wandering earth engines

Could 'The Wandering Earth' Actually Happen? Here's What a NASA Engineer Says 

"The science in it is compelling," says a senior NASA engineer.

Earth’s inhabitants are in danger of being swallowed up by the sun. So the United Earth Government comes up with a plan to thrust the Earth out of orbit and send the planet beyond our solar system to its new home as a satellite of Proxima Centauri.

Such is the out-of-this-world premise for The Wandering Earth . In February, the Mandarin-language sci-fi action movie rapidly became the second-highest grossing film in Chinese box office history. Its worldwide box office total now stands at just shy of $700 million. Netflix quickly snatched up streaming rights to The Wandering Earth for over 190 countries, including the United States.

After the film’s impressive theatrical run, Netflix added the movie to its streaming library on May 5 with zero fanfare. (It wasn’t even included in Netflix’s May newsletter sent to press.)

The hit movie is based on the 2000 short story of the same title by Liu Cixin, best known for his Hugo Award-winning novel, The Three-Body Problem .

The Wandering Earth ’s premise may sound ridiculous, but it turns out much of the film’s science holds up better than you might expect.

Here’s the official premise from Netflix:

The Wandering Earth tells the story of a distant future in which the sun is about to expand into a red giant and devour the Earth, prompting mankind to make an audacious attempt to save planet. The multi-generational heroes build ten-thousand stellar engines in an effort to propel Planet Earth out [of] the solar system, in the hope of finding a new celestial home. During the 2,500 year-long journey, a group of daring heroes emerge to defend human civilization from unexpected dangers and new enemies, and to ensure the survival of humanity in this age of the wandering Earth.

"Things that I would have expected it to gloss over, I was happy to see that they actually addressed."

“Things that I would have expected it to gloss over, I was happy to see that they actually addressed. So it looked like they did their homework to an extent,” says John Elliott , a senior engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

Indeed, The Wandering Earth filmmakers did their homework. Four scientists from the Chinese Academy of Scientists consulted on the film.

Inverse spoke with Elliott, a systems engineer and vision architect at JPL, to play “what if?” and determine what aspects of The Wandering Earth are feasible and what parts are a stretch.

This article contains some spoilers for The Wandering Earth .

A Helium Flash in the Near Future

Let’s start there. In The Wandering Earth , scientists have determined that a helium flash from the sun is nigh. Do we need to worry about the sun unleashing a burst of blazing hot helium on us anytime soon? Short answer: probably definitely not.

Helium flashes are known to occur in stars in the red giant phase. Our sun won’t become a red giant for another 5 billion years.

Elliott’s an engineer though, so “never” and “no way” aren’t exactly in his vocabulary.

“I would not be one to say there couldn’t be something that goes wrong in the sun that causes this to happen, but it’s not in current theory,” he says.

In 'The Wandering Earth,' a threat from the sun drives humanity to move Earth beyond our solar system.

Thrusting Earth Out of Orbit

Now, let’s imagine that a helium flash is a verified danger, and we do need to relocate the Earth. If that still sounds absurd to you, hang tight while we break it down with Elliott’s help.

In The Wandering Earth , the journey from Earth’s orbit to Jupiter’s neighborhood takes 17 years. Elliott kindly took the time to run some numbers for us: To move that distance in 17 years would take roughly 10 kilometers per second of delta-v.

(Elliott notes, though, that it depends on how you do the math to know what that exact number would be — it could be anywhere between 8 and 16 kilometers per second.)

There are 10,000 “Earth engines” in the film propelling the planet through space. To provide 10 kilometers per second of delta-v to the mass of the Earth (rounded to 6 x 10^24 kilograms) over 17 years, each of those engines would need to produce a continuous 2.5 x 10^15 pounds of thrust, Elliott says.

This chart provides the vital statistics for the F-1 rocket engine.

That’s a number wildly beyond realistic capabilities once you consider the real-world F-1 engine, Elliott notes. The F-1 engine used on Saturn V (a launcher which NASA used from 1967 to 1973) is the most powerful single-nozzle, liquid-fueled rocket engine ever developed, according to NASA’s website . Alas, this legendary engine falls short of what the engines of The Wandering Earth would need: a single F-1 engine that puts out 1.5 million pounds of thrust.

“Pretty inconceivable” is how Elliott sums up the movie’s giant engines.

In Liu’s short story (translated into English by Holger Nahm), the largest Earth engines are 6,000 feet taller than Mount Everest.

" I don’t know how you would build something that big."

“Well, I don’t know how you would build something that big,” Elliott says.

A massive engine used to move the Earth in 'The Wandering Earth'.

But even if you could build engines large enough, mining the Earth (as these engines do in the film) causes a problem. There would barely be any Earth left by the point you mined enough dirt to thrust the planet to Proxima Centauri, 4.2 light-years away.

“It would take about 95 percent of the mass of Earth to do this,” Elliott estimates.

Other Ways to Keep Safe From a Helium Flash

So if thrusting the Earth through the galaxy is out, what would be a more realistic way to save the human race?

The best plan may be to “get as many people as you can off the Earth,” Elliott says.

He notes that “you’re not likely to go anywhere outside the solar system with current technology or even projected technology.”

Settling on nearby planets might be the way to go. Perhaps Mars would become habitable if the sun expands. “Would it warm it up enough that the water that’s sub-surface now would melt and cause an atmosphere?” Elliott wonders. Ganymede, an icy moon of Jupiter, might also become a decent contender for a new home.

Stopping Earth’s Rotation (?!?)

Let’s accept that the Earth could be thrust toward the next-closest star. We’ll now examine how the rest of the film holds up.

To use these giant engines, first the Earth’s rotation is stopped. The resulting widespread tsunamis (and limited space in underground havens) seem to be to blame for Earth’s population being reduced to 3.5 billion.

Though Elliott says he finds it “a little odd” that the United Earth Government was willing to accept that level of casualties, he says the tsunamis themselves are a realistic consequence of halting the Earth’s rotation.

"If you’re going to stop the Earth rotating, the oceans are gonna splash over everything when you slow down."

“If you’re going to stop the Earth rotating, the oceans are gonna splash over everything when you slow down,” Elliott says. “It does depend on how fast they stopped [the rotation], but it would be hard to conceive of them stopping it very quickly just because of the mass. I don’t know if there’s a [speed at which] you could stop it when you wouldn’t get extreme flooding.”

Elliott continues: “You’d have flooding, you’d have earthquakes, tectonic plates would be screwed up and moving around.”

Conditions on the Surface of the Earth

Several years after Earth has stopped rotating and is on its way to Alpha Centauri, siblings Qi and Duoduo journey out of the safety of underground early, and a display screen in the elevator indicates that the temperature on the surface near Beijing is -84° Celsius (a brisk -119.2° Fahrenheit). Thermal suits protect them from the icy conditions outside.

Elliott says -84° Celsius on the bright side of the Earth while it’s in Jupiter’s neighborhood “didn’t seem non-credible to me,” while the dark side of the Earth “might be well below that.”

By comparison, daytime temperatures on Ganymede , Jupiter’s largest moon, range from -297° to -171° Fahrenheit.

The JPL engineer notes that Earth has its own internal heat — both that and the planet’s atmosphere means Earth would take some time to cool down. It seems that the sun hasn’t reached red giant status yet by this point in the film, so an expanding sun would not keep the Earth warm as it reaches the outer edges of the solar system.

Where's the moon?

What About the Moon?

In all of the film’s shots of the wandering Earth, the moon is nowhere in sight.

Leave the moon behind? “You can’t just do that,” Elliott says.

The engineer explains that if the speed of the Earth moving through the solar system is accelerating, “the moon’s gonna adjust its orbit as you move, and as it does that, it’s gonna get into an unstable orbit,” Elliott notes. “And depending on how fast they’re accelerating and how fast they’re moving away, I would not be surprised if [the moon] ran into [Earth].”

As for how (somehow) getting rid of the moon would affect the Earth’s tides, well, remember, stopping the Earth’s rotation has already messed with the oceans and tectonic plates.

“You’ve already done so much to the surface of the Earth by stopping the rotation that I think the tidal forces aren’t gonna be a big issue by that time,” Elliott points out.

A Gorgeous Jet Stream

The moving Earth is depicted on screen with a jet stream trailing behind it. The image seems almost too picturesque to be plausible.

" Given the size of everything in this, you probably would see something like that."

“It was maybe a little artistically enhanced, but given the size of everything in this, you probably would see something like that,” Elliott says.

He further explains: “The way they show the engines, I guess they don’t tell you a lot, but the implication is they’re basically using dirt and propelling that out of these engines. And with that much propulsion and that much thrust and that much force, you probably would see a dust trail.”

As for real-life images of something similarly picturesque, Elliott suggests checking out images of Saturn’s outermost ring (E-ring) and its sixth-largest moon, Enceladus. The E-ring is largely composed of icy water vapor that has burst out of geysers on Enceladus.

Jupiter appears above Earth in 'The Wandering Earth'

Jupiter’s Great Red Spot

Also supplying stunning visuals in The Wandering Earth is our solar system’s largest planet. Jupiter looming over Earth’s sky is quite a sight. The Great Red Spot is on full display above Sulawesi in the film’s climactic moments.

If you’ve heard that the Great Red Spot is shrinking, you may be quick to deem this a goof.

It’s not explicitly stated in The Wandering Earth when the film’s events take place, but a frost-covered stadium boasting a 2044 Olympic Games label in Shanghai tells us that the film takes place sometime after 2061 since the planet’s been on the move with everyone tucked underground for 17 years.

So will Jupiter’s iconic massive storm (twice as wide as the Earth!) still be brewing 42 years from now? About a year ago, Business Insider reported that the Great Red Spot may disappear within one or two decades. According to a post on NASA’s website by Elizabeth Zubritsky, “Researchers don’t know whether the spot will shrink a bit more and then stabilize, or break apart completely.”

The film’s apparent proposition that the Great Red Spot will hold out for at least another four decades “didn’t really bother me,” Elliott says. “There’s a chance that it will go away, but, being a weather-related thing, it’s always hard to predict.”

Approaching Jupiter

The plan is to slingshot Earth around the solar system’s largest planet. This concept is basically a Jupiter gravitational assist, which Elliott says is “a reasonable thing for them to do.”

Real scientists used a Jupiter gravitational assist on the Cassini mission, which sent a probe to study Saturn.

How humans would fare that close to Jupiter, though, is another matter. Jupiter’s intense radiation field would be a problem, for one.

A rendering of the Cassini–Huygens probe near Saturn.

