My Thoughts on “The French Dispatch 🇫🇷” and “Moonfall 🌕”
Foreword:
This was originally written and posted on DeviantART on Sunday February 20, 2022. This will be the first repost that I’ve posted on here in a while. The last repost I did was the Kikyo one, and was a whole month ago. Every other post since then has been an original post. Which is good, it means that I’m not solely reliant on reposts, and I have plenty of new things to write about, but I still got a lot of old stuff that I want to repost on here. Stuff that I think is still good and worth reposting. And this here, this double feature review is one of them.
Originally, I had planned this to be the first post of April this year (2025), but because I got sick a couple of weeks ago, I had to put it off, and my Venom: The Last Dance review ended up being my first post of April. This is the second time in a row that I’ve opened a month out with a movie review. The first time was in March with The Killer’s Game, a movie that my grandma and I have been waiting to for months, ever since we first saw the trailer for it, and barely got to see it last month. Just like Venom: The Last Dance, it was a 2024 movie that we missed, that we didn’t get to see when it was still in theaters and barely got to see this year. If you’re interested in reading my review of The Killer’s Game, click here.
So far, I haven’t seen any new movies in 2025, so I hope that there aren’t a bunch of movies from this year that I won’t be able to get to until next year, 2026. My eyes are currently on A Working Man ♂︎, the latest Jason Statham movie from director David Ayer, and I’m hoping to watch Plankton: The Movie, which I did actually write a post about when the trailer came out, if I can gain access to Netflix. I’m thinking of watching and reviewing the other SpongeBob 🧽 movie that’s set to come out this year, The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants 🧽, but that won’t come out until December, and we know pretty much nothing about other than it’s going to be directed by Derek Drymon, a storyboard artist and animator who worked on the earlier seasons of the show (the first three that everyone likes), and it’s going to have something to do with the Flying Dutchman.
I also consider watching the other two SpongeBob 🧽 movies that preceded that one, The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water 🧽💦 and The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run 🧽, and the other Netflix spinoff movie that preceded Plankton: The Movie, Saving Bikini Bottom: The Sandy Cheeks Movie 🐿️. I have actually seen and reviewed Sponge Out of Water 🧽💦 before. I wrote a review for it back when it originally came out in 2015, but I’m going to write it a completely new review for it for this blog because it’s been so long since I’ve watched it, it’ll be a rewatch for me, and I’ll be viewing it through an adult lens.
Then, maybe Mickey 17, I wasn’t originally going to watch this (it didn’t look like a movie that would interest me), but after thinking about for a little bit, I figured that since I’m planning on reviewing The Host (2006), I might as well as also watch and review Bong Joon-ho’s latest movie. I’m also thinking of reviewing Snowpiercer ❄️, Bong Joon-ho’s first English language movie before Mickey 17, which is his second English language movie.
I was even thinking of checking an even older movie of his, from 2003, Memories of Murder 🔎, which is a neo-noir detective 🕵️♂️ crime thriller movie, sort of in the vein of Seven (or Se7en as it’s often stylized as), or David Fincher’s other crime thriller movie, Zodiac. It’s actually probably a bit closer to Zodiac (before Zodiac even came out or was even a thing at all) since it is heavily inspired by the real life rape-murders in Hwaseong, Gyeonggi Province carried out by serial killer Lee Choon-jae (colloquially known as the Hweseong Murderer) from 1986 to 1994, which were the first confirmed serial murders in South Korea 🇰🇷’s entire history.
It stars the same actor from The Host (2006), Song Kang-ho, he’s an actor that Bong Joon-ho features in pretty much all of his movies, including Snowpiercer ❄️. He’s like what Samuel L. Jackson is to Quentin Tarantino, or what Owen Wilson is to Wes Anderson, or what Robert De Niro is to Martin Scorsese, or what Bruce Campbell is to Sam Raimi, or what Joseph Gordon Levitt is to Rian Johnson, or what Denzel Washington was to Tony Scott, or what Michael Rooker is to James Gunn. A lot of directors have that one actor that they like to work with on nearly all of their movies.
In the case of directors like Christopher Nolan and the Coen Brothers, they have a few actors that they like to work with on every movie they make, like Chris Nolan works with the same actors he worked on a previous movie he made. Like, I’m pretty sure he only cast Tom Hardy, Marion Cotillard, and Joseph Gordon Levitt in The Dark Knight Rises because he already worked with on his previous movie, Inception. The same thing with Anne Hathaway, I’m pretty sure he only cast her in Interstellar because he already worked with her on The Dark Knight Rises, the movie he made before Interstellar. Same thing with Kenneth Branagh, only casted him in Tenet because he was in Dunkirk. And of course, Cillian Murphy only got the role as Robert Oppenheimer in Oppenheimer because he was in the Dark Knight trilogy as Scarecrow/Dr. Jonathan Crane. He’s only other actor was in all three movies besides Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, and Gary Oldman. He’s the only Batman villain who was in all three movies.
Speaking of which, I guess the closest thing to an actor that Nolan consistently likes to work with on all of his movies is Michael Caine, who didn’t start appearing in Nolan movies until Batman Begins, when he was cast as Alfred Pennyworth, and then he was in pretty much every movie he made since. I think the only Nolan movie he wasn’t in was Oppenheimer, Nolan’s most recent movie, but I’m not sure. I’m pretty sure he’s not in it, but I’m not 100% certain, I haven’t seen it. And if I’m feeling so inclined, I’ll even consider watching Parasite, Bong Joon-ho’s most popular movie by far (the movie that earned him an Oscar for Best Director), even though I think it’s completely overhyped and a bit overrated dare I say. But first, I gotta tackle Parasyte with a y, including the original anime, the two-part live action movie, and the most recent South Korean live action series 🇰🇷 on Netflix.
I may even consider watching and reviewing Okja, another monster movie that Bong Joon-ho made and was released on Netflix in 2017, except it’s about a good monster rather than an evil monster like the one in The Host (2006). It’s probably better described as a fantasy movie, which is how it’s described on Wikipedia (it’s described as a science fantasy action-adventure film), as it is a more whimsical type of film about a kid and their unlikely friend or pet. In this case, a genetically engineered super pig 🐖🧬. Though, it is not a kid’s movie per se, even though it stars a kid. The main character is a little girl ♀︎, and it’s about her trying to save her pet super pig 🐖 named Okja from being killed and being sold as meat by a meat corporation. It has an anti-capitalist message, or at least a message that’s very critical of capitalism, like a lot of Bong Joon-ho’s movies.
