The moon has suddenly shifted off its orbit and is poised to crash into the earth. In a movie world where meteors and aliens are constantly trying to destroy the earth, why not create a story where the moon becomes the enemy?
Moonfall is the latest creation from the master of disaster films, Roland Emmerich, whose previously earth-destroying tentpoles include Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow, and 2012. In Moonfall, the moon’s sudden alignment is not exactly happenstance and it’s up to just a handful of heroes to put the satellite back into place. The film focuses on the lives of three main characters, two of which were former astronauts involved in a deadly space accident a decade ago. The third is a conspiracy theorist who believes the moon is a megastructure built by aliens billions of years ago. When the moon starts on its track to take out mankind, it’s up to these three outcasts to save the day.
Moonfall was written by Roland Emmerich, Harald Kloser, and Spenser Cohen, and stars Halle Berry, Patrick Wilson, and John Bradley.
Here are five screenwriting takeaways from the sci-fi disaster flick Moonfall.
What happens at the beginning of a disaster movie? Sometimes, it’s something ominous foreshadowing the destruction to come. For example, Independence Day didn’t start out with destruction but rather city-sized spaceships hovering over cities. Other times disaster films offer a glimpse of destruction showing what could possibly come next, such as in Armageddon when meteorites take out large landmarks in New York City.
Regardless, it’s always about building the threat in the first moments of the movie. In Moonfall, astronauts Fowler (Berry) and Harper (Wilson) are in space. Harper, along with a fellow astronaut, is working on the outside of a spaceship and joking with Fowler who is inside. Suddenly, something strange attacks them sending the ship in a roll, knocking Fowler out and causing Harper to scurry back inside to fix the spinning spacecraft and get them home. The attacking entity disappears, but not without leaving destruction in its wake.
Countless questions arise as the audience catches a glimpse of the potential devastation. Very soon we’ll learn that the moon is on a collision course with earth, and we’ll wonder, what does the first attack have to do with the moon's fall?
Big disaster movies need large casts. Most of the time, it’s about bringing together a series of individuals to tackle a major problem, individuals with families and personal problems that play in the background as they try to save the world.
Writers can see how these movies introduce such a large group of characters, each one memorable in their own way. These introductions are a slow rollout as not to overwhelm the viewer with new characters; also important for the reader who is deciding whether or not to pursue it as a project.
One example in Moonfall is how the audience meets Fowler’s family. We meet Fowler in space during the first scene, then a little later on she wakes up and checks on her son, where we meet both him and a nanny taking care of him. Finally, later still, we meet her ex-husband who is with the Department of Defense. Each person the audience meets is a direct association with one of the main characters and not involved in another main character’s life.
Slowly, the disaster movie finds a way to bring them all together, but not until the supporting characters are defined consistently with one of the leads.
Disaster movies also have a combination of unlikely heroes and highly-qualified characters. The combination varies depending on the movie but for Moonfall, we have two well-regarded characters who are up to the challenge: Harper and Fowler, both astronauts who have proven their capabilities. The third one in this trio is KC Houseman (John Bradley), the anxiety-riddled, motion-sickened conspiracy theorist who has figured out the problem and is dragged into space to help solve it.
Writers can see how Moonfall creates a world where the audience sees heroes be heroic and others rise to the occasion. Sometimes they are the same person, such as John McClane in Die Hard, other times they are the unlikely hero of Jeff Goldblum’s character and ace pilot Will Smith’s character in Independence Day.
Remember those family members and friends mentioned earlier? They can’t just be in the background, but rather they must serve the story, such as a cause for distraction to the lead characters.
Writers can observe in Moonfall how the filmmakers put the supporting cast in peril and weave their stories together while the others were off in space. As the story advances, these supporting characters are coming together, with some navigating their way to safety in Colorado, meeting up with other characters we’ve met along the way, and giving the audience a glimpse of how the moon’s proximity is changing conditions on earth from creating monster tides to weakening gravity to sucking away breathable air.
If you’re going to see Moonfall, you’re already planning on suspending some belief. But that’s pretty normal when seeing a movie regardless of whether it’s a disaster movie, superhero film, or even a comedy about someone repeating Groundhog Day over and over again.
Writers must ensure the audience understands the rules of the world they’ve created and meet their expectations without losing believability. In Moonfall, it makes sense how and why the moon is suddenly on a collision course with earth, just like the multiverse makes sense in the context of Spider-Man: No Way Home and Phil waking up every morning even after killing himself to find it’s Groundhog Day, again.
Ensuring belief within the context of the movie is key because it allows the audience to accept the rules of the story and go along for the ride.
One final note: Writers are concerned about being pigeonholed in a certain genre thinking that if they write slapstick comedies, then that’s the only thing they’ll ever do. Consider Roland Emmerich: He knows his niche — he’s been the go-to filmmaker of sci-fi disaster flicks for over 25 years. That success has allowed him to branch into different areas though, which included The Patriot and Stonewall. Niches can be great; don’t shy away from what you’re good at.
Moonfall is currently playing in theaters.
Photo Credit: Reiner Bajo / USA Today