Much of The Wandering Earth film adaptation focuses on Earth nearing Jupiter — an approach that gets too close. Our planet goes off-course and is at risk of colliding into Jupiter rather than slingshotting around it.

“If you were doing a mission like this, you’d do all these trajectory correction maneuvers, and you would always know exactly where you were and make sure you were on course,” Elliott says. “You wouldn’t wait until a week before you were too close to figure that out.”

But this is a suspenseful action movie, so of course we get too close to Jupiter. At that point, humans across the globe are warned that Jupiter is “capturing Earth’s atmosphere” and people will die of asphyxiation.

This dramatic turn does seem to be a plausible expression of the Roche limit , which is the minimum distance at which a satellite can approach another celestial body without being broken apart by tidal forces.

“When you get to the Roche limit, yes, stuff would start being sucked off,” Elliott explains.

Final Thoughts: The Appeal of The Wandering Earth

Elliott says he can see why The Wandering Earth would find box office success.

"The science in it is compelling."

“The science in it is compelling. It’s realistic enough that it’s not just something that you’d dismiss,” he says. “It’s got the one big thing about moving the Earth, which is hard to accept, but once you accept that, the rest of it kind of flows from that.”

The Wandering Earth is an epic action flick that channels movies like Armageddon and Roland Emmerich’s collection of disaster movies. The director, Gwo Frant, has cited Terminator 2: Judgment Day as an influence.

The fast-paced, high-octane vibe of these movies is a stark contrast to the cadence of the short story that inspired The Wandering Earth ’s screenplay. Like Liu’s Remembrance of Earth’s Past (the trilogy that begins with The Three-Body Problem ), the short story Wandering Earth spans several generations.

Title cards in the film do lay out the 2,500-year plan — 500 years accelerating, 1,300 years coasting, and then 700 years decelerating before firing up rotation again by Proxima Centauri — but the movie primarily takes place within a suspenseful 36-hour period.

The movie focuses on characters solving the immediate problem of a potential collision with Jupiter. It’s an effects-laden film that depicts human resilience in the face of a majorly daunting (but quickly solved) challenge.

The Wandering Earth was released in China on the first day of the Lunar New Year, and the filmmakers amped up the emotion of that human resilience with values the holiday is meant to celebrate. Hope and the idea of a family reunion fuel the characters’ determination to save Earth — much like July 4 provides the rousing backdrop to Independence Day .

The idea of Earth being in danger of getting burned up by the sun naturally calls to mind the real-world dangers of global warming. Has that very real threat ever been made into a big-budget movie? Yes, sort of.

The highest-profile film about global warming is yet another installment in the lineup of high-octane disaster movies: Emmerich’s The Day After Tomorrow , the 2004 film that depicts climate change at a rapid pace.

But, hey, if the movie followed the short story or the pace of real-life science more closely, we wouldn’t have been treated to this memorable disaster movie line: “Let’s light up Jupiter!”

The Wandering Earth is currently available to view on Netflix in several territories, including the United States. It is scheduled to debut on Netflix in Australia and New Zealand on August 5, 2019.

• Climate Crisis

Advertisement

The Wandering Earth review: Epic Chinese sci-fi film heralds a new era

The Wandering Earth, an adaptation of Cixin Liu's story of humans struggling to move Earth to a new home, is coming to Netflix. Our review: Despite a few science bloopers, it's cinematic gold

By Yvaine Ye

20 February 2019

Ultimate escape: setting Jupiter ablaze will stop Earth colliding

Beijing Jingxi Culture & Tourism Company/China Film Company Limited/United Entertainment Partners

The Wandering Earth directed by Frant Gwo, on limited release in the US and soon to launch on Netflix  

THEY said the dying sun was set to explode; they said we needed to drive Earth out of the solar system; they said it was the only way to save human civilisation. And so the world came together for a 2500-year project called The Wandering Earth. This quest to find our planet a new star system gives its name to China’s first big-budget sci-fi film, adapted from a short story of the same name by author Cixin Liu .

This $50 million film has already brought in more than $600 million in China since its release on 5 February, making it one of the top two highest-grossing films in the country. It is also already doing well in the US

Set in the near future, life is pretty bad. As the story begins, the planet is freezing, humans live in underground bunkers, and a generation has never seen sky, mountains or oceans. This is survival.

To avoid being destroyed by the sun when it explodes, the United Earth Government has built 10,000 propulsion engines, using rocks from mountains as fuel, to slowly push Earth out of its orbit. Part of the plan is to use Jupiter’s massive gravity to slingshot out of the solar system.

Surely, you ask, any advanced civilisation would just ship its peoples off-world? The film is silent on this, but Liu’s original story explains that humanity still can’t build spaceships capable of travelling fast enough to reach known habitable planets. Moving Earth is all there is.

What has happened for the sun to already face a fate not due for 500 million years? We never find out, but at least this is sort of plausible. What happens next is pure fiction. A sudden spike in Jupiter’s gravity (er, not possible) pulls one side of Earth a lot harder than the other, creating terrible earthquakes. Most thrusters are knocked out, dooming Earth to crash into Jupiter.

Unsatisfied with the depressing life underground, protagonist Liu Qi (Chuxiao Qu) and his sister Han Duoduo (Jinmai Zhao) sneak to the surface as earthquakes hit. A rescue team requisitions their vehicle to help ignite the thrusters that will restart the engines.

Earth is already too close to Jupiter, however. Even with the engines working, collision is inevitable. The government tells its people to prepare for their last seven days. Human life, however, will continue elsewhere: years before, the government prepared for a doomsday event by equipping a space station, storing human embryos, plant and animal DNA, and cultural artefacts.

“All those explosive pyrotechnics make Jupiter look terrifying and visually stunning”

Back on Earth, Liu and the team work out that Jupiter’s atmosphere is now combustible – after it has combined with oxygen in Earth’s atmosphere. Lighting up Jupiter will create a powerful explosion, and its waves should push Earth away. To help the effort, Liu’s father, a space station astronaut, drives a vehicle full of fuel towards the flame. He disappears in the blast.

Cue applause. Or not. For me, the film was just too ambitious, squeezing a big story and many dramatic highs into a mere 2 hours. Pyrotechnics, sacrifice, death, catastrophes, successes: I felt like a bad juggler, struggling to catch ideas the film was throwing at me non-stop.

To my disappointment, the film drifts a long way from Cixin Liu’s story and core ideas. He is obsessed with the destruction of humanity, key here and to his Three Body Problem trilogy. Interviewed by New Scientist recently, he said that because humanity is selfish, civilisation will survive environmental disasters  or alien invasion.

This week, the author told me that he is happy with the film, but he didn’t participate in the adaptation. He told China’s state broadcaster, CCTV.com , that he recognises film-making’s limitations: instead of making sci-fi movies from books or short stories, screenwriters should create original scripts, he says.

Among those limitations is faithfulness to science. By the end there is a fair pile of wrongness to accompany the spike in gravity. For example, when the team lights up Jupiter’s atmosphere, Earth’s atmosphere stays fire-free, despite the linked atmospheres. Still, all those explosive pyrotechnics make Jupiter look terrifying and visually stunning.

This is impressive given the The Wandering Earth ‘s budget was only half that of blockbuster The Martian . The New York Times says it is “the dawning of a new era in Chinese film-making”. Those revenues will encourage investors, directors and screenwriters. Hopefully they will learn the Martian trick of making money while ensuring the facts not only do get in the way of a good story, but become the story.

• Science fiction

Sign up to our weekly newsletter

Receive a weekly dose of discovery in your inbox! We'll also keep you up to date with New Scientist events and special offers.

More from New Scientist

Explore the latest news, articles and features

The best new science fiction books of August 2024

Imagining Nigeria as ground zero in an alien invasion

Read an extract from Tade Thompson’s science fiction novel Rosewater

The best new science fiction books of July 2024

Popular articles.

Trending New Scientist articles

Chinese Film 'The Wandering Earth' Imagines a Journey to a New Sun

Humanity turns Earth into planet-size spacecraft in epic Chinese movie.

China's 2019 blockbuster movie "The Wandering Earth," based on the novel by Liu Cixin, takes audiences on a epic journey outward through the solar system .

The 125-minute film directed by Frant Gwo is currently the second highest-earning film in the history of Chinese cinema, according to the entertainment website Deadline . As of March 15, the film had grossed over $692 million worldwide .

The great human odyssey of "The Wandering Earth" is told with fantastic visual effects and a talented cast of actors. The story begins in somewhat contemporary times, when humanity pulls together to make a desperate attempt to flee the sun's volatile activity. Governments around the globe join forces to construct hundreds of thruster engines across the planet's surface to propel Earth toward a new home around another star well beyond the solar system.

Related: Best Space Books and Sci-Fi for 2019

To make the centuries-long trip across space, humanity has to make many changes. Humans dwell in subterranean communities, and occasionally, crews ascend to Earth's frozen surface to ensure the engines are fueled and running. The International Space Station becomes a monumental gyroscope-shaped spacecraft sent farther out in the solar system to facilitate the blue planet's navigation past Jupiter. 

Meanwhile, Earth travels toward the gas giant for a massive gravity assist to slingshot out of the solar system. In real life, gravity assists — on a smaller scale — are common practice. For example, the Parker Solar Probe mission, which launched last summer, is scheduled to use about two dozen assists from Venus to approach the sun.

The movie is worth watching if you love all things Jovian: The imagery of Jupiter's streams and its Great Red Spot are mesmerizing, especially as Earth approaches it and succumbs to a planetary tug-of-war. And in one particularly epic chapter of the story, Earth's horizon fills up with the sight of the Jovian atmosphere .

Get the Space.com Newsletter

Breaking space news, the latest updates on rocket launches, skywatching events and more!

The film does an excellent job of hiding exposition within heartfelt conversations among three generations of the protagonist's family, and the drama is balanced out among the many key players. The film also features a HAL -like sentient computer called MOSS as its antagonist.

The film unfolds at a rather gentle pace considering its complex plot-driven story, and audiences can therefore savor the movie's incredible cinematography.

"'The Wandering Earth' looks better than most American special-effects spectaculars," film critic Simon Abrams wrote in a film review published on RogerEbert.com , "because it gives you breathing space to admire landscape shots of a dystopian Earth that suggest old fashioned matte-paintings on steroids." 

Still, there are a few criticisms to be made about the film. If the world is collaborating at an unprecedented scale to accomplish the mission, why not imagine more diversity in race and gender in its change-makers? There is also something to be desired when the global intercom communications system announces important updates about Earth's status in multiple languages and never speaks Spanish, for instance, which Ethnologue lists as the second most-spoken language in the world, but does feature a whole lot of spoken French, ranked 16th on that same 2019 list of languages. Arabic was also absent in the film. And though the creators may have their reasons, it's worth noting the impact science fiction has on shaping the public's mental landscape of what may come.