Then, I was maybe considering watching Novocaine (2025), and if I do, then I’ll also review the completely unrelated 2001 Steve Martin black comedy of the same name, watching a movie that most people probably haven’t even heard of and definitely did not see, Rule Breakers, which is about Afghan girls 🇦🇫♀︎ competing in some sort of technology competition, starting a feminist movement ♀︎ inside of Afghanistan 🇦🇫 resisting the Taliban’s rule and oppression of women ♀︎. I already talked about this at length in the foreword of the Kikyo post, so I won’t repeat it here.
There’s also Shadow Force (2025), which stars Kerry Washington and Omar Sy and is sort of like Spy Kids for adults, like the plot is pretty much the same as the first Spy Kids movie except it’s entirely focused on the parents and not the kids. In this case, Kerry Washington and Omar Sy’s characters have only one kid (a boy ♂︎) whereas Gregorio and Ingrid Cortez (Antonio Banderas and Carla Gugino’s characters in the Spy Kids movies) had two (a boy ♂︎ and a girl ♀︎). That’s the best way I can describe it based on what I saw in the trailer. It’s directed by Joe Carnahan, the director of Smokin’ Aces, Narc, and the 2010 A-Team movie. He also directed The Grey 🐺, the Liam Neeson wolf movie 🐺. It looks pretty good, I’m willing to check it out when it comes out in theaters in May, if we have the money 💵 to see a movie in theaters by then.
Then there’s The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie, the Looney Tunes movie that was released last month and Warner Bros. wrote off as a tax write off and barely did any advertising for when Ketchup Entertainment acquired it for a theatrical release. I might give that one a watch if it’s available anywhere after it leaves theaters because I know I probably won’t be able to see it while it’s still in theaters. I also learned recently that Ketchup Entertainment also acquired Coyote vs. Acme, another Looney Tunes movie that was complete or near complete that Warner Bros. tried to bury and delete out of existence as a tax write off, and they’re going to release it in theaters just they did The Day the Earth Blew Up.
I’m glad that movie’s finally going to get a release because I heard it was pretty good, and it was filmed in New Mexico too 😁, and even takes place in New Mexico if I’m remembering that plot synopsis right from that one video I saw talking about the movie based on the information we have right now. But everyone who’s looking forward to watching Coyote vs. Acme will have to wait until 2026. I have a bunch of 2025 movies on my list of movies, shows, and games that I want to review (they’re all color coded to indicate which one is a movie, which one is a show, and which one is a game, and even which ones are OVAs and ONAs), I don’t remember all of them because not all of them have the years listed. Just the ones that share a title with another movie that came out years before. Jurassic World Rebirth is still my most anticipated movie of this year, it’s the movie I’m most interested in seeing, and you can be damn sure that it’s on my list.
Since I mentioned Owen Wilson and Wes Anderson before, I guess I better talk about the movies at hand, the main topic of this post: The French Dispatch 🇫🇷 and Moonfall 🌕. Two diametrically opposed movies. Then, I’ll talk about a couple more news topics. I mean, they’re not really news anymore, one of them isn’t, but they’re things that I want to talk about but had no other venue to talk about them. Originally, the title of this post when it was still a journal on DeviantART was “My Thoughts on Moonfall 🌕 and The French Dispatch 🇫🇷,” but when I decided that to repost this on my blog, I decided to switch the order of the titles of the movies discussed in this review. Since I talked about The French Dispatch 🇫🇷 first, I thought it only made sense to put that one first in the title of this post and then put Moonfall 🌕.
Also, I want to mention real quick that I was looking my other old DeviantART to see if I ever wrote a review of Fantastic Four (2015) AKA FANT4STIC, because I started thinking about that movie again after I mentioned it in my Venom: The Last Dance review, and it turns out that I did. I don’t plan on reposting that exactly review, I’m planning on writing a re-review, since it’s been so long since I’ve seen the movie and I wrote that review when I was a teenager, and a lot has changed since then. Changed in me. I also discovered that I wrote a review of Focus (2015), that Will Smith and Margot Robbie crime comedy drama movie that hardly anyone remembers or talks about anymore. That movie was their first collaboration prior to Suicide Squad (2016). I completely forgot I wrote a review to that. I was just going to watch it again and write a completely new review for it (which I still plan to do) after I started listening to the soundtrack again and thinking about the movie again, but I had no idea that I had written a review of it already when it first came out.
I haven’t seen either of these movies in a long time, I did see Moonfall 🌕 again months after I saw it in theaters because I got it on Blu-Ray 💿 as a Christmas gift 🎄, but I have not watched The French Dispatch 🇫🇷 since I watched it on Blu-Ray 💿 for this review because I disliked it that much. Yes that’s right, I hated this movie. Even though I haven’t mentioned it much since this review both on DeviantART and off it like on this blog, whenever I do mention it, I’ve made no secret of my disdain for this movie. I think it might’ve singlehandedly made me swear off Wes Anderson movies entirely. I have no interest in watching any of his other movies. I had interest in checking out The Grand Budapest Hotel, even I had the entire soundtrack album for it a few years prior, but not anymore after watching The French Dispatch 🇫🇷.
I’m not even interested in watching his stop motion animated movies, Fantastic Mr. Fox 🦊 and Isle of Dogs 🐕. I considered it, I considered making an exception with his animated movies especially since people who don’t really care for his movies say that his style works better in animation than it does live action, after thinking about it, no, I will not support anything he does or did by giving him any of my money 💵. Even if, the money 💵 won’t actually go to Wes Anderson but will go to the studios that actually own his movies and the companies that distributed them on home media like Criterion. Criterion sure has been playing favorites with ol’ Wes, they’ve added almost all of his movies to the collection even if they don’t deserve it in my opinion. At least they didn’t add this movie or his latest movie, Asteroid City ☄️ to the collection…yet 🙄.
