THE WANDERING EARTH either needed to be a lot smarter or a little bit dumber to really land. It’s fascinating to see China enter the international blockbuster arena in earnest with the killer premise of building monolithic engines on the Earth’s surface to move the whole planet away from our dying sun. Jupiter being a one of the biggest obstacles in the solar system with a gravitational pull to match just adds to the world-ending problems and at a key moment prompts the line, “Come on, let’s ignite Jupiter!”. The sheer magnitude of the concept and the dazzling, terrifying astro imagery makes it worth a look, but can’t disguise the fact that really it’s just another disaster movie with generic characters and action beats. Director Frant Gwo clearly has a natural eye for this scale, though perhaps could be less inclined to crib Hollywood’s tiredest clichés. SSP