Moonfall Review: 4 Ups & 6 Downs

3. Too. Many. Subplots.

Even though its 130 minute runtime seems positively economical for Roland Emmerich's standards, this is still jam-packed with all the usual melodramatic subplots that only detract from the thrill of the big-budget carnage.

As mentioned, an egregious amount of screen time is spent on Brian's son Sonny, who is the focus of the Earth-set subplot while Jo and Brian are up in space trying to save the Moon.

Sonny's story eventually converges with both his and Jo's families, all of this adding a frankly revolting amount of narrative dead weight to a film that should've just focused on the Moon plot.

Presumably Emmerich assumed that the destruction on Earth needed to imperil human characters known to us, but ultimately does anyone watching really give a damn about Brian or Jo's families?

With a few scripted nips and tucks it would've been easy to eliminate most of the peripheral characters and make this a leaner vehicle focused intently on the Moon mission and the chaos that occurs back home.