I just couldn’t get into it, I couldn’t get into Wes Anderson’s style. His style was probably the most infuriating thing about it. Had anyone else directed this, I think it would’ve been a lot better, even though this was his idea. It’s his movie, his vision through and through. But, he’s the reason why it sucked in my opinion. Wes Anderson’s style is an acquired taste and something that you’re either into or you’re not and one of those people who isn’t. I don’t know if this is the case for other people who dislike his movies, but in the case of this movie, it felt like he was prioritizing style over substance, like the style came first before the story or the characters.
But, apparently, people like that because like all of his other movies, this movie got pretty glowing reviews from critics, it has a 75% critic score (as well as a 76% audience score) on Rotten Tomatoes 🍅, which isn’t as high as I thought it would be, but it’s still pretty good, 75% is still considered a fresh rating. It also has a 7.1 out of 10 on IMDb, which is ironically about the same as the IMDb rating for Transformers (2007), so the majority of people who rated this movie on IMDb liked it just as much as that movie. If I were to rate it, even I don’t rate movies anymore, I’d rate it about a 4 or a 3 out of 10, pretty low. I really did not like this movie at all.
It was heavily inspired by the real life magazine, The New Yorker, like the artwork that see in The French Dispatch 🇫🇷 magazine is straight out of The New Yorker, it looks like artwork you’d see in The New Yorker. The cover art looks like New Yorker cover art. The French Dispatch 🇫🇷, as it’s portrayed in the film, is just The New Yorker if it was based in Ennui-sur-Blasé (a fictional French town 🇫🇷 that Wes Anderson made up and doesn’t actually exist) and not in New York. The movie purports to be a tribute to journalism, but I didn’t really get that sense, that it was a loving tribute to the art of journalism, but rather, I got the sense that it was making fun of journalism and journalists, that it was making of mockery of the profession, and not in a loving way but in a malice kind of way. If I were a journalist, I’d feel insulted by this movie rather than honored.
The story and characters are nothing special, they’re not good at all. First of all, this movie doesn’t really have a story, it doesn’t really have a plot in the traditional sense. It’s just a bunch of disconnected subplots, little vignettes strung to together by the fact that the editor of the magazine (played by Bill Murray) dies towards the beginning of the movie, and that’s the catalyst for everything else that happens in this movie because everyone at the magazine is scrambling to put together one last issue of the magazine before it shuts down for good.
I hated pretty much all of the characters, I really didn’t like a single one. They’re all either journalists who work for the magazine or people who are subjects for stories in the magazine. This is the aspect of the movie that suffers the most from Wes Anderson’s “style,” the characters in his movies are always so annoying. They all talk the same and they act the same, there is very little variety in terms of the personalities of these characters. They’re monotone, deadpan, smart asses who always blunt about how the way they feel, and have these long winded explanations of what they’re doing or what they plan on doing. They all speak in this very robotic way. Some people think it’s funny, but I don’t, I think it’s infuriating.
A lot of people give M. Night Shyamalan shit for the fact that he never writes his characters as real human beings, that M. Night Shyamalan characters don’t act like real human beings, but I feel the same criticism could easily apply to Wes Anderson. It’s like this guy ♂︎ has never really interacted with people before, and is just writing characters based on his own personality and his own little quirks and he thinks people should act, not as they do. Roland Emmerich’s characters act more like real people than any of Wes Anderson’s. I know that’s a blasphemous thing to say for some people but I don’t care. I’m just writing what I feel, what I think.
Also, I don’t like Wes Anderson as a person, like he feels like such an absolutely insufferable human being, like it seems like he’d be annoying to have to work with and be around, and if that on-set audio from the set of Asteroid City ☄️ is actually real, then he’s an abusive asshole. But, even if he’s not, just seems he’s just full of him, like he’s just so far up his own ass that he thinks his shit seems good and everyone else does too, that he doesn’t need to improve or change whatsoever because critics like his movies and he has a dedicated cult-like fanbase that will defend him at every turn. Even if you say even the slightest bad thing about him, they will attack you and give you hate.
He’s just like Quentin Tarantino in that regard, where he’s so full of himself and thinks he’s amazing and thinks he’s one of the greatest directors who ever lived, even though he’s not, and is insufferably smug. Mostly because he’s surrounded by people who never question him, who never criticize him, who never openly disagrees with him and are just yes men who are just there to do what he says no questions asked and tell him what a genius he is. But, like Tarantino, even though not crazy about his movies, I still like the soundtracks to his movies.
Wes Anderson and Quentin Tarantino both have a pretty awesome taste in music, they never skimp out on the music, usually, (some of the soundtracks for Tarantino’s most recent movies haven’t been very good and have been lacking), and it’s one aspect of their movies that I can say is truly great, even if it can be enjoyed without the movie and is probably better without the movie accompanying it. I have no regrets about buying the soundtrack to The Grand Budapest Hotel or the soundtrack to this movie because the music is so good. Even if a lot of it wasn’t even used in the film itself, I don’t remember. I even bought the soundtrack album for Asteroid City ☄️ even though I hated The French Dispatch 🇫🇷 and I had no interest in actually watching Asteroid City ☄️ and Asteroid City ☄️ by all accounts looked just as bad as The French Dispatch 🇫🇷 if not worse.
I only decided to repost this because of Moonfall 🌕, the one of the two movies that I reviewed in this post that I actually liked. Yes, I really did like Moonfall 🌕 and gave it a positive review after I just given The French Dispatch 🇫🇷 a negative review. I have absolutely no shame in saying that I liked a movie about the Moon 🌕 smashing into the Earth 🌎 made by one of the least respected directors in Hollywood more than I liked a movie about a fictional magazine (inspired by the New Yorker) based in France 🇫🇷 made by one of the most respected directors in Hollywood. I like Roland Emmerich more as a director than I do Wes Anderson, and I’d watch any of Roland Emmerich’s movies over any of Wes Anderson’s any day of the week. I do unironically enjoy it just like I do most of Roland Emmerich’s movies (the ones that I’ve seen), and I have absolutely no shame in saying that it’s a good movie. Not a so bad it’s good movie, but an actual good movie. It’s a cool movie with a cool and unique concept: the Moon 🌕 smashing into Earth 🌎…or at least grinding against it or barely missing it.