"The Wandering Earth" is creatively told, exciting to watch and does away with the trope that blockbusters are just eye candy: Audiences are invited to imagine what the future will indeed be like for our vulnerable planet. 

"The Wandering Earth" is currently being screened in select theaters and has been picked up for future release by Netflix.

Check out some awesome stills from the movie below:

Ready for a Fight

As the Earth traverses the Universe in search of a new star system, unanticipated dangers lead to an unlikely group stepping up to protect it and its inhabitants.

A Long Journey

After 2500 years in search of a new solar system, teamwork becomes essential to fight for the survival of the planet and the species. Actor Jing Wu portrays Liu Peiqiang in "The Wandering Earth."

Accepting the Call

A group of young people rise to the call of contending with a frozen Earth traveling the cosmos to find a new home. Actor Jing Wu, as Liu Pieqiang, somberly assumes responsibility for the mission.

Actors Guangjie Li, as Wang Lei, and Chuxiao Qu, as Liu Qi, prepare for a mission in "The Wandering Earth."

Mission-Minded Astronaut

A dying Sun brought a desperate decision to earthlings — stay and die or move and possibly survive. Giant thrusters transform Earth into a planet-sized spacecraft to go in search of a new solar system to call home. Liu Peiqiang, played by Jing Wu, dons a spacesuit in the mission to save Earth.

A Serious Job

Actors Chuxiao Qu, left,  and Jin Mai Jaho, portraying Liu Qi and Han Duoduo, contemplate their mission in "The Wandering Earth."

Not So Welcoming

On Earth's surface, actor Chuxiao Qu, as Liu Qui, looks at the remnants of a 2500 year old culture in "The Wandering Earth."

Humanity in the Balance

Wang Lei, played by actor Guangjie Li, watches as a serious situation grows more dire in "The Wandering Earth."

Frosty Missions

In "The Wandering Earth," actor Jin Mai Jaho, as an Duoduo, explores the frozen wasteland that is Earth.

Tech Challenges

Technology on this cosmic is not always helpful, in "The Wandering Earth."

Earth's frozen crust offers little help to the valiant team tasked with completing the journey to a new star system in "The Wandering Earth."

Frozen Civilizations

In the task of completing Project Wandering Earth, the brave team members face an antagonistic Earth.

The teams travel the frozen landscape in all-terrain vehicles to complete their missions in "The Wandering Earth."

Unexpected Dangers

It will take over 2500 years and and a distance 4.5 light years for Earth and its inhabitants to complete Project Wandering Earth and many unexpected hazards put the journey in jeopardy.

Ice-Bound Earth

Without the warmth of the Sun, Earth freezes, leaving a less-than-welcoming atmosphere for the courageous team to traverse.

Unknown Earth

Traveling from the Milky Way to another solar system proved more dangerous than the scientists anticipated. Though humanity is hidden away deep inside the Earth, a group of brave souls ventures outside.

Traveling to a New Home

In "The Wandering Earth" thousands of infusion thrusters maneuver our (formerly) Blue Planet through the Universe to a new home.

Working the Vehicles

A 4.5 light year journey, lasting 2,500 years requires more than the planners expected in "The Wandering Earth."

Unhelpful AI

Aboard a space station, a troubling AI system named MOSS gives astronauts fits as they try to complete their mission.

Problems in Orbit

In a remote space station, astronauts work to aide the cosmic journey of Earth and its population.

Engines of Change

Thousands of infusion-powered thrusters move Earth to its destination 4.5 light years away.

Separating Sections

Aboard the remote space station, astronauts must respond quickly to unplanned events to save Earth's odyssey, Earth and its peoples.

Troublesome Sentience

MOSS, a computer program aboard the space station, makes trouble for the astronauts involved in the unexpected mission to save Earth in "The Wandering Earth."

Fighting to Save Earth

In "The Wandering Earth," scientists use thousands of thrusters to move the planet away from its dying Sun into another star system 4.5 light years away.

• Jupiter's Great Red Spot Is Spectacular (and Weird) in This Juno Photo
• The Sun's Turbulent North Pole Looks Like a Spooky Vortex in This Composite Image
• Earth's Atmosphere: Composition, Climate & Weather

Follow Doris Elin Salazar on Twitter @salazar_elin . Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook . 

Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: [email protected].

Doris is a science journalist and Space.com contributor. She received a B.A. in Sociology and Communications at Fordham University in New York City. Her first work was published in collaboration with London Mining Network, where her love of science writing was born. Her passion for astronomy started as a kid when she helped her sister build a model solar system in the Bronx. She got her first shot at astronomy writing as a Space.com editorial intern and continues to write about all things cosmic for the website. Doris has also written about microscopic plant life for Scientific American’s website and about whale calls for their print magazine. She has also written about ancient humans for Inverse, with stories ranging from how to recreate Pompeii’s cuisine to how to map the Polynesian expansion through genomics. She currently shares her home with two rabbits. Follow her on twitter at @salazar_elin.

SpaceX launching private Polaris Dawn astronaut mission Aug. 27: How to watch online

SpaceX stacks 2nd Starship launch tower in Texas (photos)

200 meteorites on Earth traced to 5 craters on Mars

Most Popular

• 2 Why the 7 worlds of TRAPPIST-1 waltz in peculiar patterns
• 3 NASA will give a Boeing Starliner update on Aug. 24 and you can watch live
• 4 Get a sneak peek at upcoming 'Avatar Land' in Disney's California Adventure Park
• 5 The Cassiopeia constellation is surrounded by celestial treasures. Here's how to see them

What the sci-fi blockbuster Wandering Earth II can teach us about China’s global and local aspirations

Ph.D student at School of Humanities & Language, Faculty of Arts, Design & Architecture, UNSW Sydney

PhD candidate, UNSW Sydney

Disclosure statement

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

UNSW Sydney provides funding as a member of The Conversation AU.

View all partners

A prequel to the 2019 film Wandering Earth, the Chinese blockbuster hit Wandering Earth II opens on a futuristic dystopia where the dying Sun is about to explode and engulf Earth.

A survival strategy is proposed: the Wandering Earth Project will build giant engines and use them to propel Earth away from the Sun.

Amid a global crisis, China rises to save the world. Western countries descend into chaos. Using state-of-the-art made-in-China technologies, China carries out the Wandering Earth Project – disregarding the cost of lives lost.

Now released globally, Wandering Earth II has earned more than half a billion dollars in China since it opened on January 22. It has also achieved critical success in its home country, with domestic media saying it exemplifies a “Chinese-style space romance”.

Adapted from a short science fiction story by celebrated Chinese author Liu Cixin, at first sight the plot will seem very familiar to fans of Hollywood.

But this film speaks to China’s growing ambition of leading global governance, and its embrace of collectivism and consequentialism .

Chinese science fiction

These political imaginations are not recent. They are deeply rooted in China’s political traditions, along with the development of science fiction literature in China.

Western science fiction was first translated into Chinese in 1902, at a time when Chinese thinkers called for learning from the West to “subdue” the West: a self-salvation plan to modernise China.

Science fiction was taken as an educational tool to disseminate Western sciences. Science fiction enabled China to imagine a bright future when it achieved national independence from Westerners – or became a new power in international politics.

An early Chinese science fiction book was The New Era, published in 1908. This book envisioned China would rise as a regional power in 1999 and secure peace in the Asian continent.

Chinese science fiction began by learning from Western counterparts at the turn of the 20th century when works of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells were widely translated and read in China.

After 1949, however, the genre followed the footsteps of the Soviet Union in its imagination of how science and technology could be better used in the hands of communists than Western capitalists.

Read more: China's Communist Party at 100: revolution forever

East versus West

Wandering Earth II continues this tradition of praising the science possible under communism, and positioning China as a global power. Here, China invests the most resources – technological, financial and human – in saving Earth.

The West is often represented as a rival in Chinese science fiction literature. Alternatively, it serves as a witness to China’s victory: in Wandering Earth II, even the United States has to consult a Chinese diplomat for advice.

This diplomat, Mr Zhou, bears a remarkable resemblance to Zhou Enlai , China’s first premier under Mao Zedong’s leadership. As a diplomat, Zhou Enlai helped China negotiate regional disputes with neighbouring countries.

Today, Xi’s “ community of common destiny ” is shaking the world order.

China’s leadership in Wandering Earth II’s “united Earth government” echoes the increasingly assertive image of China in global politics.

Chinese collectivism

The Wandering Earth Project exemplifies Chinese collectivism when old astronauts voluntarily join in a suicide mission – although some of them are not given a chance to speak.

Chinese history is permeated with political myths of individual sacrifices, derived from the long-existing authoritarian regime.

After communism won in 1949, “for the people” became supreme doctrine: the new government worked to eliminate remaining bourgeois liberal thoughts, and build revolutionary heroes. Individual interest was reduced to be secondary to service for the nation.

A key part of Chinese political life is the collective ideology of conspicuous consequentialism: that is, the morality of an action is measured only in its consequences.

Taking human survival as its goal, the supreme artificial intelligence in the film pushes Earth to the verge of destruction to test the willingness of human unity.

Despite the “good” intentions of this artificial intelligence, it drags everyone’s life into extreme danger and leaves more than half the world’s population on a barren and frozen Earth without atmospheric protection.

No one in Wandering Earth II questions this draconian decision-making logic. Indeed, when the AI’s true purpose is revealed at the end of the film, the human survivors eulogise its intelligence, forgetting the high price they have paid.

Individual sacrifices

There are many parallels to draw between Wandering Earth II and modern Chinese society.

Today in China, the authoritarian bureaucracy emphasises results, while the policy goals – whether extensive economic growth or COVID-zero – lead to a moral dilemma between overall outcome and individual losses in the process.

When the greater good is achieved, individual sacrifices are lightly portrayed as a necessary cost and a “detour” in the development – which, of course, can be forgivable, and then forgettable.

In contrast to Kant’s humans are ends, not means , both Wandering Earth II and Chinese politics conceive the opposite.

Read more: More lunar missions means more space junk around the Moon – two scientists are building a catalog to track the trash

• Science fiction
• Collectivism
• Chinese literature
• Chinese cinema
• Science fiction movies
• Science fiction film
• Blockbuster movies

Head of Evidence to Action

Supply Chain - Assistant/Associate Professor (Tenure-Track)

Education Research Fellow

OzGrav Postdoctoral Research Fellow

Casual Facilitator: GERRIC Student Programs - Arts, Design and Architecture

Earth Engine

• Edit source

Engine Sizes

The inside of the Earth Engine.

