One thing that was blindly obvious from a visit to the edit bay of director Roland Emmerich’s latest action epic is that Moonfall has come to play.
“It’s this certain style of movie that I think we invented. There is a certain cheesiness to it, but there’s also realism, a lot of action, and then there are a lot of jokes,” he explained as he rolled out four scenes to provide a taste of what audiences can expect when the film hits theaters on February 4, 2022. “We don’t take ourselves too seriously.”
Moonfall also doesn’t waste any time. Within two and half minutes of the first clip, which is also the movie’s opening scene, the cast, including Halle Berry and Patrick Wilson, make first contact with their adversary in space.
The movie is about a mysterious force that knocks the moon from its orbit of Earth, setting it on a collision course with our home planet. Berry plays NASA executive and former astronaut Jo Fowler while Wilson is astronaut Brian Harper. Moonfall starts with a scene where Harper and another of his crew are making repairs to their Endeavor shuttle in space.
At first, we see the entity reflecting in Harper’s helmet as he stares in disbelief, watching it hurtle towards them, about to hit them dead on.
“The only people who witness it are these three astronauts, but one dies and another, Halle Berry’s character, is unconscious,” explained Emmerich. “Patrick Wilson’s Harper is the only guy who saw it and what happened. The problem is that [he got] only glimpses of it, and because of that, nobody believes him.”
The scene ends with the unidentified culprit returning to its moon base. So what is the alien life form hell-bent on interplanetary mayhem?
“It’s a technical being, a nanoswarm, in a sense,” Emmerich confirmed. “I don’t want to give too much away, but it has been created by whoever built the moon. Years later, this thing finally made it inside the moon and [it’s] wreaking havoc and crashes the moon into our Earth to try and extinguish all life.”
The filmmaker added, “This idea started about nine years ago when I read a book by two British authors called Who Built the Moon? They had this idea that the moon was constructed. Why is it exactly 400 times smaller than the Sun so that it perfectly blocks it out? There’s no other moon, to our knowledge, like that. It was a cool idea, and I went with it.”
The second scene that the Independence Day director shared is focused on the idea that Berry’s character doesn’t buy what she’s being sold when it comes to explaining what happened in space in the opening scene.
“Harper is the guy who landed a shuttle without electronics, but he gets blamed for everything that went wrong on that mission,” Emmerich said. “Fowler is now the Acting Director of NASA and confronts him about what’s happening on the moon.”
It’s a technical being, a nanoswarm, in a sense. It has been created by whoever built the moon.
The scene contains the least action of what was shown that day, but nicely cements the conceit that Fowler believes her friend and he is the only one who knows that the threat they face is very real and that he’s not an astronaut who made mistakes - or did something far worse.
The third scene on offer at Emmerich’s Centropolis Entertainment offices in Los Angeles takes place on Earth as the moon is on a rapid trajectory towards our planet. That has a catastrophic effect on this planet’s gravity, creating wildly destructive phenomena such as a tsunami-like “gravity wave.” One of the things in its path is the NASA base where Fowler, Harper, and John Bradley’s KC Houseman are based.
“It’s Houseman who theorizes that because the moon has much more gravity, they can use that to their advantage and help get them and their shuttle to the moon,” he explained.
The director also spoke about the casting that went into Moonfall.
“The first person I wanted to have for the movie was Halle Berry because I always liked her, and I thought she was perfect for it. It’s almost like I have certain people in mind, and I needed a strong woman for this. Halle has an attitude that worked perfectly for this. Luckily, she said yes. Patrick Wilson was a given. I worked with him on Midway, and I loved him. Then I discovered this English actor in Game of Thrones, John Bradley. We had one Zoom call, and I was in love with him too. That was it for me. I had my trio.”
The next scene Emmerich offered up takes place after Fowler, Harper, and Houseman successfully make it to the moon and are making their way into the depths of the natural satellite itself.
Although unfinished at the time, the detail and scale of the nanoswarm nest is breathtaking and, even on an edit bay monitor, it was clear to see that it is on a par with everything Emmerich has committed to the big screen previously. Creating the complex techno organism also posed the most significant creative challenge.
“The biggest problem was the swarm,” he recalled. “There were endless discussions about that, and we had two companies doing them. One had to do the outside swarms, and one had to do the swarms inside the moon. We had to bring those together, exchange files, and things like that. I think that was the most complicated challenge for us.
“Almost nothing on Moonfall was physically there. When I started with Independence Day, what I was working with was mostly real, and I was using models. Now almost everything is made by the computer. Very little is real.”
However, there was one thing that Emmerich had no option other than to have on set. That was the space shuttle - or at least part of it.
“The Endeavor cockpit itself could be taken apart so we could film inside it from various angles,” he mused. “It was in two or three pieces and was an actual training cockpit for astronauts. We found it in Florida. Some guy had taken it from NASA and put it in a museum that went bankrupt, and we bought it. We did what we needed to do and put [electronics] in it, and then when we were done, we made a deal with somebody else to sell it to them.”
Even though he was happy to screen clips in the edit bay, the filmmaker remained committed to not giving too much away, including when he created Moonfall’s trailer.
“For me, that’s really important. I never want to give the story away,” Emmerich concluded. “I want to whet the appetite of the audience and hope people go see it. I’m very strict when it comes to the trailer. I’m like, ‘Don’t f**king give the story away.’ I hate that. That comes with a set of problems because I have the feeling today people want to see the whole film as a trailer and say yay or nay based on whether you give them the whole story. I don’t understand that. It’s peculiar.”
Emmerich happily admitted that he sees Moonfall as the first film in a trilogy. He’s mapped out the arc and hopes to film the second and third film back-to-back, but he admits that of course depends on how successful the first one is. Moonfall opens in theaters and on IMAX on February 4.