I don’t know why people thought just the basic concept was ridiculous and laughable 😂, the idea of the Moon 🌕 colliding with the Earth 🌎 is a pretty awesome and terrifying concept. If the Moon 🌕 did actually hit the Earth 🌎, it would be the end of all life as we know it. Not even the outer crust of the Earth 🌎 (the part of the Earth 🌎’s crust that we live on) would survive in such a scenario. It would all just melt away and float around in space for a little bit. It’s a pretty apocalyptic scenario and it already raises the stakes because if the humans don’t find a way to stop the Moon 🌕 from hitting the Earth 🌎, all life on Earth 🌎 would go extinct, not just humans.
Well actually, in this movie, before the big twist is revealed, the scientists at NASA think that the Moon 🌕 would break apart in multiple pieces (a few big chunks and billions or even trillions of smaller pieces) as it got closer to Earth 🌎 because it would be ripped apart by the Earth 🌎’s gravity. So, had the NASA scientists actually been right in this movie, it would been like the Earth 🌎 getting hit by several asteroids ☄️ at once, the worst meteor shower ☄️ imaginable, rather than being hit by one giant moon 🌕.
Yeah, yeah, I know that the Moon 🌕 isn’t a “giant moon 🌕,” it’s either an average sized moon 🌕 or a small moon 🌕, but it’s giant compared to us humans, compared to every city we’ve ever built, every building, every structure, every vehicle, vessel, and aircraft. I believe in PointlessHub’s review of the movie, he said the Moon 🌕 was roughly the same size as the contiguous United States 🇺🇸, and the contiguous United States 🇺🇸 is pretty big, it’s main reason why the United States 🇺🇸 is the third or fourth largest country on Earth 🌎.
I don’t know how accurate this or how accurate the idea of the Moon 🌕 breaking up into pieces as it got closer to Earth 🌎 is. And much has been said about this movie’s scientific accuracy, as in, it’s not very accurate at all. This movie is as unrealistic and scientifically inaccurate as you can get, I’m pretty sure it breaks the laws of physics multiple times. But, the part about the theory of the Moon 🌕 breaking apart as it got closer to Earth 🌎 to due to Earth 🌎’s gravity. Any astronomers or physicists reading this, let me in the comments below.
I mean if people were to accept the idea of the Moon 🌕 being a giant spaceship with a butt on it (get it because it’s called the Moon 🌕 😉) in Invader Zim, or accept the idea of an artificial wormhole space bridge blowing up half of the Moon 🌕 and causing all of the debris to fall down to Earth 🌎 like meteorites ☄️, causing humanity to largely abandon the Earth 🌎 in favor of other colonies in the Solar System in Cowboy Bebop, or even the Earth 🌎’s rotation coming to a complete stop after the core hardens and humans being able to reignite the core by just detonating some nukes ☢️ into it in The Core. Does anyone remember that movie? It had Aaron Eckhart, Harvey Dent himself, and it also coined the term “Unobtainium” before James Cameron ever used it in Avatar (2009).
That movie is pretty much a Roland Emmerich disaster movie in terms of realism and storytelling (definitely not in terms of destruction, I don’t think, it doesn’t match the level of destruction in a Roland Emmerich disaster movie), and yet the people who remember that movie usually hold it higher regard than most people do any of Roland Emmerich’s movies, even his more popular movies like Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow, or even 2012 (2009). Or hell, even the movie Sunshine ☀️ by Danny Boyle (the director of 28 Days Later, Slumdog Millionaire, 127 Hours, and now this year, 28 Years Later), that movie has a pretty implausible premise, the idea that the Sun ☀️ is dimming and dying out and humans can jumpstart it using a few nukes ☢️, like get outta here.
The same thing applies to Andy Weir’s third book 📖 Project Hail Mary (which will soon be a movie starring Ryan Gosling) since it essentially has the same premise as Sunshine ☀️ where the Sun ☀️ is dying and humanity needs to restart it back up again in order to prevent the extinction of all life on Earth 🌎 (all life that relies on the Sun ☀️ to survive that is), except they don’t use nukes ☢️ to restart the Sun ☀️, they use something else. I don’t know what that something else is because I’ve never read the book 📖. Maybe, I’ll find out when I see the movie if it ever comes out. If people can accept any of those other scenarios in a movie, I don’t know why people couldn’t accept the Moon impact 🌕 scenario.
Maybe if the movie had just been about the Moon impact 🌕 scenario, people would’ve had an easier time accepting it and would’ve actually liked it a lot more. I think where the movie lost a lot of people was the introduction of the more sci-fi elements, meaning that the Moon 🌕 is actually an artificial megastructure (a Dyson sphere basically) that was created by humanity millions of years ago (maybe even billions), the Earth 🌎 is not actually humanity’s birth place, humanity originated from another planet entirely, Earth 🌎 was one just last colony, a contingency to preserve the human race and hide them away from the rogue AI they created. And that rogue AI is using the Moon 🌕, the megastructure underneath the crust, to try to wipe out the last remnant of humanity in the universe. Had it not had any of those elements and just a story about the Moon 🌕 crashing into Earth 🌎, I don’t think as many people would’ve had a problem with it and made fun of it so much.
There is actually a video out there that shows what a Moon impact 🌕 would actually look like from a human’s perspective if it actually happened for real. There’s a couple of videos actually, but this is the best one, the most accurate one I believe. It’s by a YouTube channel called MetaBallStudios, and let me tell ya, it is some scary stuff 😟. It is tremendously well animated and gives you a sense of dread that the movie Moonfall 🌕 didn’t really provide because it wanted to be a science fiction movie more than it wanted to be a pure disaster movie. It makes it pretty clear that if the Moon 🌕 did actually collide with the Earth 🌎, we’d be doomed. There’s no surviving it, no escape, it’s just the fucking end. I’d highly recommend you check it out. This channel also made a video about what different sized asteroids ☄️ would be like if they hit Earth 🌎 (including one that’s moon-sized or close to moon size 🌕), it’s pretty great stuff too.
But, I never had a problem with the more out there sci-fi elements. As much as I would’ve loved it if the movie was just about the Moon 🌕 hitting the Earth 🌎 it didn’t involve aliens 👽 (really ancient space-faring humans) or a rogue AI bent on humanity’s extinction, these elements did add something special to the movie and did help make it unique and stand out from other big disaster movies. It makes it into a movie you just got to see and talk about, a movie you have to see to believe. It sort of reminds of the lore and worldbuilding in Jupiter Ascending a little bit. It also makes it into more of a straight up science fiction movie, which Roland Emmerich clearly wants to do.