The Earth Engine is a rocket that is attached onto the earth's crust. The Earth Engine's size can range from 3.5 to 8 kilometers tall. There are two types of earth engines, torque and thrust. The torque engines are attached to the equator of the Earth and used for steering and keeping the earth stable. The thrust engines are used to propel the Earth forward on its 2500 year journey to Alpha Centauri. There are 12000 Earth Engines in total.

• Show Spoilers
• Night Vision
• Sticky Header
• Highlight Links

Follow TV Tropes

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/TheWanderingEarth

The Wandering Earth

The Wandering Earth (Chinese: 流浪地球, Pinyin: Liúlàng Dìqiú) is a 2019 live-action science fiction film directed by Frant Gwo (Guo Fan), based on the novella by Liu Cixin, and starring Wu Jing . It is currently in the top ten highest-grossing non-English films.

In the near future, the sun is exhausting its fuel, and will soon turn into a red giant, destroying the entire Solar System in three hundred years. Under threat of planetary annihilation, humanity bands together to construct 12,000 enormous "Earth Engines" on Earth's surface to propel it out of the Solar System to a new home. However, upon approaching Jupiter to make use of gravity assist, thousands of engines get knocked offline all across the globe, threatening to plunge the entire Earth into Jupiter.

It was released on Chinese New Year's Day (February 5th, 2019) and later picked up by Netflix on April 30th.

• Action Girl : Zhou Qian kicks just as much ass as the rest of her rescue team. Other female rescue workers appear to provide assistance at the Sulawesi Earth Engine.

• A.I. Is a Crapshoot : MOSS becomes the primary antagonist on the space station, fighting Liu Peiqiang at every step. MOSS : It is unreasonable to expect humans to stay reasonable.

