Director – Zhang Chiyu, Screenplay – Dai Siao, Qian Chengkuan & Shen Yuyue, Based on the Web Series Moon You by Cho Seok, Producer – Zhang Li, Photography – Du Jie, Music – Peng Fei, Visual Effects Director – Allen Wei, Visual Effects Supervisors – Rita Shi & Zhang Fan, Visual Effects – Beijing SourceVFX Film and Television Culture Co. Ltd,, Jiuying Shuzike Ji, MoreVFX Beijing (Supervisors – Fan Zhang, Rita Shi Allen Wei), MoreVFX Chengdu (Supervisor – Shanghan Lu), Nimensions VFX, Yanjin VFX, Yimage Culture Communications, Ltd., Special Effects Supervisor – Zhang Tai, Makeup Effects – Jin FX (Supervisor – Xing Jin), Production Design – Li Miao. Production Company – Zhejiang FunAge Pictures Co., Ltd.
Cast
Shen Teng (Yui Dugu), Ma Li (Ma Lanxing), Hao Han (King Kong Roo), Chang Yuan (Zhu Pite), Li Chengru (Control Center Chairman), Huang Callum (The Flautist), Jackie Li (Wei Lasa), Gao Haibo (Level 8 Mechanical Fitter), Yang Zheng (Level 3 Mechanical Fitter)
Plot
The United Nations Moon Shield Project has been established to deflect the oncoming asteroid π with the Cosmic Striking Hammer, which will use The Moon as a shield to prevent the debris striking the Earth. Yui Dugu applies to the project as an engineer only to be told that all the positions have been filled but happily accepts a job as a janitor. Eight years later as the asteroid nears, preparations are made to evacuate the moonbase. However, Yui is forgotten and left behind as the ships are launched. As he watches, the asteroid misses the Moon and strikes the Earth with catastrophic effect. All life is destroyed except for those in underground shelters. Believing he is the last person left alive, Yui indulges his unrequited passion for the commander Ma Lanxing and breaks into her quarters, conducting imaginary dinner dates with her. He is unaware that Ma and the other evacuees are watching the video feed from their ship. As Yui discovers companionship with the kangaroo King Kong Roo, the evacuees rebroadcast his efforts to the survivors on Earth. There Yui’s bumblings becomes an unlikely source of hope. When he discovers that there is another chunk of asteroid heading towards them, Yui tries to improvise efforts to deflect it with what he has to hand.
The Chinese science-fiction film is a relatively new creation. It was unknown at least until the late 2010s – at least as far as I can tell, there may well be earlier works that have gained no profile outside of China. However, the 2010s has seen an explosion of works emulating Hollywood models with the likes of Kung Fu Traveler (2017), Gone with the Night (2019), Shanghai Fortress (2019), The Wandering Earth (2019) and sequel, Restart the Earth (2021), The Underground War (2021), VR Fighter (2021), Mutant Ghost Wargirl (2022) and the tv series The Three-Body Problem (2023- ). Moon Man is adapted from the South Korean animated web-series Moon You (2017-9).
There has been a surprising body of films about the Earth being devastated and last survivor(s) left alive in space. The first of these was Defcon 4 (1985), which had a group of people in a space station orbiting Earth surviving a nuclear holocaust below. There was also the little seen Love (2011) about a lone astronaut abandoned aboard the International Space Station after contact with Earth goes dead and other recent offerings such as 3022 (2019), The Midnight Sky (2020), Rubikon (2022) and I.S.S. (2023). The obvious work that Moon Man comes the closest to is in fact The Martian (2015), albeit with the addition of the destruction of the entire Earth added to the mix. The surprise about Moon Man is that it is the only of these films to play the premise as a comedy.
I felt somewhat dubious about the portrayal of a fairly grim subject like the destruction of all life on Earth and the last men left alive as a comedy. Nevertheless, the comedy comes with an undeniably appealing tone – Shen Teng surfing across the lunar surface and accidentally erasing Neil Armstrong’s footprint; his attempts to break in to commander Ma Li’s room, blowing up the door and then sitting down to dine with a likeness of her made up of a uniform and a photo, unaware that everything is being watched on video feed by the survivors and the commander herself. On the other hand, by about the point of the introduction of the kangaroo to the mix things start to get a just little silly. There are an extended series of scenes that involve the kangaroo beating Shen Teng up and the big dramatic scene near the end that involves Shen Teng surfing across the lunar surface on a makeshift surfboard towed by the kangaroo.
Yui Dugu (Shen Teng), the last man left alive, and kangaroo
Despite being almost taken over by the comic element – ie. anything involving the kangaroo – Moon Man has its charms. There’s the appealingly sentimental scene where Shen Teng is about to end it all and take off his helmet on the lunar surface and the survivors on the ship convince everyone on Earth to activate their lights to offer him hope. The film goes out on a tragic sacrificial ending where one individual gives their life for the sake of the many, a recurrent theme in recent Chinese cinema.
China may have only recently discovered SF cinema but within the space of only a handful of films are rapidly catching up. The quality of effects work here and detail gone into the ships and moonbase is something that easily rivals what is being put out by Hollywood. It is also a much more scientifically realistic depiction of The Moon than the recent Crater (2023) with which this has a number of similarities – both films have scenes where the characters engage in flights via oxygen tank propelled propulsion – although we still do get sound in a vacuum when meteor fragments strike the lunar surface. The only effect that doesn’t work so well is the kangaroo where you are unable to tell if it a CGI effect or is someone in a costume, with it ending to look more like the latter.
Moon Man was the second film for Zhang Chiyu who had previously co-directed the bodyswap comedy Never Say Die (2017).