He’s been wanting to do a science fiction movie since Independence Day: Resurgence was his first attempt at trying to make his own Star Wars, an expansive sci-fi universe with many different aliens and a galaxy or even universe spanning conflict. Independence Day 3 would’ve been entirely a space movie, having very little if any disaster movie elements. Then he wanted to make a Stargate sequel, the Stargate 2 he never got the chance to make, which got canceled after the box office failure of Independence Day: Resurgence. Then, he made this movie, and he got closer to making his sci-fi space movie than ever before. It even some egregious sequel bait teasing a more space faring adventure just like Independence Day: Resurgence did.
That’s why all of the disaster movies elements and destruction scenes in these feel more like an obligation than anything else. He’s only putting them in because that’s what he’s known for, and what expect from him. They don’t care about his desires to make a sci-fi space epic like Star Wars. They just want to see him tear down buildings and blow shit up 💥, even his heart isn’t really in it anymore. It’s why the destruction in both Independence Day: Resurgence and Moonfall 🌕 isn’t as visually interesting as the destruction in Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow, or 2012 (2009).
But, it didn’t work out for him because just like Independence Day: Resurgence, Moonfall 🌕 didn’t make anywhere near enough money 💵 to justify a sequel, making only $67.5 million 💵 of its $150 million budget 💵 back. The production budget was $136 million-$146 million 💵, so that $150 million 💵 amount counts marketing and distribution costs. Making it a huge embarrassment and one of the biggest box office bombs 💣 in history. That $150 million budget 💵 BTW makes it one of the most expensive independently produced movies of all time. This is not a studio movie, it is an independent movie, Roland Emmerich financed it himself attracting different investors and film companies, which is why the movie has so many logos at the beginning. Can’t say it’s corporate slop 🤷♂️, this was the work of a real artist with a vision 😉.
And to be clear, Roland Emmerich made no secret of this. He made it pretty clear that this was going to be both a disaster movie and a sci-fi space adventure movie. He specifically described as a “cerebral science fiction film” that makes you question your existence, the origin of humanity, and the nature of the Moon 🌕. I wouldn’t go that far, but he was upfront about it, about what this movie was and what he saw it as and what he wanted people to see it as.
For what it’s worth, I do think the rogue AI made for a decent antagonist. It has a sort of nanotech body, where it’s made out of smaller machines that join together almost like a hive mind, and the shapes that it forms itself into, are mathematically sound, like the animator made so that when the AI changed its shape, it mathematically sound, how a machine would calculate and form those sort of geometric shapes and patterns. It’s kind of the same approach the designers took with the Machine City in The Matrix Revolutions, making it look like something a machine would make based on mathematical models and calculations.
People also took issue with the fact that NASA fired Patrick Wilson’s character, Brian Harper and basically ruined his life after the incident involving the space shuttle at the beginning of the movie after he reported seeing a robotic entity, a nanotech swarm, and that was the thing that killed his and Jocinda Fowler’s colleague, Alan Marcus. Fowler is Halle Berry’s character in case you didn’t know, and Alan is a newcomer, a rookie. Figures, the rookie always dies in these kind of movies. Unless they’re the main character of course 🤷♂️.
Especially when it’s revealed later on that NASA knew all along that there was a rogue AI up there and it was doing something nefarious to the Moon 🌕 and that they actually had a weapon that could stop it but didn’t use. But, that didn’t bother me because the way I saw it, the current people at NASA (the people in the top leadership positions) didn’t know anything about the rogue AI on the Moon 🌕 or about the secret project to stop it, and thus didn’t believe Harper’s story and thought he was lying or he was delusional and was seeing things. And if they did know, then they fired him to maintain the cover up and prevent the whole world from finding out. Either way, they had every reason to fire him, even if it was totally shitty and did ruin his life.
And then people also took issue with the fact that NASA knew about the rogue AI on the Moon 🌕, knew it was a big enough threat that they tried to build a weapon to stop it (they drew up the plans for it), but didn’t move forward with it because of budgetary reasons. Because the US government 🇺🇸 slashed NASA’s budget. People thought this plot point was unrealistic. The people who complained about it and thought about this was unrealistic, have no idea how small NASA’s budget actually is. NASA only has a budget of $25.4 billion 💵, compare that to the US military 🇺🇸’s budget of $895 billion 💵.
It’s pretty much a meme at this point that if NASA had the same budget as the military, we’d be much further along in space travel and space exploration than we are now. We would’ve sent manned missions to Mars, sent new manned missions to the Moon 🌕, and even established a Moon base 🌕 among other many cool things by now. There’s even a couple of videos that I saw showing this, I made a playlist out of it, here I link it to you here so you can watch. NASA’s plan to save the world from an extraterrestrial rogue AI on the Moon 🌕 being ruined by budget cuts is probably the most realistic thing in this entire movie. Also, that Donald Sutherland scene where all of this is explained is so weird to watch after his passing considering that his character essentially commits suicide.
And as for the nukes ☢️ thing, people complained about the US military 🇺🇸 deciding to launch nukes ☢️ at the Moon 🌕 in order to stop it from hitting the Earth 🌎, saying that it was stupid and yeah, I’d agree with that. That’s the whole point. You aren’t supposed to think it’s a smart idea or a good idea, you’re supposed to think it’s a bad idea, or even a stupid idea. Plus, I could see governments (especially our government under this current administration) coming up with an idea like that. When they’re confronted with a potential world-ending catastrophe, they immediately turn to nukes ☢️, thinking nukes ☢️ will solve their problems. It’s the easy option. If an asteroid ☄️ big enough to wipe out humanity was heading towards Earth 🌎, every government’s first thought would be to try to launch nukes ☢️ at it, thinking they can just blast the rock apart. Imagine what they’d do if the Moon 🌕 was heading towards Earth 🌎 and was going to collide with it.