• Apocalypse Anarchy : When the destruction of the world seems imminent, the people in the underground cities start rioting and stealing everything they can.
• As Foreshadowed before the end, an anti- UGE insurgency was being brewed by whoever doubt the Sun's imminent death.
• Apocalyptic Logistics : No emphasis is put on the logistics of maintaining underground cities, how populations are supported, or how space is distributed.
• Arc Number : For anyone outside China, Rescue team's sequence CN171-11 is an reference to a real-life rescue team flying a Mi-171 helicopter who gave their lives rescueing people from the Grand Earthquake of Wenchuan in 2008, 11 years prior to the film's debut.
• Artificial Outdoors Display : One of the first scenes after the prologue has a bunch of students (Duoduo among them) getting a school lecture on the Chinese New Year that gets disrupted when Liu Qi activates an EMP, making all if the lights and the wall display of a Chinese city downtown blink uncontrollably.
• Of course, the idea that the entire Earth can be equipped with giant thrusters to push it out of orbit.
• Even within that sudden death, the Sun expanding wouldn't be the problem. Stellar expansion is preceded by a significant increase in temperature. If the Sun was three hundred years away from engulfing the Earth, it would have already heated up enough to render the planet uninhabitable.
• The "gravitational spike" that Jupiter causes. No, planets cannot randomly increase in gravity.
• Igniting Jupiter's atmosphere which would cause a shockwave strong enough to push Earth out of its gravitational pull.
• Earth. Instead of bringing just a sufficient amount of resources to establish a new home around a new sun, humanity decides to bring the entire planet .
• The International Station has multiple stored human embryos, as well as stores of seeds and a database with hefty amounts of mankind's knowledge, all to be sent towards Alpha Centauri as part of the backup "Helios Project".
• The Beforetimes : Han Zi'ang reminisces of the time before the Wandering Earth Project, when nobody worried about the sun and everyone was more interested in something called "money".
• Big Bad : MOSS is the closest thing to a big bad that this movie has. Besides that, there is no real big bad.
• The Big Guy : Wang Lei and the other members of the CN171-11 rescue team .
• Binary Suns : Assuming Earth makes it to its destination, the humans will have to deal with this, since Alpha Centauri is not one star, but two. note  It's actually technically a ternary star system with three stars, since Proxima Centauri orbits the other two, but it's at a much greater distance.
• Bubble Shield : Early in the movie, when threatened by Brother Yi, Liu Qi uses an inflatable sphere to slow him down. He is shown to have several of these on his suit. While the gang is in Shanghai, it is revealed that this sphere is a protective inflatable bubble-type piece of equipment, which saves his life when it allows him to land safely (if a bit roughed up) and protects him from debris after a great fall near the end of the movie.
• Calling Parents by Their Name : Due to his contempt towards his father, Liu Qi always calls Liu Peiqiang by name. It's not until Liu Peiqiang sacrifices himself at the climax of the movie that Liu Qi finally calls him "Dad".
• Calling the Old Man Out : Liu Qi does this to Liu Peiqiang for leaving his family behind and allowing Qi's mother/Peiqiang's wife to die.
• The Cavalry : The rescue workers that arrive at the Sulawesi Earth Engine to help push a firing pin into place.
• Centrifugal Gravity : The Navigational Platform International Space Station spins, which allows the crew to walk normally. At one point, the control room of the station stops spinning, and everything starts floating away.
• Chekhov's Gift : Makarov puts a bottle of vodka in Liu Peiqiang's space suit to celebrate the latter's retirement. Peiqiang later uses the vodka to disable MOSS.
• Chekhov's Skill : At age four, Liu Qi learns from Liu Peiqiang that Jupiter is composed 90% of hydrogen. He then remembers this information and realizes that it means that the hydrogen could be used to cause an explosion strong enough to propel Earth out of Jupiter's gravitational pull.
• Chekhov's Volcano : Sort of. The Earth Engines are essentially giant artificial volcanoes taller than even Mount Everest. One of the oversized vectoring engines becomes essential in saving Earth from Jupiter's gravitational pull.
• Choosing Neutrality : There's actually a third officer who shares his quarters with Liu and Makarov. When Liu breaks out of his hibernation chamber to stop MOSS, the A.I. awakens both Makarov and the third officer so that they can coerce Liu back into hibernation. While Makarov goes against MOSS's orders and chooses to directly help Liu stop MOSS, the third officer instead opts to quietly go back to sleep, neither helping MOSS nor Liu.
• Colony Ship : Earth is turned into one of these to reach a new star system.
• Computer Equals Monitor : In a way. MOSS is the space station's A.I., but primarily communicates through various box-shaped "heads" throughout the station that each bear a single eye. When Liu Peiqiang reaches the command module, MOSS has a "head" in there berating him for breaking protocol. He immediately "decapitates" it with a thrown air canister, which manages to shut it up. Naturally, it only takes a few moments for MOSS to lower a replacement "head" in the exact same position its old one was in.
• Humankind takes a grave risk to save the hope of rebuilding the Earth's biosphere from total annihilation.
• Creative Closing Credits : An Earth the size of a grain of sand flies through floating parts of a printing press, which assemble together and print words onto immense pages, which get rolled up and bound into Liu Cixin's original The Wandering Earth novella. Pages of the book also reform into an Earth Engine, the Navigation Platform International Space Station, and Jupiter.
• Death World : The wandering Earth has become a frozen wasteland that will snap-freeze anybody without a protective suit, and this is without taking into account the chaos Jupiter's gravity makes during the events of the film.
• Depopulation Bomb : Stopping Earth's rotation causes catastrophic tsunamis all over the world that wipe out half Earth's population.
• Died Standing Up : One small team of four is seen frozen in a walking position, having succumbed to the sheer cold while transporting a lighter core. Justified in that they are completely encased in ice, so that they continue to be held up.
• Disaster Movie : A lot of disaster happens for sure.
• Distant Finale : Not super distant, but the last scene of the film takes place 3 years after the encounter with Jupiter.
• Distant Prologue : The beginning of the movie takes place 17 years before most of the events of the film, before the Earth Engines were activated and back when Earth was in its regular place in orbit.
• Driven to Madness : When the heroes find Li Yiyi in a crashed airplane, he is homicidal and nearly kills Han Duoduo. Fortunately, the others are able to calm him down.
• Eternal Engine : The Earth Engines. Each one is stated to be eleven kilometers tall, and the torque engines around the equator are even bigger. One Earth engine over Paris is shown to make the Eiffel Tower look like a blade of grass. There are ten thousand standard thrust engines and two thousand more torque engines.
• Extremely Short Timespan : Aside from the Distant Prologue at the beginning of the movie and the Distant Finale at the end of the movie, the events of the film take place more-or-less over a mere 36-40 hour period.
• Fight to Survive : Comes with being a disaster movie of sorts.
• Funny Foreigner : Tim, a Chinese-Australian fool, and Makarov, a Russian cosmonaut. Both are played for comic relief.
• Generation Ship : Earth, as a Planet Spaceship . The Wandering Earth Project is said to take 2,500 years to complete, and will involve 100 generations of humans.
• Glacial Apocalypse : The Earth entering a new ice age is the natural consequence of transforming it into a Planet Spaceship and send it flying away from the Sun (to escape it becoming a red giant several billion years too early). The cold, which is capable of instantly killing a person if they are not protected, is one of the greatest threats in the journey to save the planet when it threatens to crash with Jupiter.
• Gondor Calls for Aid : Han Duoduo does this near the end of the movie.
• Gratuitous English : Tim shouts one or two lines in English when frightened. Liu Qi also snaps at someone in English.
• Greater-Scope Villain : In a way, the United Earth Government is this, as MOSS is acting on the decision made by the council members of the government to continue with Project Helios instead of saving Earth; however, their intentions are fairly reasonable and understandable. Eventually, however, the Government has a Heel–Face Turn and chooses hope, allowing Liu Peiqiang to destroy the Navigation Platform International Space Station to save Earth.
• The Heart : Han Duoduo.
• Heartwarming Orphan : Han Duoduo, who was orphaned in a tsunami as a baby and found and adopted by Han Zi'ang. She later heartwarms enough rescue workers to convince them to help push the firing pin of the Sulawesi Earth Engine.
• Heel–Face Turn : The United Earth Government eventually agrees to allow Liu Peiqiang to terminate Project Helios to save the Earth.
• An unspecified worker chose to fall down a ravine in their truck rather than possibly allow the cargo to fall down with them. The cargo is an incredibly important Lighter Core - essentially, the firing mechanism for an Earth Engine.
• He Lianke dies while tweaking the hardware to hack the Sulawesi Earth Engine.
• Liu Peiqiang plunges himself and the Navigational Platform International Space Station into the exhaust beam of one of the Earth Engines to ignite Jupiter's atmosphere.
• Hollywood Science : Has this in spades. Reviewers like Bob Chipman have mentioned that the plot is as scientifically sound as that of Armageddon (1998) (which is famously used by NASA as a litmus test of how much Hollywood screws up).
• Human Popsicle : The Navigational Platform International Space Station contains hundreds of thousands of human embryos on board in case something goes wrong with the Wandering Earth Project. Also happens in a lethal way a few times to some of the people due to the cold surface environment.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice : Zhou Qian gets impaled through the shoulder all the way through by a steel rod when a ceiling collapses. She survives.
• In Space, Everyone Can See Your Face : Liu Peiqiang and Makarov's faces are clearly visible in the helmets of their space suits.
• Ironic Echo : At the beginning of the film, Liu Peiqiang tells his son, Liu Qi, that he will turn into a star by flying up to the Navigational Platform International Space Station. He says it again at the climax when he sends the same station into the Sulawesi Earth Engine's modified exhaust beams, causing an explosion visible from Earth's surface that resembles a star.
• I Will Only Slow You Down : Wang Lei convinces Liu Qi and Tim to escape with Han Duoduo, as he's trapped under rubble and can't escape. When they do, he cracks a smile before he dies.
• Crosses over into Dark Is Evil and Red and Black and Evil All Over because MOSS's node/head/whatever in the control room of the space station, which is directly hooked up to its databank (basically its true "body"), is instead black with a red eye.
• Lovable Coward : Tim is the only member of the group who is constantly freaking out over the danger.
• The Medic : Zhou Qian has a pouch with a Red Cross icon and several vial-like cylinders on her belt (possibly adrenaline shots), and she is shown performing CPR on Huang Ming. Li Yiyi even gives her the nickname "Band-aid".
• Missing Mom : Liu Peiqiang's wife died before the events of the film, a fact that their son, Liu Qi, holds over his head due to the fact that Peiqiang chose to pull the plug to guarantee Liu Qi and Han Zi'ang residency in the underground cities.
• Monumental Damage Resistance : Shanghai's Oriental Pearl Tower is shown to be intact, albeit frozen. So is the (fictional) building for the Shanghai Olympics 2044.
• Mundane Utility : Li Yiyi wrote a program called the 12 Chimes of Spring as a show for Chinese New Year's, which would modify an Earth Engine to fire out sequential red bursts of plasma through individual nozzles rather than constant blue streams of plasma through all seven nozzles.
• The Nicknamer : While discussing the plan to hijack an Earth Engine, Li Yiyi exclusively refers to everyone by odd nicknames such as "Band-Aid" for Zhou Qian and "Chinese Man" for Tim.
• No Hugging, No Kissing : There is no romance between any of the characters in this film at all.
• No One Gets Left Behind : Invoked, but ultimately averted. Han Zi'ang gets left behind while transporting the Lighter Core through Shanghai, and dies when the building they are in collapses. This leaves Liu Qi enraged.
• Non-Action Big Bad : MOSS can't do much to the protagonists besides try to lock Liu Peiqiang in the hibernation chamber and activate a thruster to blast Makarov. Most of its antagonism is in the form of restricting access to various things on the Navigation Platform International Space Station.
• Non-Indicative Name : Earth isn't actually wandering (i.e. moving around aimlessly), since the planet has a target destination (the Alpha Centauri system).
• Not Afraid to Die : Liu Peiqiang is absolutely fearless as he steers the Navigational Platform International Space Station into the Earth Engine's exhaust stream.
• One World Order : In the face of planetary destruction, all the nations of Earth band together to form the United Earth Government, which initiates the Wandering Earth Project to save the world.
• Only One Name : Tim and Makarov, the two western characters, are only ever referred to by one name.
• Outrun the Fireball : Some of the protagonists hop in a transport to try to outrun the shockwave from the explosion on Jupiter's surface. The shockwave destroys half the transport before they can take shelter under an Earth Engine, but they all manage to survive.
• Pac Man Fever : Brother Yi near the beginning of the movie is shown playing Contra on a Famicom. This is particularly odd since assuming it's an original Famicom, the console is up to 92 years old , since the movie takes place in 2075.
• Percussive Therapy : Han Zi'ang's death enrages Liu Qi to the point of trying to attack Wang Lei.
• Plucky Comic Relief : Makarov has a "drunk Russian" shtick, while Tim spends the majority of his screentime being clueless and goofy.
• Precision F-Strike : In the English dub, Liu Qi gives one to Wang Lei after Han Zi'ang gets killed in a collapsing building. Liu Qi: Why the fuck didn't you save my grandfather!?
• Planet Spaceship : Earth. The 12,000 Earth Engines on the surface of the planet allow it to cruise through space.
• Powered Armor : Not exactly armor, but rescue teams such as CN171-11 use exoskeletons that grant the user more strength.
• Rape as Comedy : It's a punchline when Tim reveals that he's in jail because of a rape accusation.
• Red and Black and Evil All Over : MOSS's main drive is a black box with a red eye, in comparison to the gunmetal grey of its other terminals.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning : MOSS, which has a design clearly inspired by HAL 9000 . Surprise, surprise, it turns out to be the Big Bad of the film.
• Rogue Planet : Humanity turning Earth into one of these is an important part of the plot.
• Saharan Shipwreck : There is an enormous ship frozen in the middle of Shanghai. Justified in that it is explicitly stated that due to the Earth Engines' influence, the planet's rotation stopped, causing tsunamis all across the globe, which is how the ship could have gotten there.
• Scenery Gorn : Has a few such scenes, such as the shot of the frozen Shanghai.
• The engines are also powered by ordinary rocks burned using "heavy fusion" technology. From John Elliot from the same article as above, it would also take 95% of the Earth's mass to power the entire 4.3 light year trip to the Alpha Centauri system.
• The entire ploy to ignite Jupiter to cause an explosion strong enough to push Earth away is simply ludicrous for the people on the surface of the planet. Assuming such a powerful explosion can even happen, an explosion powerful enough to push Earth away to allow it to overcome Jupiter's gravity while it's 30 minutes from breaching its roche limit would crush all the Earth Engines on the side of the planet that the shockwave hits, killing everyone who is currently on that side of Earth, sending shockwaves through the entire crust and probably caving in every underground city on the face of the globe, and leaving the world with one hell of a dent. Of course, none of that happens and Earth simply continues on its merry way.
• Single-Biome Planet : Earth becomes an ice world after leaving its place in the Solar System and begins to get more and more distant from the Sun.
• Sleeper Starship : The Navigational Platform International Space Station comes with hibernation chambers for the crew.
• The Smart Guy : Li Yiyi and He Lianke.
• Space Station : The Navigational Platform International Space Station, which cruises 100,000 km ahead of Earth to help guide it.
• Stuff Blowing Up : A few things. We have exploding electrical equipment, erupting volcanoes, and later, the entire Navigation Platform International Space Station and Jupiter .
• Super Wrist-Gadget : Liu Qi's wrist multitool, which includes devices like an EMP and a blowtorch.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome : Though Liu Qi, Han Duoduo, and Li Yiyi become a team by the epilogue of the movie, the surviving rescue workers and Tim simply returned to civilian life.
• Tempting Fate : While driving a stolen transport, Liu Qi assures Han Duoduo that "no one can catch [him]". Seconds later, he runs into a police vehicle, and in the very next scene, he's in prison .
• Time-Passage Beard : Liu Peiqiang is clean-shaven in the prologue, but seventeen years later during the bulk of the film, he has a full beard.
• Tidally Locked Planet : Sort of. Since the Earth has stopped rotating and it is being propelled away from the Sun, only the northern hemisphere is exposed to sunlight, while the southern hemisphere, facing away from the sun, is in permanent night. Since the Earth Engines that push Earth are facing towards the sun, this means that most of the Earth Engines are on the lit side of Earth, with only the torque engines approaching the dark side.
• Title Drop : The plan to move Earth to a new star system is itself called "The Wandering Earth Project".
• Translator Microbes : Despite speaking different languages, characters in the film can often understand each other, such as the Chinese Liu Peiqiang and the Russian Makarov. Might have something to do with the earpieces each Navigational Platform International Space Station crew member is wearing. At one point in the movie, one rescue worker on Earth is explicitly shown activating a translation device when receiving a spoken message. In the English dub, however, everyone simply speaks English with various accents.
• 20 Minutes into the Future : The technology (besides the Earth Engines) does not seem much more advanced than modern times. The movie takes place in 2075, as shown by a blink-and-you'll-miss-it display monitor. This means that the Earth Engines were activated in 2058 at the earliest, since the prologue that takes place 17 years before shows the Earth in its usual position, before the engines were activated. In fact, Han Zi'ang states that no Earth Engine had failed in 30 years, which means that at least one was completed in 2045, and were being constructed earlier still.
• Two Girls to a Team : Han Duoduo and Zhou Qian are the only females among the main cast.
• Underground City : There is one under each of the 10,000 Earth Engines.
• Weaponized Exhaust : The third act of the movie focuses on amplifying the output of one of the Earth Engines to blast Jupiter in order to cause an explosion to push Earth out of the danger zone.
• Weird World, Weird Food : People underground eat flavored earthworms.
• White-and-Grey Morality : Though MOSS is the closest thing to a Big Bad in the film, it is simply acting on orders given by the United Earth Government, the members of which are only choosing to abandon Earth to ensure human survival - a difficult decision for sure. They eventually decide to save Earth instead.
• True Legend (2010)
• Chinese Films
• Wang De Sheng Yan
• Voyagers (2021)
• Space Stories
• Virus (1980)
• Science Fiction Films
• The War Game
• Creator/IMAX
• War for the Planet of the Apes
• A Wakefield Project
• Films of 2015–2019

Important Links

• Action Adventure
• Commercials
• Crime & Punishment
• Professional Wrestling
• Speculative Fiction
• Sports Story
• Animation (Western)
• Music And Sound Effects
• Print Media
• Sequential Art
• Tabletop Games
• Applied Phlebotinum
• Characterization
• Characters As Device
• Narrative Devices
• British Telly
• The Contributors
• Creator Speak
• Derivative Works
• Laws And Formulas
• Show Business
• Split Personality
• Truth And Lies
• Truth In Television
• Fate And Prophecy
• Image Fixer
• New Articles
• Edit Reasons
• Isolated Pages
• Images List
• Recent Videos
• Crowner Activity
• Un-typed Pages
• Recent Page Type Changes
• Trope Entry
• Character Sheet
• Playing With
• Creating New Redirects
• Cross Wicking
• Tips for Editing
• Text Formatting Rules
• Handling Spoilers
• Administrivia
• Trope Repair Shop
• Image Pickin'

Advertisement:

'The Wandering Earth' Featurettes: Behind The Out-Of-This-World Visual Effects By Weta Workshop And Pixomondo

The Wandering Earth is an astounding achievement for China — not just in being the country's very first sci-fi blockbuster, but for its out-of-this-world visual effects.

