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The Wandering Earth(2019)
CMC Pictures Feb 5, 2019 | Limited
As the sun is dying out, people all around the world build giant planet thrusters to move Earth out of its orbit and sail Earth to a new star system. Yet the 2500-year journey comes with unexpected dangers, and in order to save hu...
Releases
Original Release | Feb 5, 2019
Box Office
Results
$1,685,287
$5,971,413
$694,021,099
$699,992,512
Director & Top Cast
Technical Specifications
Sound Mix: Dolby Atmos
Aspect Ratio: 2.55 : 1
Other Details
Country of Origin: China
Summaries
Plot Summary
- The story was written more than 20 years ago by the most famous Sci-Fi writer in China, Liu CiXin, who is also the executive producer of this film. It tells the first part of the story. The whole novel can easily become a trilogy. The time is in the early 22nd century. The Sun goes through a rapidly deteriorating phrase. In 100 years it will destroy the earth. In order to survive, human society goes through a drastic change: all the countries are merged to form the "United Earth Government (UEG)". They build 10,000 gigantic heavy-material-fusion propulsion engines to slowly push the Earth out of the original orbit. It takes 20 years to reach the Jupiter, which its massive gravity should serve as the sling for the frozen Earth to accelerate through. Yet things go very wrong in that faithful day, when Earth is passing the Jupiter. The protagonist, Liu Qi (nicknamed Hu Kou, kind of an inside joke of Chinese), is a young machinist of heavy trucks. He smuggles some special instant inflatable bubble capsules to the local thugs, in exchange of special suits to go outside of the underground bunker. He brings his little sister along for her favor of stealing his grandpa's truck key. After slipping through the thugs' chasing they get into an elevator to the surface. Outside they are awed to see the huge structure called "earth engine", which is only one of the 10,000. They find the special truck their grandpa drives and use the stolen key card to drive it. Just when the joy ride is almost over, they are caught and thrown into jail. Their grandpa comes and tries to bride the jail warden, only gets thrown into the same cell as Liu Qi's. Meanwhile on a space station called "The Navigator", their father, Liu Pei Qiang, is getting ready to return to earth. It is his last shift, and it's exactly the same day the Earth is supposed to glide past the Jupiter and accelerate to achieve the necessary speed of flying out of the solar system. Suddenly Jupiter's gravity becomes irregular and the Earth has a huge tremor. Many earth engine go offline, and the underground cities are crushed or drown by lava. Liu Qi, his sister and the grandpa escaped the prison with a cellmate called Tim. Grandpa drive his heavy truck and narrowly escapes death. In the space station, the main computer AI, called MOSS, warns everyone that the space station will go into low energy mode, and they should go back to their sleeping bay. Liu Pei Qiang, the father, calls the grandpa and is surprised to learn that they are in a truck together. He directs the truck to the nearest bunker. After that he goes to his quarter and prepare to hibernate. The truck is intercepted by a team of elite Chinese soldiers. They need the truck to tow a precious cargo called "lighter core", which can be used to ignite earth engines. The grandpa is not happy but has to obey their order. The father calls again and request the captain of the team to let them go into a bunker, for that the captain promises they will let everyone go except the grandpa for his job of driving. After some time, the grandpa drives them to Shanghai, where the huge tremor has torn open a long gap, showing the old city covered by ice. As the truck goes into the gap, the grandpa tell stories about his memories in the city. (A deleted scene shows thousands of people frozen solid in the ice, revealing the sister's origin. She is among the few survivors of that disaster.) A second tremor hit and cliffs on both sides of the gap start collapsing. Everyone has to abandon their vehicles to go into the tallest building of Shanghai. In the effort of escaping the team loses a soldier, and the grandpa dies when the tall building collapses. Liu Qi blames his death on the captain, and refuses to continue. The elite team carries the lighter core themselves and march toward the earth engine in Hangzhou, while Liu Qi, his sister and Tim go their way back toward their home. In the space station, just after the hibernation program starts, Liu Pei Qiang, the father, learns from MOSS that the grandpa's truck is missing, the ground has a new round of chaos, and the AI is preparing to leave Earth behind. He struggles to break the circuits inside the bay and gets out from it. MOSS the AI wakes up other members in his team, trying to rectify the situation, but the Russian teammate, Markarov, decides to help him instead. They open a hatch closest to the control center and flies out into the vacuum. To reach the control center, Markarov sacrifices himself and pushes Liu toward a moving arm. Liu gets hold of the exterior of the control center and gets in by overriding a hatch's control. On the earth, Liu Qi, the son, and his companions finds a crashed plane with a truck intact. Inside that truck, they meet the sole survivor, a crazy genius, Li, who told them that the Jupiter's gravity is sucking Earth's atmosphere to such a degree that the air is too thin to even fly the plane, thus the crash. He asks them to rescue a torque engine (bigger earth engine) in Sulaweisi in the equator. The truck is their last chance to turn back and go home, yet Liu Qi decides to rescue the earth engine in Hangzhou first. In the space station, Liu PeiQiang, the father, gets into the computer room and tries to override MOSS, yet the AI informs him that it is merely carrying out orders authorized by the Unite Earth Government. The ship Navigator contains all the necessary DNA and materials to start the civilization in a distant planet. So