The only part of the movie that I didn’t really like was the conspiracy theory stuff. Not necessarily the Hollow Moon 🌕/Spaceship Moon 🌕 hypothesis which was used as the basis for the premise of the entire movie, but the way the movie portrays conspiracy theorists. The fact that this movie portrays conspiracy theorists in positive light and essentially makes them the heroes always kind of rubbed me the wrong way. Especially when you consider the damage and harm conspiracy theories and conspiracy theorists have done in real life. This isn’t the first time Roland Emmerich has done in one of his movies. He incorporated ancient alien stuff 👽 in Stargate, he incorporated Area 51 and the Roswell incident and validated the alien abduction story 👽 of Russell Case (Randy Quaid’s character) in Independence Day.
He based the plots of The Day After Tomorrow, 2012 (2009), and even 10,000 BC around conspiracy theories and pseudoscience. He included a conspiracy theorist character in 2012 (2009) and made him a sympathetic character who’s proven right in the end. And he made an entire movie about a conspiracy theory, Anonymous which was a movie based entirely on a conspiracy theory that William Shakespeare didn’t actually write a single word of the plays that he was credited writing and he was actually illiterate and couldn’t write, and the plays in question were actually ghost written by someone else. That might just be his worst movie, just on principle. I’m glad that it bombed 💣 and hardly anyone saw it.
That of course begs the question of whether or not Roland Emmerich is a true believer in any of the conspiracy theories he includes in his movies or if he just picked them out because he thought they were cool and would make for a good movie. I think for most of them, no, he’s not a true believer (this is a guy ♂︎ who publicly said that he didn’t believe in aliens 👽 while he was on the press tour for Independence Day), I do think he probably does actually believe in that William Shakespeare stuff and the Atlantis stuff he included in 10,000 BC.
At least he didn’t push any conspiracy theories in Midway (2019) or White House Down. The Patriot 🇺🇸 (2000) may not have conspiracy theories, but it does have a ton of historical inaccuracies, inaccuracies that driven historians absolutely nuts 🤬 ever since that movie came out. I haven’t seen Stonewall (2015), nor do I know much about it other than it’s about the Stonewall riots in New York in 1969. It was a project that was near and dear to Roland Emmerich because he himself is a gay man ⚣, I don’t know if you knew that about him before or not. So, I can’t really say anything about that movie, but I’m willing to bet it probably doesn’t have any conspiracy theories. I think Godzilla (1998) is his one movie (his one disaster movie) that is totally conspiracy theory free, which is probably why it’s one of my favorites and does make me feel guilty or comfortable while watching it. I wrote a review of that, it was the first Roland Emmerich movie that I ever posted a review for on this blog. Go check it out if you’re interested.
I think the best way to look at the conspiracy theory stuff in this movie and his other movies is that this is its own unique world that is nothing like our own and operates on completely different rules than ours, kind of like how we view the Hollow Earth 🌎 stuff in the MonsterVerse. No one who watches the MonsterVerse actually believes the Earth 🌎 is hollow (and if there are, they’re in the minority), they just see it as a cool fixture of that world that they like, an integral piece of the lore that they can accept as being apart of this fictional world.
All of the Elon Musk worshipping in this movie is definitely the thing that aged the worst and is the one thing that is actually indefensible, like the “what would Elon do?” line will go down as one of the most tone deaf and naïve lines in film history. Right up there with “that’s crazy, the government doesn’t lie to people” in Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (AVPR). But, you could say, that’s just part of the character, K.C. Houseman is just an Elon worshipper, and doesn’t realize that he’s part of the problem, he’s just as bad (if not) as the people he rails against. Same thing with the “government doesn’t lie to people” lady ♀︎ in AVPR (who’s name is Darcy Benson BTW), she’s trustful of the government and doesn’t think that they’d ever lie to the American people 🇺🇸, even though she probably shouldn’t. She shouldn’t be so trusting of the government and should be a little bit more skeptical of them. A healthy amount of skepticism, not the unhealthy amount that conspiracy theorists engage in.
One last thing about Moonfall 🌕, since I talked about the music in The French Dispatch 🇫🇷, I do really like the end credits song for Moonfall 🌕. It’s called “One More Time” and it was performed by Luka Kloser, the co-composer Harold Kloser’s daughter (yep, we gotta a case of nepotism here), and it’s a really nice song. It’s one of my favorite end credit songs ever, it fits the movie pretty well, and I think it’s the one aspect about this movie that most people can enjoy unironically. Even though, I’m of course of the few people on Earth 🌎 who enjoys this movie completely unironically. There’s even a music video for it, here it check out. There, I ended this section on a positive note.
There are a few more news topics that I want to discuss before I finally close out this foreword. I wrote an update to my Behind Enemy Lines review where I mentioned Gene Hackman’s recent passing, and I sort of mentioned how people were speculating about the cause of death for both him and his wife Betsy Arakawa. Well, weeks after I wrote that update, they did an autopsy on them, and the New Mexico State Police (or New Mexico Sheriff’s Office or Department of Justice, I don’t exactly know) did a press conference where they announced the cause of death. Gene Hackman died from heart disease 🫀 as well as advanced Alzheimer’s disease and kidney disease, and his wife died from hantavirus.
She contracted from the rats 🐀 that their house was infested with. She died first, and because their house was so big and because he had advanced Alzheimer’s, Gene Hackman had no idea that she had died and her body was on the other side of the house. And without her there to tend to him and take care of him, Gene Hackman died alone and confused, probably not even sure where he was and who he was. Their deaths were really that simple and mundane. It was not a premeditated murder, it was not a gas leak like some people speculated.
I’m actually glad that Arakawa died with him or died before him because had she still been alive, everyone would’ve accused her of murder and assumed that she killed Gene Hackman, even though she didn’t and would never, and the Internet 🛜 would never let her live it down even if it was a false accusation. I mean, the Internet 🛜 hasn’t let Amber Heard off the hook for way less. She basically got victim blamed and Johnny Depp managed to gaslight everyone into thinking she was the abuser and not him. This is the news story that I mentioned earlier that it isn’t really news anymore. It was news when I wrote it in my To Do List as a thing to include in my next post with a foreword, but not anymore.