The jaw-dropping effects were created by a cabal of visual effects studios, including Peter Jackson's famous Weta Workshop , which was behind the Lord of the Rings series, and  Pixomondo , which created the dragons for HBO's Game of Thrones. Two featurettes from both companies delve into the making of the global hit, which has quietly become 2019's highest-grossing film worldwide.

The Wandering Earth Featurettes

Weta Workshop created the the film's highly specialized spacesuits, exoskeletons and weaponry worn by the heroes of the sci-fi film as they attempt to save Earth from certain destruction. The spacesuits were much more elaborate than they appeared, boating an array of tech and equipment on top of a customized exoskeleton that Weta designed.

"[ The Wandering Earth 's team] approached us with some beautiful conceptual design work done by the Chinese designers and asked if we wanted to help with the heroes' suits," Weta co-founder and creative director Richard Taylor said in the behind-the-scenes video released by the company. Using a combination of director  Frant Gwo and his team's ambitious designs and their many years of expertise, Weta crafted stunning-looking spacesuits that had both form and function.

But Weta was only one of the many companies that worked to make  The Wandering Earth a reality. Base FX, Bottleship VFX, Dexter Studios, Macrograph, More VFX, Black Mondo, and Pixomondo were among the companies that worked on the film's visual effects. Pixomondo also released a video of their work on  The Wandering Earth in a form of a VFX breakdown reel.

The company completed 216 shots, including over 50 full CG shots which ranged from full CG environments to simulations of collapsing ice and frozen buildings. It seems the company was in charge mostly of the surface-setting shots, in which the characters encounter frozen carcasses of former cities and navigate collapsing buildings and shattered streets. The company's biggest project was the CG ice wall, which was over 400 meters in height, pushing PXO to build an entirely new scene management pipeline for the project.

Combined with the film's gorgeous vision of the cosmos, these effects create a film that demands to be seen in theaters. The Chinese mega-hit will be coming soon to Netflix , but I encourage you to check it out in the big screen in one of the select theaters showing it nationwide.

Here is the synopsis of  The Wandering Earth :

The sun is dying out. The earth will soon be engulfed by the inflating sun. To save the human civilization, scientists draw up an escape plan that will bring the whole human race from danger. With the help of thousands of infusion powered engines, the planet earth will leave the solar system and embark on a 2,500 year journey to the orbit of a star 4.5 light years away.

• Entertainment /
• US & World

A new trailer for The Wandering Earth shows off a desperate plan to save the planet

China’s biggest science fiction blockbuster to date.

By Andrew Liptak

Share this story

A new trailer for The Wandering Earth — described as China’s biggest science fiction movie ever — landed earlier this week, showing off an ambitious adventure that follows the efforts to save Earth after scientists discover that the sun is about to go out.

The movie is based on a story by Chinese author Cixin Liu — who’s best known for his Three-Body Problem trilogy and last year’s Ball Lightning . While those books are huge, epic stories, The Wandering Earth is no less ambitious: when scientists realize that the sun will go out in a couple of decades, they hatch a desperate plan: to move the planet to Proxima Centauri. The construct thousands of giant engines to move the planet out of orbit, where it can then slingshot post Jupiter and out of the Solar System.

The Wandering Earth could be China’s breakout sci-fi blockbuster film

This new trailer shows off some of the drama midway through the project: The engines have malfunctioned and Earth misses its exit window, and will collide with Jupiter in a matter of hours. To save the Earth, a crew of astronauts hatch another desperate plan to reactivate the massive Earth Engines to avert disaster. The film’s design looks good, with decent costumes, props ( WETA of New Zealand produced the costumes and weapons ) and special effects.

Make no mistake: this movie looks bonkers and over the top. There’s desperate rescue missions, trucks dodging huge blocks of falling ice, astronauts escaping from damaged spaceships, and a guy shooting the Jupiter’s great Red Spot with a machine gun. But it also looks like it could be a really fun film.

Another trailer hit back in December, showing off the giant engines that are set up across the Earth to push the Earth out of its orbit, and teases that their failure that will doom the mission.

The film has been hailed as the biggest science fiction film produced in China, and is a good signal that the local film industry is maturing, and is capable of producing high-budget thrillers. Speaking with The Verge last year , Chinese screenwriter and author Anna Wu said that the genre was a “challenge for the Chinese film industry,” noting that audiences really demand a high level of special effects, and that prior high-profile examples have failed — like another adaptation of a Cixin Liu novel, The Three-Body Problem , which was filmed but never released . The Wandering Earth could be the country’s first big breakout hit.

Because of that, there’s a lot riding on The Wandering Earth for the country’s film industry when it’s released on February 5th. With its growing middle class, China has become an important stop for most Hollywood films, sometimes making or breaking a film —  Venom went on to pull in a massive $243 million from the Chinese box office, while Solo: A Star Wars Story earned a measly $9.62 million . The Wandering Earth certainly won’t pull in huge numbers from the US box office — it’s only slated for a limited release starting on February 8th, but it’s a good indicator that we could see more in the future.

Starlink has a pricey new plan to stop scalpers

European iphones are more fun now, elon musk says x staff can get their stock — if they prove they deserve it, french authorities arrest telegram’s ceo, no one’s ready for this.

More from this stream The Wandering Earth: news and updates for China’s biggest science fiction movie

China’s blockbuster the wandering earth is gorgeous, goofy, and on netflix now, watch how a studio created the wandering earth’s fantastic world in this vfx reel, china’s blockbuster the wandering earth is coming to netflix.

Movie Reviews

Tv/streaming, collections, chaz's journal, great movies, contributors, the wandering earth ii.

Now streaming on:

Time runs out in carefully marked units in the mainland Chinese sci-fi disaster pic “The Wandering Earth II,” a sturdy prequel to the record-smashing adaptation of Liu Cixin ’s novel. In “The Wandering Earth II,” the apocalyptic problems faced by this movie’s Chinese characters—along with their international peers from the United Earth Government (UEG)—have already happened. Because in “ The Wandering Earth ,” the planet has already left its orbit thanks to some high-powered rocket engines, which have pushed the Earth out of harm’s way (aka a crash course with the Sun). Set in the near-future—a range of dates that includes 2044, 2058, and 2065—“The Wandering Earth II” follows China’s men and women of action as they lead the planet out of the solar system and into the previous movie.

Both “The Wandering Earth” and its sequel are flashy, state-approved cornball spectacles about humanity’s resilience (especially the Chinese). Both movies were produced with gargantuan budgets that would make even James Cameron blink, and they both look fantastic thanks to director Frant Gwo ’s eye for panoramic scope and paperback cover-worthy details. The main difference between these two blockbusters is that the protagonists of “The Wandering Earth II” must repeatedly choose to be hopeful despite perpetually impending disasters, each one of which is neatly labeled and foregrounded with pulpy on-screen text like “The Lunar Crisis in 12 hours” and “Nuclear explosion in 3 hours.”

In this way, Gwo (“ The Sacrifice ”) and his five credited co-writers succeed in refocusing our attention on scenes of ticking-clock suspense, sandwiched between syrupy—and mostly satisfying—melodramatic interludes, where square-jawed astronauts and UEG diplomats struggle to do what we know is a foregone conclusion.

Most of “The Wandering Earth II” follows the superhuman efforts needed to jumpstart the Moving Mountain Project, the mission to first build and then deploy the globe-shifting engines needed to push the Earth out of harm’s way. The UEG’s Chinese delegation, led by the paternal diplomat Zhezhi Zhou ( Li Xuejian ), recommends prioritizing the Moving Mountain Project instead of the Digital Life Project. This radical initiative would transfer human participants’ consciousnesses into artificially intelligent computer programs. Some Digital Life supporters try to sabotage the Moving Mountain Project, including a deadly attack on the Space Elevator transportation ships that send UEG representatives from the Earth to the Moon.

Nobody living through the events of “The Wandering Earth II” knows what we know: That the Moving Mountain project succeeds and eventually becomes the Wandering Earth project, which comes under threat by a HAL 9000-esque artificial intelligence (A.I.) named MOSS in the first film. Still, multiple scientists, government officials, and space adventurers—mostly Chinese—believe in their work’s vital necessity, whether they’re punching out saboteurs or detonating one of a couple hundred nuclear devices scattered around the moon. There’s a lot of hand-wringing and teeth-gnashing along the way, mostly from English and Russian-speaking UEG members, all of whom speak in stilted, poorly dubbed dialogue. But Chinese astronauts, like “The Wandering Earth” co-leads Liu Peiqiang (“ Wolf Warrior 2 ” star Wu Jing ) and Han Duoduo ( Wang Zhi ), always prove Zhou’s slogan-simple maxim: “In times of crisis, unity above all.”

Some melancholic (and occasionally maudlin) flashbacks and dialogue emphasize the personal motives of one-note characters who, in the movie’s best scenes, are just parts of a beautiful post-human landscape. Liu remembers his wife and young daughter while melancholic scientist Tu Hengyu ( Andy Lau ) talks with his dead child after he uploads her personality into an experimental A.I. program; she cries a lot and sometimes responds with existentially troubling questions like, “Where am I, daddy? I want to get out.” We’re then periodically reminded of the next impending crisis—“the moon disintegrates in 50 hours”—in between solar storms and nuclear explosions. Somehow, “The Wandering Earth II” never feels tonally unbalanced or narratively convoluted, partly because Gwo and his collaborators keep their movie’s plot focused on feats of action-adventure heroism.

“The Wandering Earth II” only seems relatively unambitious because it’s more focused on sap-happy human emotions than on dystopian intrigue. Both movies are still essentially showcases for beautiful and expensive-looking computer graphics. But “The Wandering Earth II”—a brittle and, at heart, old-fashioned space opera—would be insufferable if Gwo and his ensemble cast members didn’t sell you on the possibility that someday, people who are as selfless, monomaniacal, and capable as Liu and Tu could exist.

“The Wandering Earth II” is also like “The Wandering Earth” because it’s just the right mix of silly and somber. Hurt, scared people wonder about the recent past, but always from a rare position of forward-thinking emotional clarity. (“She’s dead, and that’s it. That’s the reality.”) So when humanity must inevitably save the day, their accomplishments are appropriately surreal and awesome. 

