And there was an audience out there who had hoped to see it - an audience that did know the story and was large enough to have put at least a significant dent in the poor performance figures. But that audience "got the word" long before it came out, since the trailers were as piss-poor as "Pearl Harbor," the other crime against war movies this compares to in awfulness - and we spent our time mocking it mercilessly at all kinds of venues.
Hopefully, with Moonfall, Emmerich will finally be sent to Hollywood Jail for his crimes against filmmaking.
'Moonfall' and the Fall of Roland Emmerich
Can't speak to the others, but the reason Midway bombed (I wrote a popular, well-reviewed, history book on the exact same topic, covering all the events from Pearl Harbor to Midway that the movie covered, so I know what I am talking about here) was that it was written by a "screenwriter" who knew nothing about the topic, who did no research (he could have just read Gordon Prange's book, let alone mine or my friend Jon Parshall's book and gotten things better) and who didn't know that The Pointed End Goes In Front. The only thing Emmerich appeared to know about the topic was that a movie (even worse than this one) was done on the topic back in 1975. The actual Dick Best (who was a friend of mine) who is the story's central character was the polar opposite of the caricature in the movie. In fact, throughout the movie, the screenwriter managed to confuse the words "character" and "caricature." And even the audience who went were able to get the phoniness of the entire thing - the bad CGI was as bad as the writing and the terrible casting (even people who know nothing about airplanes know that airplanes don't bounce off the ocean when they hit it). And there was an audience out there who had hoped to see it - an audience that did know the story and was large enough to have put at least a significant dent in the poor performance figures. But that audience "got the word" long before it came out, since the trailers were as piss-poor as "Pearl Harbor," the other crime against war movies this compares to in awfulness - and we spent our time mocking it mercilessly at all kinds of venues.
Hopefully, with Moonfall, Emmerich will finally be sent to Hollywood Jail for his crimes against filmmaking.
We are going to see Death on the Nile today. I can’t wait for that important reveal…
What did you all think of The Expanse?