even if the Earth fell into Jupiter, the human race will continue. Outside of Hangzhou, the elite team finds out that the whole city is lost to the lava. The earth engine there is damaged beyond repairing. A teammate died from the bitter cold. They have a fight about whether to continue the mission. A female soldier shoots at the lighter core and breaks it. The captain almost kills her for it. Just when they are all desperate, the truck driven by Liu Qi shows up, and they now have a new mission: escort the other lighter core inside the truck to Sulaweisi. When they finally almost reach Sulaweisi, some other teams has successfully repaired the engines before them. However, the reading shows that the Earth is still heading toward Jupiter. All the engines' force combined cannot make Earth escape the gravity well of Jupiter. In the space station, after MOSS explains to Liu that all the rescue missions are actually useless, it opens a channel to the Earth and broadcast to everyone that they have only 7 days, until the earth get torn apart. Listening the bad news, the genius Li cries that they actually have only one day to live, while the air of the earth being sucked by Jupiter at that rate. Watching the tremendous Jupiter looming over his head, Liu Qi suddenly has an idea: Earth's oxygen mixed with Jupiter's Hydrogen can be ignited and generate a big boom. Li agrees with him, so he develops a new plan to rescue the Earth: Liu and Tim drive the truck to deliver the lighter core; elite soldiers push a giant igniter pin, Li and another tech will go to the control room, and Liu's sister and the female soldier will go to the communication room. The plan suffers major setbacks: the core is delivered but machine is stuck, soldiers have too little manpower to push the pin, Li's program is uploaded but freeze at 99%, Liu's sister's call for help get no response. She suddenly realizes that she can make an emergency call to the space station and ask for Liu PeiQiang's help. Liu receive the call, but MOSS tells him that someone else already had this idea, and the successful chance is zero, but he still calls the UEG and pleas for authorization. UEG only agrees to broadcast the sister's message to all remaining rescuers. Liu's sister cries and beg for the hope to save Earth. Many rescuers return and help the soldiers pushing the giant pin. Liu Qi, the son, finally get the machine unstuck, then they drive the truck running away from the engine. Everything is ready except the launch program. The tech is badly hurt by falling rocks, but he manages to put the right cable in the socket. The program finally get uploaded 100%. The genius Li starts the program, right after Liu's truck barely makes it outside. The torque engine (the bigger earth engine) shoot a straight red light toward the giant eye of the Jupiter, but the power cannot reach the ignition area. It is short by 5000km. The father, Liu PeiQiang, remembers that the Navigator has 30,000 tons of fuel, which should generate a 5000km of flame if ignited. The AI, MOSS, tries to stop him but fails. Liu burns the computer and manually drives the space station toward the red light. Before the space station is destroyed by the red light, the two Liu have a final conversation. The father repeats that when you look at the Jupiter, you will see me. The son looks up at the huge red eye above and see his father's ship turns into a fire ball. Jupiter's atmosphere is burning. A gigantic impact wave is coming. People scramble to get into the underground bunker. Liu Qi find his sister with Tim, but the elevator is broken. The genius Li advises them to hide under the torque engine, which they complies, but before they can reach the engine, the impact wave arrives and destroys the truck they are riding, throwing them out. Tim holds on a pipe, but Liu sees his sister dropping down so he falls toward her. In the air he catches her and deploys an instant bubble capsule, which saves both of their lives. Liu's helmet is broken by the fall. The cold air is killing him. The last glimpse he catches tells him that the Earth survives the ordeal, then he closes his eyes... Time jumps to three years later. Earth goes on. Liu Qi becomes a junior driver. Everyone respects him and smiles at him. Their journey will continue in the next movie, perhaps. The first one is already good enough.
Storyline
- The sun is dying out. The earth will soon be engulfed by the inflating sun. To save the human civilization, scientists draw up an escape plan that will bring the whole human race from danger. With the help of thousands of infusion powered engines, the planet earth will leave the solar system and embark on a 2,500 year journey to the orbit of a star 4.5 light years away. In the near future, when the inflating Sun is threatening all lives on Earth, governments are united together to carry out an ambitious plan: building thousands of gigantic thrusters on the ground to push our planet out of the solar system. They call it "Project Wandering Earth". 17 years later, the plan is in danger of catastrophic failure when the Earth is traveling near Jupiter. With only 37 hours to spare, teams of rescuers rush to save the Earth from colliding with Jupiter. A young man, Liu Qi, his sister and his grandpa are involuntarily involved in this biggest rescue mission of the history. Together, they will encounter many difficulties along the road, they will revisit their past, and they will feel desperation and hope. This is a story about uniting all humans to face enormous challenges, about strong feelings between father and son, and most importantly, about hope in despair. Years later, when the sun was in danger of aging and eventually exploding, people on earth built several engines to escape to neighboring stars. However, when the earth sailed to Jupiter, because of some failures, the earth could not escape Jupiter's gravity. The hero, Liu's father, works on the space station. When he discovered that the space station explosion could ignite Jupiter's gas, he piloted the space station to ignite Jupiter.
