Da-da-ha. I'm Nathan Rich aka, well, guo ta-waang. As most of you know, for the last 10 years I've been working in the visual effects industry. And for the last few years I was the CTO at a VFX company here in China. We worked on many films including Star Wars, Jurassic World, Dr. Strange, Aquaman, and so on. But we didn't just work on Hollywood movies. We also worked on Chinese movies. Some recent ones are The Wandering Earth and Crazy Alien. And today I went to go see The Wandering Earth in theaters for the very first time. This year I stayed in Beijing for Chun-jie and what better way to spend the holiday than going and seeing a big movie like The Wandering Earth. The Wandering Earth is a smash hit right now and people keep asking me what I think about it, so I just had to check it out. The film was made by the China Film Group Company or CFGC for short. Normally I don't like to go see movies that we worked on because they're kind of a bit spoiled for me. But you demanded it so I went and I was really really well you're just going to have to wait to find out what I thought. First I want to introduce you to how the VFX industry works and really how the movie industry works. Once a studio decides to make a movie, especially this kind of film, they shoot everything using blue screen or sometimes green screens and they seek out companies who specialize in visual effects to add in the rest. Normally a big budget film like this one will have several VFX companies and those companies generally don't share too much between them. So in other words one VFX company might do all the aliens in your movies and another might do all the ships and machinery for example. Every day the VFX company checks in with the film studio with the latest version of the shot for feedback from the director. So the director is involved with every major decision when it comes to the actual visual effects. One of the striking things about The Wandering Earth is that not only do they use tons of visual effects, it actually looks really really good. I'm going to cover three things in this review. One, things I don't like, two, things I liked, and three overall thoughts. Okay so first the things I didn't like. There was a huge amount of what's called exposition in the beginning of this film. This is when movies just explained you what happened before the movie started, before finally moving on. Don't get me wrong a lot of movies do this, for example Star Wars. I just personally don't enjoy exposition. Originally during the movie I thought the character development was too weak, but actually as the film goes on I started to understand why they didn't focus on the characters too much and honestly this was one of the rare movies where I'm kind of happy that they didn't. I haven't read the book but I have read the three body problems so I know the book probably makes more sense, but I can say there were definitely some, shall we say, magical physics in this movie. For example the sun is dying in the near future when in reality it's going to take literally billions of years, but that's just nitpicking. Obviously you need to go to this kind of movie ready to accept whatever premise they give you because this is a certain kind of movie called the blockbuster. That's a big huge popular film made for everyone, not just people who care about every little stupid science detail. There were a few effects here in there that I didn't like. For example there's a scene which has a CG lens flare that I thought wasn't good enough, but overall the effects were actually awesome. Let's see what else. Oh the English subtitles had many mistakes like wrong words and misspellings. I know you probably don't care about that, but obviously the international market will. All they have to do to fix this is give it to one native English speaker. And another thing movies like this sometimes do is accidentally forget that the story is in the future. There's a scene that shows an outdoor camera and the thing literally looks exactly the same or even older than the ones we have now, but the movie takes place in the future when cameras will almost certainly be smaller and more powerful. All right well let's talk about what I did like about this movie. First of all I actually liked the casting choices, at least compared to other Chinese films I've seen. No one was acting so over the top so as to distract from the action going on which I've actually seen in Chinese movies before. So the cast was overall good, most of the acting was a step higher than what I've seen before and from the Chinese market. And I thought the general feel of the cast was good too. The icy environment of Earth and the overall look of the outside shots was really really beautiful. I really felt the frigid cold and the snow and ice effects were really spot on. I liked the use of heavy machinery throughout the movie. The world looked like something out of Warhammer 40K, Metal, Tough, Rugged. There was really good detail put into the design of the large machines and all the machines really. One thing I noticed was there's a lot of things moving and doing stuff that weren't immediately obvious as to why. Let me explain. In a lot of movies everything that moves or lights up or whatever has some kind of obvious purpose. Movie sometimes even go out of the way to explain every little thing about how it all works. Something I found refreshing about TWE is that they didn't do this. Things just look how they look and if you don't know why, well too bad for you. And that makes it feel so much more realistic because that's how it would really have been. And real life people don't wander around explaining everything. You either know what or you don't. So I actually really appreciated that. While there were some parts of the movie that were a little corny like the comic relief from the blonde guy or the gatlin gun scenes, honestly the entire film was overwhelmingly appropriately toned. In other words, it felt right. I can't get into what specific VFX work the company I was at did for TWE, but I can tell you that I'm proud to have worked with amazing artists who made this film a possibility. Oh something else. The movie had almost a video game like feel to it. There was something really cool about that effect, almost like I was on a ride or in a video game. I thought the directors and cinematographers actually did a great job on this film. They tried really hard not to use the boring old shots and angles from the past and I think they really pulled it off nicely. Unlike a lot of other Chinese films I've seen, the wandering earth didn't try to go cheap on the visual effects and the results are easy to see. CFGC made an amazing film that is visually stunning because they didn't skimp on the budget. They went all the way with this movie and man does it show. The ending was really great and in fact this is one of those movies that is almost defined by its ending. I won't ruin it for you but I will tell you that part of the theme of the ending has to do with Chunziya so you better go see it during the break if you can. Okay overall most of the best movies ever made are American and Hollywood isn't going to go anywhere anytime soon. It's loaded with professionals who know what they're doing and even though a lot of movies America makes are rubbish a lot of them are absolutely amazing. Most Chinese films on the other hand seem to suffer from a lack of acting skills too low of a visual effects budget or a weak story. I can tell you that Chinese film studios are a lot cheaper about BFX. They almost never want to pay for the best. Until now. For the first time in history and the first quarter of 2018 China's box office overtook America and Canada combined and that's not the end of the story. Experts estimate that within three years China will overthrow America as the number one box office permanently. What does that mean for you? Well it means movies will start focusing more and more on the China market. It means better international movies and hopefully it means better domestic movies if and only if Chinese film studio study and learn from the wandering earth especially when it comes to unique ideas a well written story and budget needed for visual effects the quality of Chinese movies will go up dramatically and we will start to see more and more big budget films done well like the wandering earth. When investors see how big it goes they'll be a little easier to hand out bigger amounts and when the studio starts insisting on proper budgets you the viewer will see the difference. If China starts down this path of making bigger and better movies than ever before it could be the beginning of something new an era where China sets the tones for movies. China sets the standards. When I saw the wandering earth I told my girlfriend it could be the beginning of something new. The wandering earth isn't kind of good or almost good it's a smash hit that does nearly everything right. If the other studios learn from this amazing film I truly believe it will be the new beginning of an era of Chinese cinema. So go watch it and enjoy the ride and let me know what you thought. Did it wow you? By the way congratulations to everyone involved making the film because it was amazing and when the quality comes up high enough I want to urge the studios to make an amazing horror movie based on hay by uchang that one I'll see twice thanks everybody see you in the end kai la. Thank you everybody bye bye you