Roland Emmerich’s latest helping of disaster porn will find the moon knocked from its orbit by some mysterious force and on a collision course for Earth. With life as we know it hanging in the balance and just weeks until impact, a ragtag team is launched into a seemingly impossible mission to land on the Moon and save humanity. Moonfall stars Halle Berry and Patrick Wilson and Vanity Fair have a handful of new Moonfall images which you can check out below!
Although he doesn’t believe in many of them, Roland Emmerich told Vanity Fair that he’s very interested in conspiracy theories. “As you know, I did the movie Independence Day, where we were strongly inspired by the whole Area 51 conspiracy,” Emmerich said. “When you have a conspiracy which a lot of people believe, you already have some built-in interest. You don’t have to believe them yourself. Most of the time I’m a skeptical person—I’m German after all. So I never quite buy into them, but I find them super interesting.” After coming across something known as the Hollow Moon theory, Emmerich knew he had to use it for Moonfall.
I immediately realized, oh, my God, this could very well be one of these conspiracies where you can have something really traumatic happen, meaning the moon is getting out of orbit and falling on Earth. But at the same time, you learn that the moon is not what you think it is. It’s always a cool way to get into a movie.
As the moon approaches Earth, all sorts of “gravity craziness” starts happening, including ripping tall buildings out from major cities and depositing them in the Rockies, such as the Chrysler Building seen in one of the Moonfall images above. “That’s my signature thing anyway— famous buildings in places where they don’t belong,” Emmerich said.
The official synopsis for Moonfall:
A mysterious force knocks the Moon from its orbit around Earth and send it hurtling on a collision course with life as we know it. With mere weeks before impact and the world on the brink of annihilation, NASA executive and former astronaut Jo Fowler (Halle Berry) is convinced she has the key to saving us all, but only one astronaut from her past, Brian Harper (Patrick Wilson) and a conspiracy theorist K.C. Houseman (John Bradley) believe her. These unlikely heroes will mount an impossible last-ditch mission into space, leaving behind everyone they love, only to find out that our Moon is not what we think it is.
Moonfall will hit theaters on February 4, 2022.