In theaters Sunday, January 22.

Simon Abrams

Simon Abrams is a native New Yorker and freelance film critic whose work has been featured in  The New York Times ,  Vanity Fair ,  The Village Voice,  and elsewhere.

Now playing

Dance First

Glenn kenny.

The Good Half

Clint worthington.

Mothers' Instinct

Brian tallerico.

The Becomers

Matt zoller seitz, film credits.

The Wandering Earth II (2023)

173 minutes

Andy Lau as Tu Hengyu

Wu Jing as Liu Peiqiang

Li Xuejian as Zhou Zhezhi

Zhang Fengyi

• Hongwei Wang
• Yang Zhixue

Latest blog posts

13 Films Illuminate Locarno Film Festival's Columbia Pictures Retrospective

Apple TV+'s Pachinko Expands Its Narrative Palate For An Emotional Season Two

Tina Mabry and Edward Kelsey Moore on the Joy and Uplift of The Supremes at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat

The Adams Family Gets Goopy in Hell Hole

• Login / Sign Up
• Entertainment

Netflix’s The Wandering Earth is a thrilling mix of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Armageddon, and Gravity

The record-breaking Chinese blockbuster turns the familiar into the fantastic

by Karen Han

If a movie that features two imminent space disasters, several stoic sacrifices, and a man screaming and shooting his monstrously large machine gun into the air and screaming, “SCREW YOU, DAMN JUPITER!” sounds like your idea of a good time, have I got the movie for you.

When The Wandering Earth hit theaters earlier this year, touted as the first Chinese space epic, the blockbuster quickly rose to become China’s second highest-grossing film of all time, as well as the second highest-grossing non-English language film of all time. It’s a bona fide hit, which makes it a coup for Netflix, which snapped up the global streaming rights, then dropped it on the platform with little fanfare on May 6. One of the biggest movies in recent history is now just a click away, without you realizing it.

Directed by Frant Gwo and adapted from a novella by Hugo Award-winner Liu Cixin, The Wandering Earth more than earns its reputation as a smash. It’s exactly the mix of cheesy and crowd-pleasing that you’d expect from a blockbuster, with eye-popping CGI sci-fi set dressing to give it a little extra oomph .

In the world of the film, the impending death of the Sun leads to the creation of the United Earth Government, a single global government, and the initiation of the Wandering Earth Project. Earth will be propelled out of the Solar System via giant thrusters, turning the planet into a living spaceship en route to the Alpha Centauri system. In the meantime, humanity retreats to vast underground cities (of limited capacity, and filled by lottery), as the surface of the planet is made uninhabitable by the effects of the cessation of Earth’s rotation as well as the drop in temperature caused by the increasing distance from the Sun.

Liu Qi (Qu Chuxiao) dreams of a life on the surface. In the 17 years since his father, Liu Peiqiang (Wu Jing), left him to take a position on the space station that guides Earth on its new course, Liu Qi has developed something of a rebellious streak. In an attempt to escape the quotidian, he steals his grandfather’s (Ng Man-tat) vehicle license, barters for two illegal thermal suits, and takes his adopted little sister (Zhao Jinmai) along with him for a joyride on the surface. These petty crimes, however, put him in the wrong place at the wrong time — or maybe the right place at the right time.

As it turns out, the plan to save Earth requires a second plan to save Earth. The current trajectory puts it on a collision course with Jupiter, and earthquakes caused by Jupiter’s gravitational spike have put some of Earth’s engines out of commission. The truck Liu Qi has stolen is commandeered by a handful of military officers to transport a lighter core to restart the nearest planetary thruster engine, and so he — and his grandfather, sister, and a few civilians similarly caught up in the chaos — becomes a part of the plan to save the world.

The Wandering Earth is that it’s a blast. It’s an amalgamation of every single science-fiction action trope, with errant A.I., daddy issues, sacrifice for the sake of the greater good, a zero gravity ballet, and heartfelt appeals to humanity and hope for the future. The sheer amount of stuff that’s packed into the movie make a little unwieldy, yes, but there’s always another gonzo set piece on the way just when the movie starts feeling stretched thin.

The one-note characterizations also manage to skate by on the strength of the performances (Ng Man-tat and Wu Jing wring drop of pathos from the action-forward script) as well as a few inventions unique to the movie that help keep it from being totally rote. Gwo’s vision of the future includes a grenade-like device that turns into an oversized, protective hamster ball, as well as a curiously (refreshingly?) minimal American presence. American pop culture’s fingerprints are all over the movie, but the characters are almost entirely Chinese, with the exception of a few Russian cosmonauts, and almost every character gets a heroic beat rather than a single character becoming the planet’s savior.

Even the music feels like it’s been cribbed from previous movies in the same genre — Roc Chen’s score is like Hans Zimmer with emotional manipulation cranked up to 100 — but all of those familiar aspects don’t scuttle The Wandering Earth ’s effectiveness as a box office behemoth. The movie’s a little silly, but it’s the perfect way to kill two hours with friends and a bucket of popcorn. Every beat is bigger and goofier than the last, to the point that it’s impossible not to cheer when — I’d say “if,” but the surprises in a movie like this aren’t in the destination but the journey — things finally work out. The film is spectacle after spectacle, and thank goodness for that.

Most Popular

• Inside Out 2, Longlegs, Netflix’s Incoming, and every movie new to streaming this week
• Star Wars Outlaws might fulfill the promise of multiple Star Wars failures
• The best movies leaving Netflix, Max, and Prime at the end of August 2024
• Crimson Desert’s wild combat left me skeptical at Gamescom
• The slickest superhero RPG I’ve ever seen is on sale for $20

Patch Notes

The best of Polygon in your inbox, every Friday.

This is the title for the native ad

More in Entertainment

The Latest ⚡️

• Cast & crew
• User reviews

The Wandering Earth II

Humans built huge engines on the surface of the earth to find a new home. But the road to the universe is perilous. In order to save earth, young people once again have to step forward to st... Read all Humans built huge engines on the surface of the earth to find a new home. But the road to the universe is perilous. In order to save earth, young people once again have to step forward to start a race against time for life and death. Humans built huge engines on the surface of the earth to find a new home. But the road to the universe is perilous. In order to save earth, young people once again have to step forward to start a race against time for life and death.

• Hongwei Wang
• Yang Zhixue
• Yanmanzi Zhu
• 237 User reviews
• 59 Critic reviews
• 56 Metascore
• 29 wins & 26 nominations

Top cast 99+

• Liu Peiqiang

• Zhou Zhezhi

• Herbert Copley
• Andrey Gerasnov

• Space Elevator Female Attacker
• Space Elevator Male Attacker A
• Space Elevator Male Attacker B
• Korean Pilot

• Wang Zhijian

• Tu Hengyu's Wife
• Thai Astronaut
• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

More like this

Did you know

• Trivia The film is a prequel to the 2019 film The Wandering Earth, which is based on the short story of the same name by Liu Cixin, who serves as the film's producer.
• Goofs The concept behind a space elevator would be the many massive payloads can be hauled into orbital space with very little energy use as compared to the present use of large rocket boosters. It would also not be necessary to subject human occupants to 9 Gs of acceleration to get to space.
• Connections Followed by Liu Lang Di Qiu 3 (2027)
• Soundtracks Humans are Composed by Lei Qian Performed by Shen Zhou Lyrics by Tian Tang

User reviews 237

• Orson-on-the-moon
• Jan 30, 2023
• How long is The Wandering Earth II? Powered by Alexa
• January 22, 2023 (China)
• Douban page
• Shanghainese
• Lưu Lạc Địa Cầu 2
• WanDa Studios, Qingdao, China
• China Film Co., Ltd.
• G!Film Studio
• Beijing Dengfeng International Culture Communications Company
• See more company credits at IMDbPro
• CN¥900,000,000 (estimated)

Technical specs

• Runtime 2 hours 53 minutes
• Dolby Atmos
• IMAX 6-Track

Related news

Contribute to this page.

• See more gaps
• Learn more about contributing

More to explore

Recently viewed.

Starting November 13, 2024, all Earth Engine access will require a Cloud project . We will be limiting quotas for accounts without Cloud projects starting September 16, 2024.

A planetary-scale platform for earth science data & analysis.

Powered by Google's cloud infrastructure

Meet Earth Engine

Google Earth Engine combines a multi-petabyte catalog of satellite imagery and geospatial datasets with planetary-scale analysis capabilities. Scientists, researchers, and developers use Earth Engine to detect changes, map trends, and quantify differences on the Earth's surface. Earth Engine is now available for commercial use, and remains free for academic and research use.

Our planet is changing

See our impact on the Earth from a new perspective through 37 years of satellite imagery in Timelapse in Google Earth. Timelapse is one example of how Earth Engine can help gain insight into petabyte-scale datasets.

Ready-to-use datasets

The public data archive includes more than thirty years of historical imagery and scientific datasets, updated and expanded daily. It contains over eighty petabytes of geospatial data instantly available for analysis.

Simple, yet powerful API

The Earth Engine API is available in Python and JavaScript, making it easy to harness the power of Google’s cloud for your own geospatial analysis.

Google Earth Engine has made it possible for the first time in history to rapidly and accurately process vast amounts of satellite imagery, identifying where and when tree cover change has occurred at high resolution. Global Forest Watch would not exist without it. For those who care about the future of the planet Google Earth Engine is a great blessing!

Convenient tools

Use our web-based code editor for fast, interactive algorithm development with instant access to petabytes of data.

Scientific and humanitarian impact

Scientists and non-profits use Earth Engine for remote sensing research, predicting disease outbreaks, natural resource management, and more.

Ready to be part of the solution?

Screen Rant

Black myth: wukong - all 9 transformations ranked & how to use them.

Your changes have been saved

Email is sent

Email has already been sent

Please verify your email address.

You’ve reached your account maximum for followed topics.

8 Best Spirits In Black Myth: Wukong

8 best curios in black myth: wukong, how to beat tiger vanguard boss in black myth: wukong (chapter 2).

With nine potent Transformation Spells available to unlock in Black Myth: Wukong , players may wonder which ones are worth utilizing, as you can only equip one Transformation at a time. With so many choices out there, selecting your Transformation based on its ranking may help you see which one would best suit your playstyle, and how you can be most effective in combat.

