Moonfall: Everything you need to know

When disaster-movie maestro Roland Emmerich decides to make a space flick, chances are we’re not talking the 21st-century vogue for cerebral sci-fi (Interstellar, High Life). No, when the director of The Day After Tomorrow and 2012 looks at the moon, he doesn’t reflect on its splendid isolation or its beauty, he thinks how awesome it would look if it was hurtling towards Earth in a world-ending cosmic death spiral.

That, at least, is the premise behind Emmerich’s latest epic wheeze. Drawing on a conspiracy theory that has real-world adherents, Moonfall puts forward that our moon is a hollow alien megastructure with an unknown but doubtless nefarious purpose.

Unsurprisingly, this meets some scepticism even when it’s delivered by as affable a presence as Games of Thrones’ John Bradley. But the news that the moon is also out of orbit and Earth has just weeks before it smashes into the planet gets the boffins’ attention, and kickstarts the kind of apocalyptic thrill-ride we’ve come to expect.

Halle Berry adds smarts as an ex-astronaut on a mission to save humanity, Midway’s Patrick Wilson is in wisecracking Chris Pratt mode and a wonderfully doomy Donald Sutherland is the face of Nasa’s darker, secretive side, all of which promises a spectacle that’s as engaging as it is pleasingly preposterous. And we’re happy to be caught up in any disaster that features “Bad Moon Rising” and Toto’s “Africa” on the soundtrack.

It’s de rigeur to reference US culture wars in sci-fi now – see recent nuance-free satire Don’t Look Up – and Moonfall is dutifully sprinkled with conspiracy nuts, civil unrest and online cults that you won’t need a Newsweek subscription for.

As ever, the real fun is in the wanton destruction and, given the moon’s vast gravitational pull, the draw for audiences will doubtless be what Emmerich calls his trademark “famous buildings in places where they don’t belong”. Expect earthquakes, tornadoes, drowned cities and enormous, enormous waves. When it comes to the end of the world, you couldn’t be in better hands.

Thu Feb 3. ksa.voxcinemas.com.