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“It’s this certain style of movie that I think we invented. There is a certain cheesiness to it, but there’s also realism, a lot of action, and then there are a lot of jokes,” he explained as he rolled out four scenes to provide a taste of what audiences can expect when the film hits theaters on February 4, 2022. “We don’t take ourselves too seriously.”
Moonfall also doesn’t waste any time. Within two and half minutes of the first clip, which is also the movie’s opening scene, the cast, including Halle Berry and Patrick Wilson, make first contact with their adversary in space.
The movie is about a mysterious force that knocks the moon from its orbit of Earth, setting it on a collision course with our home planet. Berry plays NASA executive and former astronaut Jo Fowler while Wilson is astronaut Brian Harper. Moonfall starts with a scene where Harper and another of his crew are making repairs to their Endeavor shuttle in space.
At first, we see the entity reflecting in Harper’s helmet as he stares in disbelief, watching it hurtle towards them, about to hit them dead on.
“The only people who witness it are these three astronauts, but one dies and another, Halle Berry’s character, is unconscious,” explained Emmerich. “Patrick Wilson’s Harper is the only guy who saw it and what happened. The problem is that [he got] only glimpses of it, and because of that, nobody believes him.”
The scene ends with the unidentified culprit returning to its moon base. So what is the alien life form hell-bent on interplanetary mayhem?
“It’s a technical being, a nanoswarm, in a sense,” Emmerich confirmed. “I don’t want to give too much away, but it has been created by whoever built the moon. Years later, this thing finally made it inside the moon and [it’s] wreaking havoc and crashes the moon into our Earth to try and extinguish all life.”
The filmmaker added, “This idea started about nine years ago when I read a book by two British authors called Who Built the Moon? They had this idea that the moon was constructed. Why is it exactly 400 times smaller than the Sun so that it perfectly blocks it out? There’s no other moon, to our knowledge, like that. It was a cool idea, and I went with it.”
The second scene that the Independence Day director shared is focused on the idea that Berry’s character doesn’t buy what she’s being sold when it comes to explaining what happened in space in the opening scene.
“Harper is the guy who landed a shuttle without electronics, but he gets blamed for everything that went wrong on that mission,” Emmerich said. “Fowler is now the Acting Director of NASA and confronts him about what’s happening on the moon.”
It’s a technical being, a nanoswarm, in a sense. It has been created by whoever built the moon.
The scene contains the least action of what was shown that day, but nicely cements the conceit that Fowler believes her friend and he is the only one who knows that the threat they face is very real and that he’s not an astronaut who made mistakes - or did something far worse.
The third scene on offer at Emmerich’s Centropolis Entertainment offices in Los Angeles takes place on Earth as the moon is on a rapid trajectory towards our planet. That has a catastrophic effect on this planet’s gravity, creating wildly destructive phenomena such as a tsunami-like “gravity wave.” One of the things in its path is the NASA base where Fowler, Harper, and John Bradley’s KC Houseman are based.
“It’s Houseman who theorizes that because the moon has much more gravity, they can use that to their advantage and help get them and their shuttle to the moon,” he explained.
The director also spoke about the casting that went into Moonfall.
“The first person I wanted to have for the movie was Halle Berry because I always liked her, and I thought she was perfect for it. It’s almost like I have certain people in mind, and I needed a strong woman for this. Halle has an attitude that worked perfectly for this. Luckily, she said yes. Patrick Wilson was a given. I worked with him on Midway, and I loved him. Then I discovered this English actor in Game of Thrones, John Bradley. We had one Zoom call, and I was in love with him too. That was it for me. I had my trio.”
The next scene Emmerich offered up takes place after Fowler, Harper, and Houseman successfully make it to the moon and are making their way into the depths of the natural satellite itself.
Although unfinished at the time, the detail and scale of the nanoswarm nest is breathtaking and, even on an edit bay monitor, it was clear to see that it is on a par with everything Emmerich has committed to the big screen previously. Creating the complex techno organism also posed the most significant creative challenge.
“The biggest problem was the swarm,” he recalled. “There were endless discussions about that, and we had two companies doing them. One had to do the outside swarms, and one had to do the swarms inside the moon. We had to bring those together, exchange files, and things like that. I think that was the most complicated challenge for us.
“Almost nothing on Moonfall was physically there. When I started with Independence Day, what I was working with was mostly real, and I was using models. Now almost everything is made by the computer. Very little is real.”
However, there was one thing that Emmerich had no option other than to have on set. That was the space shuttle - or at least part of it.
“The Endeavor cockpit itself could be taken apart so we could film inside it from various angles,” he mused. “It was in two or three pieces and was an actual training cockpit for astronauts. We found it in Florida. Some guy had taken it from NASA and put it in a museum that went bankrupt, and we bought it. We did what we needed to do and put [electronics] in it, and then when we were done, we made a deal with somebody else to sell it to them.”
Even though he was happy to screen clips in the edit bay, the filmmaker remained committed to not giving too much away, including when he created Moonfall’s trailer.
“For me, that’s really important. I never want to give the story away,” Emmerich concluded. “I want to whet the appetite of the audience and hope people go see it. I’m very strict when it comes to the trailer. I’m like, ‘Don’t f**king give the story away.’ I hate that. That comes with a set of problems because I have the feeling today people want to see the whole film as a trailer and say yay or nay based on whether you give them the whole story. I don’t understand that. It’s peculiar.”
Emmerich happily admitted that he sees Moonfall as the first film in a trilogy. He’s mapped out the arc and hopes to film the second and third film back-to-back, but he admits that of course depends on how successful the first one is. Moonfall opens in theaters and on IMAX on February 4.
Continue reading...