To use Transformations, head to a Shrine and navigate to the tabs 'Self-Advance > Set Spells' . This will show you four Spell categories; the fourth one being Transformations. Simply click on it and select your preferred Transformation from the ones you have unlocked. When you use this feature, your health and Stamina bars will be replaced with new ones, and your shapeshifted form will last until either of these bars depletes.

The best Spirits to cultivate in Black Myth: Wukong, are gained by killing high-level enemies and bosses, allowing you to use their combat skills.

9 Azure Dust

The Azure Dust Transformation in Black Myth: Wukong is a great option for those who like slow but steady tanky hits that can deal massive damage. With charging and ramming abilities , it is an extremely potent Transformation but ranks last due to its lack of versatility in combat.

With Azure Dust, you can strike enemies using your head in three consecutive smashes , as well as aggressively charge towards targets, similar to that of Wandering Wight in Black Myth: Wukong . The form in which players transform when using this Spell will be familiar to those who have explored Chapter 2, as it resembles the same Rock Guai enemies that roam around these barren lands.

The table below details all its features, including the attack roster available upon use:

To acquire this Transformation, players must complete the elusive Man-in-Stone quest, which is picked up very close to the 'Squall Hideout' Keeper's Shrine in the Fright Cliff region of Chapter 2. Follow Wow Quest 's quest walkthrough on YouTube to take all the correct steps, and obtain this Spell as a reward.

8 Red Tides

Red Tides is the very first Transformation Spell that players acquire in Black Myth: Wukong , and although it ranks low compared to the many other formidable options, it can still carry you quite far into the game. You will have to face the optional Wolf Guai boss, Guangzhi, who can be found following a path from the 'Outside the Forest' Keeper's Shrine in the Forest of Wolves region of Chapter 1.

This powerful Transformation allows you to build up Scorch Bane, while continuously slashing at enemies, or using dash attacks , with a fiery double-sided blade, as you build up Focus points. This resource is the backbone of your Heavy Attacks and must be built up during combat. When your Focus is full, you can dodge in any direction to unleash a powerful new move, giving you an edge in battle.

Moreover, its Unique Talent provides increased damage to an Attack that follows a Perfect Dodge. As dodging is paramount in the Black Myth: Wukong soulslike , this is a great bonus to your skillset.

7 Ashen Slumber

Another strong Transformation obtained from a side quest, Ashen Slumber allows you to turn into a Rat Guai to build up Scorch Bane, similar to the Red Tides Transformation ability. Its Light Attack also allows you to build Focus by swinging an iron blade several times , but its Heavy Attack is what is most striking.

By holding your Heavy Attack key binding, you can use the Blow Fire ability, spewing scorching flames and dealing Fire-based damage on enemies. What's more, upon De-Transforming, your shapeshifted form will explode, which will deal massive AoE Fire damage. These effects make this Transformation a deadly Spell, even against bosses in Black Myth: Wukong .

To get your hands on this Transformation Spell, you must have defeated both the First and Second Rat Prince bosses, before speaking to a Rat NPC found at the Sandgate Village entrance in the Yellow Wind Ridge region of Chapter 2. However, players won't receive this reward until Chapter 3, as the NPC will tell you that you must defeat the Third Prince in the New West region.

6 Hoarfrost

Monk from the sea.

The Hoarfrost Transformation, while a great option, doesn't rank too high as its Light Attacks are not so effective. However, its Spell is extremely potent in battle. Its main Transformation Trait allows you to inflict frost bane, a useful elemental damage type, and your hits also increase your Focus, when using your tentacles . As for its Heavy Attack, Tentacle Sweep deals a swinging motion that builds up your Focus.

Its best feature is its Spell, which uses the Focus gained from the Heavy Attack to create an area covered in ice, which inflicts more Frost Bane on those within the AoE. This should be used to deal with multiple enemies at once, which is a very tactical battle strategy in Black Myth: Wukong .

To get the Hoarfrost Transformation, you must enter the New Thunderclap Temple in the New West of Chapter 3 . Follow the path from the 'Temple Entrance' Keeper's Shrine, until you confront the Monk of the Sea boss in Black Myth: Wukong . Upon his demise, you will receive the Transformation as a reward.

5 Ebon Flow

The Ebon Flow Transformation has one of the m ost diverse sets of features and abilities that can considerably aid you in combat. This Transformation is great for those who want to deal deadly melee attacks, while also utilizing Spells more effectively.

The table below showcases all the abilities and attacks that this Transformation possesses. Its Unique Talent is most notable, with the reduction of Alteration Spell Cooldowns , allowing you to use your Cloud Step or Pluck of Many (given to you by the Headless Monk in Black Myth: Wukong ) skills more often, which are some of the most useful skills in the game.

Taking the form of the Yin Tiger, players must defeat this boss in Black Myth: Wukong , to obtain this Transformation. He can be confronted in Chapter 3, upon completing Chen Loong's side quest , which can be followed by using Game Guides Channel 's visual walkthrough on YouTube.

The best Curios in Black Myth: Wukong can be found, purchased, or awarded from boss fights, and can significantly enhance players' skills.

4 Umbral Abyss

Macaque chief.

Umbral Abyss ranks high as one of the best melee-style Transformations due to the offensive and defensive capabilities it offers. Moreover, it doesn't require a prolonged quest or a specific boss fight to unlock, instead, players automatically learn this Spell upon completing the third Chapter in Black Myth: Wukong .

This mid-game Transformation allows you to transform into a Macaque Chief and deal multiple slashes with your long blade, with the last hit dealing more Damage and granting more Focus . Its Heavy Attack is slower, but much stronger, and grants even more Focus.

One of the best features of Umbral Abyss is its Spell. This puts you in the Cold-Hearted state, which further enhances your blade attacks, and similarly to Cloud Step, turns you into mist, specifically when you perform a Dodge . What's great about this ability is that it makes you momentarily immune to Attacks , allowing you to take advantage of performing a Dodge. With this Spell, not only can you evade a hit from a Dodge, but you won't take damage after.

If you're further away from an enemy while using this Transformation, use the Cold Resolution Spell to swiftly close the gap between yourself and your opponent. As soon as you do so, you can deliver a deadly strike to take down foes.

3 Golden Lining

Yellow loong.

With the Golden Lining Transformation, players can hone Lightning and Thunder abilities , making this one of the most unique Spells in Black Myth: Wukong . Due to the sheer power of these elements, this ranks quite high and will ensure success in almost any boss fight from Chapter 4 onwards.

Its Unique Talent, Lightning Flash, moderately increases your invincibility duration when seen through an enemy, while its main trait also grants you immunity to Shock and Thunder Bane-infused attacks. This Transformation is an excellent resource for defensive capabilities, while also balancing formidable damage; The Lightning Dance Light Attack has you repeatedly slash foes, while the Heavy Attack, Fatal Shadow, allows you to charge at enemies, executing them with a fatal strike upon release.

What is even more unique about this Transformation is that it offers you a Counter, which no other Transformation or ability in Black Myth: Wukong provides. The See Through Counter allows you to see through an enemy's move and counter it, following a Light Attack and Heavy Attack combo. This also builds up your Focus Points by +1.

Lastly, you can even replace the Fatal Shadow Heavy Attack with Death Trilogy, but only when you perform a Heavy Attack with at least +1 Focus Point built up. Death Trilogy has you jump up and infuse your spear with Thunder, before crash-landing onto an enemy.

What's more, you can repeat this up to three times if you have enough Focus Points. This move will most likely lead to the demise of any enemy, or at the very least take huge amounts of HP off bosses.

To gain this potent Spell, you will require Loong Scales, found in Chapter 2, after fighting the First Prince of Flowing Sands boss. This gives you access to three secret Loong bosses in Black Myth: Wukong , one of which is faced near the 'Relief of the Fallen Loong' Shrine in Webbed Hollow, Chapter 4 . Upon defeating Yellow Loong, you will gain this Transformation as a reward.

2 Violet Hail

Violet Hail is one of the most powerful Transformations in the game , but it doesn't quite rank at the top as it requires a lot of skill and can be somewhat chaotic if not performed properly. Although it is somewhat complex, those who do learn how to use it optimally, will most likely always come out victorious.

When transforming into the Worm Guai, you become entirely immune to Poison , so you won't have to worry about curing Poison in Black Myth: Wukong . Additionally, the Filthy Malice Unique Talent increases your Poison Damage, while you also inflict Poison Bane.

This Transformation would be most appealing to those who want to experience a Poison build, which is one of the strongest builds in the game, due to the damage-over-time status effect it inflicts.

Where it becomes slightly tricky to use, is its self-wounding, self-healing mechanic. The Self-Torment ability allows you to wound yourself, which slightly depletes your HP, but at the same time, this imbues your blade with up to four Larvae .

Following this, it is paramount that you perform Light Attacks, which consist of a simple hit with your blade. Upon doing so, each Light Attack will infest an enemy with the Larvae from your sword. Players must then use their Spell ability, Hive Mind, to command all Larvae to explode and deal instant , deadly damage. The Detonation Spell also commands your Larvae to explode, when you De-Transform.

When this happens, you absorb back the health you lost from Self-Torment , making this lengthy process well worth it, due to the catastrophic damage it deals. While it is quite a complex Transformation to utilize, it is one of the best in the game, which can be effectively applied to bosses, as well as multiple enemies at once.

Obtaining the Violet Hail Transformation requires players to unlock the secret area within Chapter 4, 'Purple Cloud Mountain.' This region can only be accessed after defeating the Venom Daoist boss twice, which will then lead you to a confrontation against Daoist Mi. Upon his demise, the Snake Lady will teach you the Violet Hail Transformation Spell.

1 Azure Dome

Stone monkey.

The last and best Transformation is acquired through a secret ending and by defeating the final boss in Black Myth Wukong , and therefore, it is as difficult to obtain as it is powerful. With the Azure Dome Transformation, you can turn into the Stone Monkey to gain many talents and features, such as Indestructible, Earthshatter Slam, and best of all, the Monkey Mind Spell, as detailed below:

To unlock the secret ending, players will encounter a familiar boss in Black Myth: Wukong from the tutorial, Erlang, the Sacred Divinity, which consists of two phases , as well as the four Heavenly Kings. MELOO on YouTube provides a full boss fight demonstration on how to combat all bosses and unlock the secret ending, allowing you to obtain the Azure Dome Transformation as a reward.

Editor's Note: The studio behind Black Myth: Wukong , Game Science, has previously been accused of fostering a toxic environment for its workers. The 2023 allegations include sexualized comments against women, misogyny, fatphobia, and more. More details can be found here .

Source: Wow Quests/YouTube , Game Guides Channel/YouTube , MELOO/YouTube

Black Myth: Wukong