Last week, if you’ll remember I wrote a post about the Nintendo Direct, Nintendo’s big unveiling, or showcase rather, of their new console, the Nintendo Switch 2, and the games that would be on it, and I mentioned the hubbub about the price for Mario Kart World 🌏🏎️, a flagship title for the Switch 2. Well, the controversy got even worse as more and more of the prices of the games came out, and learned more about the Switch 2 and what’s actually on it, and learned that not all the physical games will have game cards to play the games on, but keys or codes that you have to type into the Nintendo eShop to download the games onto your console, and that Switch 1 games being ported to the Switch 2 will be sold at full price (often more than what they cost originally) and that it will cost money 💵 to upgrade to the higher resolutions and frame rates on the Switch 2. I wouldn’t be surprised if they also did micro transactions too on some of their games, their first party titles.
Plus, Trump’s idiotic tariff announcement on the same day made things even worse as now there were concerns among the consumer base that the price of the console will go up, especially considering that it was already at a pretty steep price at around $449.99 💵. Concerns that were exasperated by Nintendo announcing that all pre-orders for the Switch 2 were delayed indefinitely in order for them to figure out the pricing again in light of Trump imposing tariffs on pretty much the whole planet 🌍🌏. It got so bad that the chat on the Treehouse livestream was filled with nothing but comments saying “drop the price!”, on the console as well as on the games, especially the games. Not everyone complained about the price of the console, and kind of just accepted that it was going to be sold at $450 💵 (pre-Trump tariffs), but the price of the games was the thing that everyone had an issue with.
They don’t want to pay $80 💵 or even $90 💵 for a video game each time a new release comes out, especially when they’ve got bills to pay (barely scrapping by to make ends meet), and Nintendo rarely ever drops the price on any of their games. Once it’s sold at $80 💵 at launch, it will still be sold at $80 💵 5 or 10 years down the line. Nintendo is pricing so many people out of the market by selling the games at those exorbitant prices. They really showed their greed 🤑 and arrogance with this one. Then Nintendo actually responded to the controversy surrounding the pricing of everything involving the Switch 2, and it was about as bad as you would expect it would be coming from a guy ♂︎ named Doug Bowser. This is what happens when hire a guy ♂︎ who used to be a top executive at EA to run the American branch of your company 🇺🇸.
They had so much pride coming off the success of the Switch 1, that they thought they could exploit their consumer base, their loyal fans, and extort them for every penny that they’ve got. Their mindset is, “they’ll buy it, regardless of whatever price it’s sold at.” It’s the same thing that happened when they made the Wii U after the success of the Wii. Except it’s worse than with the Wii U, because a lot more Nintendo fans have woken up to Nintendo’s greed 🤑, arrogance, and utter disrespect for the consumer, and are deciding on either boycotting the Switch 2 and all the games at launch, or pirating all of the games 🏴☠️. This is the kind of stuff that drives people to pirating 🏴☠️.
Nintendo burned pretty much all of the good will they had with their loyal fanbase, and they managed to do it in just a few days. In just a week really. We’ll see how well the Switch 2, or if this backlash will stick, but I’m hoping that the Switch 2 underperforms and doesn’t do well, and it probably won’t because the price will be too high for most people especially once the tariffs take into effect and cause the price of the console to go up. I already don’t intend to buy a Switch 2, at least not for a while, because it’s just too expensive and I have a PS5 that I still gotta play with. Nintendo needs to be humbled, just as they were humbled when the Wii U failed.
Lastly, A Minecraft Movie came out, last Friday. The reaction to this movie is a lot more positive than I ever thought it would be. I thought it was going to be universally hated just like Borderlands (2024) was. But, there are people out there who do genuinely like this movie, and like it a lot. The reaction to this movie is a lot more similar to the Venom movies or Five Nights at Freddy’s (2023) where critics mostly hate it, but enough of the fans and general audiences like it to where it isn’t universally hated and is a box office success. And it is a box office success, it had a pretty good opening weekend, but I don’t know how it will do on the second weekend or what the box office total, but at the moment it seems like it make a lot of money 💵.
I guess brand loyalty goes a long way for certain movies. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, and this was one of those instances where brand loyalty did help. I think Minecraft fans are just happy to finally have a Minecraft movie, even one like this, and they liked all of the references and lore dumps that were clearly catered to them and only they would get. It’s very much the same reason why Mario fans and Nintendo fans in general liked The Super Mario Bros. Movie so much because of all the references.
Though, in the case of that movie, I think a lot more critics liked it than like A Minecraft Movie. It wasn’t considered controversial or weird to like The Super Mario Bros. Movie like it sort of is for A Minecraft Movie, and there wasn’t as much of divide between the critics and fans in terms of how they perceive the movie like there is here. I guess maybe because there a lot more critics who were Mario fans and Nintendo fans or at least have any sort of knowledge about Mario that they were able to get something out of it, whereas here, there aren’t that many critics who like Minecraft, who are Minecraft fans, and know anything about it. There is much more of a generational divide with Minecraft that there isn’t with Mario.
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I just saw Moonfall 🌕 today, in the theaters (an impromptu visit to the theater), and I give my brief thoughts on it. I don't remember all the plot points or all of the character names, or even all of the actors' names, so I'm just going to keep this as brief and as general as I can. But, I also watched The French Dispatch 🇫🇷 the other night as well, and I thought that I might as well give my short and general thoughts on that movie as well. That's why I have both posters on here.
I'll start with The French Dispatch 🇫🇷 since I have the least amount to say about it. It was okay, I didn't really like it that much. I was a bit disappointed with what I saw, and I don't think it's worth much of the hype that I have no doubt that it's gotten. I don't really know what the point of the movie was, like what it was trying to say, if anything. Other than it's a "celebration of journalism," which is what the synopsis on the back of the Blu-Ray case says, but that to me isn't enough. The movie is an anthology, I didn't know that going in, in fact, I didn't really have any expectations. Out of the four stories that are in the movie, I only found one of them interesting or entertaining.
That one was the Jeffery Wright storyline, the one where he's a reporter doing a piece in the French Dispatch 🇫🇷 about a police chef 🧑🍳 (who's played by a Korean actor 🇰🇷 named Stephen Park), and he gets wrapped up in a police case about the police chief's missing son who was kidnapped by a gang lead by a criminal (played by Edward Norton). That was the only one that was engaging, fun, and dynamic.
