THE WANDERING EARTH – Directed by Frant Gwo – SPOILERS ⁓

The science might be a bit outré, but this is really the story of Station Commander Liu, his father-in-law Han Zi’ang (Ng Man-Tat), his son Liu Qi (Qu Chuxiao), and his adopted daughter Han Duoduo (Zhao Jinmai), and how, between the four of them, they save the planet from disaster. It is Lunar New Year, seventeen years after the Earth began a journey to Alpha Centauri (more on that later). Liu is about to end his tour of duty on the space station and return to his family on Earth. On the same day, his son, possibly in celebration of the New Year, steals his grandfather’s identification and takes his sister on an excursion to Earth’s surface.

Most of the Earth’s population lives underground because the temperature on the surface has fallen to -84° Celsius. The main activity there is hauling fuel from the mountains to the engines propelling the planet through the void, and grandpa is a truck driver. Liu Qi and Han use grandad’s ID to steal a truck and are quickly apprehended and jailed. Han Zi’ang tries to bail them out by bribing an official and ends up in jail as well, but the Earth is approaching Jupiter and the planned slingshot maneuver begins. The associated acceleration causes violent earthquakes which enable the three to escape. Several propulsion engines fail putting Earth on course to crash into the gas giant, and the job of restarting the Hangzhou engine eventually falls to Han and her brother, who accomplish that, and also devise a plan to prevent the planetary collision. Without going into detail, the Earth needs an energy boost, and with the aid of Commander Liu they contrive to provide it.

The station has a Russian cosmonaut named Makalov (Arkadiy Sharogradskiy) who provides comedy relief, evoking fond memories of Star Trek’s Pavel Andreievich Chekov.

Five billion years from now the Sun will become a red giant with a radius slightly smaller than the orbit of Mars, then it will shrink and become a white dwarf. THE WANDERING EARTH is loosely based on Liu Cixin’s 2000 science fiction novella that explores what might happen if the sun were to undergo this change a mere one hundred years from now, and calculations show that the solar system will be completely destroyed. The story’s proposed response is The Wandering Earth Project, which is divided into five phases.

Phase One: Construction of 10,000 Earth Engines for propulsion, and an underground city for each engine.
Phase Two: Activation of the torque engines circling the equator to stop Earth’s rotation.
Phase Three: A slingshot maneuver around Jupiter to achieve solar escape velocity.
Phase Four: Once outside the solar system (beyond the Oort Cloud?), the Earth Engines turn on full power, and accelerate to .005 of the speed of light. After 1300 years at that speed, the planet turns and decelerates for another 700 centuries.
Phase Five: Earth enters orbit around Alpha Centauri.

Flying ahead to help the Wandering Earth navigate is a space station containing Project Helios which contains 300,000 human embryos, 100 million seeds of basic crops, DNA maps of all known animals and plant species, and digital libraries of all human civilizations. If the planet for some reason failed to complete the journey, these materials could be used to reconstitute life on another world. When Commander Liu Peiqiang (Wu Jing) is forced to choose between the survival of Project Helios or planet Earth, he sacrifices the 300,000 embryos to save Earth from destruction. (He must battle an American-designed artificial intelligence named MOSS to achieve this.)

The rocket engines in the film use something called “heavy fusion technology”, which enables them to use ordinary rocks as fuel.

Having decided to find another star, taking the whole planet along is over-packing for the trip. Given the technology to build these engines and the ability to put people in stasis, why not build ships instead? Instead of building ten thousand underground cities, build ten thousand ships and attach one drive engine to each. In the novella, the US proposed the building of ships, but only the wealthy were to be allowed on board. The rest of the world, including China, rebelled against this idea, and decided to move the entire planet instead, but the bad idea was not the building of ships; it was making them available only to the wealthy.

The film is two hours and five minutes long, everything happens in forty-eight hours, and the story is so fast-paced one wishes it was longer. Liu Qi and Han travel first to Hangzhou, then to Shanghai, and after that to Sulawesi, a total distance of about 3500 kilometers. Between driving trucks through hazardous, icy terrain during earthquakes, and climbing through the remains of a deteriorating abandoned skyscraper, the accidental heroes completely ensnare the viewer in their struggle to survive.

In the film’s most moving and intense scene, Han goes on the global broadcast network with an impassioned plea for help in the face of nearly insurmountable odds. “Hello, people from every rescue unit,” she says. “My name is Han Duoduuo. I’m a junior high school student. Our rescue unit is executing its final mission. Right now, I’m extremely terrified. My legs are trembling. Everybody is doing their best, but there’s nothing I can do to help! Yesterday, my teacher asked us: ‘What is hope?’ In the past, I never, never believed in hope. But now I do. I believe that in our time, hope is precious, like a diamond. Hope is the only way to guide us home.”

The Hope Diamond is reputed to bring misfortune to anyone who possesses it.

---

Miscellaneous Info

Wu Jing is Fang Wuzhou in Daniel Lee’s 2019 film THE CLIMBERS (攀登者) about the first expedition to successfully climb Mount Everest’s North Ridge. Jing is also Chen Yuanwei in the action comedy RIDE ON (龙马精神).

The prequel WANDERING EARTH II (流浪地球2) was released in 2023. It was directed by Frant Gwo (who also directed WANDERING EARTH I), and was filmed at The Qingdao Oriental Movie Metropolis 700 kilometers southeast of Beijing.

---

THE WANDERING EARTH can be streamed on Netflix.

---

** — Revised. Originally Posted on 9 May 2019