I especially liked police chases, I liked how they were done in a 2D animation comic-strip art style, that was a unique idea. I also like Jeffery Wright's character, probably my favorite character in the whole movie. That guy ♂︎ has an awesome voice, he should be a narrator in stuff or be a voice actor. I kind of have a feeling that he has done some voice acting, but I'm not quite sure.
The other stories were boring, unengaging, and kind of stupid. I didn't like Owen Wilson's story, the obligatory Owen Wilson cameo/appearance, it was the most pointless story in the whole movie. The only real purpose that story had was establish the setting, this fictional French city 🇫🇷, Ennui-su-Blasé. It contributed nothing else to the movie and was kind of a waste of space in my opinion.
I didn't care at all about the artist story with Benicio del Toro, Adrien Brody, and Léa Seydoux. That story took up most of the run time of the movie, and I literally couldn't care less. What? A fucking prisoner, a literally convicted murderer painted an abstract painting, using a female prison guard as his nude model, and then became famous for it? Whoopdedoo, so interesting 🙄.
Oh, and don't get me started about the Frances McDormand and Timothée Chalamet story. That one was probably worst one of the whole bunch, in my opinion. I don't know, maybe Wes Anderson's style just doesn't appeal to me 🤷♂️. This movie is a bit of an acquired taste, and is not for everyone, I'll give it that. This movie's basically for hipsters and film snobs who think they're way smarter and sophisticated than they actually are, just because they watch movies like this.
The only thing I liked about it was the Jeffery Wright police chef 🧑🍳 story, and the soundtrack, which I downloaded and listen to on a regular basis. Oh, and they showed Léa Seydoux naked, which was nice, she was one hot body 😍. They also showed Tilda Swington naked too briefly, which was nice too. But, speaking about the soundtrack for a brief moment, some of the songs on the album are not in the movie. One example that I can think of is that the Grace Jones song that's on the album, "I've Seen That Face Before (Libertango)" is not in the film.
I don't remember hearing it at any point, and after watching the movie I don't know why it's even on the album at all, other than it's a French song 🇫🇷 and the soundtrack album is filled with nothing but French music 🇫🇷 by French artists 🇫🇷; because you know, the movie takes place in France 🇫🇷. It's an 80s song, and yet, this movie never goes to the 80s at any point. It just sticks to the 1950s, the 1960s, and the 1970s, that's it. No section of the movie takes place in the 1980s.
So, those are my thoughts on The French Dispatch 🇫🇷, a huge disappointment for me. I kind of expected more, and I was thoroughly underwhelmed. I can't really give a recommendation for this one. If you're interesting in watching this movie, then go watch it. Don't let any of what I'm saying deter you. See it for yourself and form your own opinion. It's a Wes Anderson movie, the guy's made what? 10 or 11 movies at this point, you should know what to expect by now.
It's low budget, you can tell that most of the money 💵 was spending on paying for all the big name actors that are in this. Everything looks and feels like a stage play, it's mostly practical, there's very little CGI if any. And all the characters are quirky and awkward, and talk in a very unnatural monotone and calm voice, and/or in a matter of fact kind of way. Wes Anderson's characters don't talk or act like real people, and I think that's the point. They aren't meant to be like real people, they're supposed to be, I don't know, like cartoons because that's what a lot of them feel like. They feel like live-action cartoons.
He even had all of his actor buddies appear in this movie just as he does with all of his movies: Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, Edward Norton, William Defoe, Adrien Brody, and now Tilda Swington. He's just like Quentin Tarantino, where Tarantino will just hire and reuse all his actor buddies that he uses in near all of movies, like Samuel L. Jackson, Michael Madson, Tim Roth, and now Christoph Waltz.
I will say that although I didn't really like this movie, I am willing to give some of Wes Anderson's other movies a chance. I'm still willing to check out The Grand Budapest Hotel, Fantastic Mr. Fox 🦊, Isle of Dogs 🐕, and The Royal Tenenbuams. Maybe those movies are great, and I just picked out his worst one or his weakest one. If I watch any of those and I don't like them either, then I'll just write Wes Anderson off as a director who's movies I just don't like and will avoid.
Anyway, moving onto Moonfall 🌕, I talked way more about The French Dispatch 🇫🇷 then I intended, much more than I can stand. I'll probably end up saying much more about The French Dispatch than Moonfall 🌕 🤦♂️. It was a pretty fun movie, a great big budget sci-fi disaster movie. This is definitely Roland Emmerich's craziest and wackiest movie yet, like it blows 2012 (2009) and Independence Day: Resurgence out of the water 💦 in terms of absurdity and insanity, in a good way.
That's actually the best that I can describe Moonfall 🌕, it's like Roland Emmerich combined 2012 (2009) and Independence Day: Resurgence into one movie, except this movie is actually better than Independence Day: Resurgence, like a huge improvement. All the actors did a pretty good job, I don't remember all of their names. The only ones who's names I remember are Halley Berry because well, it's Halley Berry, and Michael Peña because he's awesome and he's pretty much in everything.
The guy ♂︎ from Watchmen (2009), Aquaman, and The Conjuring movies is in this movie too, the main guy, I just don't remember his name off the top of my head, but he was cool. He was in another Roland Emmerich movie, Midway, and he was pretty great in that. So, yeah, this movie was a total blast, and I highly recommend you watch it, especially if you like Roland Emmerich's other big budget disaster movies.
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Note:
The main actor in Moonfall 🌕's name is Patrick Wilson. I cannot believe that I spaced that out, usually I'm pretty good at remembering actors' names. I like Patrick Wilson, I think he's a pretty great actor and a pretty underrated one at that. I liked him in Watchmen (2009), Aquaman, and Midway, which are coincidentally, the only two other movies I've seen him in. I've never seen the Conjuring movies because they don't interest me.
I don't like ghost/demon haunting movies, mostly because I don't believe in ghosts or demons. I know you don't have to believe in either of those things to enjoy movies like that. But, the Conjuring movies claim to be "based on a true story" or "inspired by real events," so it kind of is a requirement. You have to believe that these stories are true, and that things really did happen and these things really exist to get the full enjoyment out of those movies, otherwise they aren't that effective on you.
But anyway, I just wanted to write this little note at the bottom of this journal to let you all know that I did finally remember the main actor's name in Moonfall 🌕. I don't remember his character's name, but I at least remember the actor's name.
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