The Wandering Earth
In the future, the Sun has aged and is about to turn into a red giant, pushing the nations of the world to consolidate into the United Earth Government, a world government, to initiate a project to move the Earth out of the Solar System to the Alpha Centauri system, in order to preserve further human civilization. Enormous Thrusters running on fusion power are built across the planet to propel the Earth. Human population is reduced severely due to catastrophic tides that occur after the planetary engines stop Earth's rotation, and later as the planet moves away from the Sun, much of the surface is frozen due to lowered temperatures, forcing humans to live in vast underground cities built adjacent to the engines. At the beginning of the film, Liu Peiqiang (Wu Jing), a Chinese astronaut, promises to his son Liu Qi (Qu Chuxiao) of his eventual return before his mission to a space station that will help Earth navigate as it moves out of the Solar system, and hands guardianship of his son over to his father-in-law Han Ziang (Ng Man-tat). Seventeen years later, Liu Peiqiang's mission is about to end, and he will soon return to Earth. To celebrate Chinese New Year, an adult Liu Qi brings adopted sister Han Duoduo (Zhao Jinmai) on a trip to the surface in a truck they stole using Han Ziang's clearance as a trucker. They are arrested, meet a fellow prisoner named Tim (Mike Sui), and are joined by Han Ziang after an unsuccessful attempt to bribe the prison warden into releasing them. As Earth passes by Jupiter to make use of gravity assist, Jupiter's gravitational spike causes devastating earthquakes that disable many Thrusters across the globe and pull the Earth dangerously close. The four escapes from the middle of the chaos and attempt to make their way out in Han Ziang's truck, but the truck is requisitioned for a rescue mission by the military rescue team CN171-11; they are to transport a lighter core, an engine component, to restart the planetary Thruster engine in Hangzhou, supervised by soldiers led by Wang Lei (Li Guangjie). In the remnants of Shanghai, they lose their vehicle, and while transporting the component up the ruins of the Shanghai Tower Han Ziang is killed. With news that the Hangzhou Thruster was fully compromised, and the city was completely destroyed, the group is downcast. However, they later find a new vehicle where the on-board engineer, Li Yiyi (Zhang Yichi), convinces them to transport a lighter core to repair a larger planetary Thruster engine in Sulawesi. In space, Liu Peiqiang discovers that MOSS, the artificial intelligence commanding the space station, has directed the space station itself to escape rather than to assist the humans on Earth. He breaks out of forced hibernation and attempts to stop the space station along with Russian cosmonaut Makarov (Arkady Sharogradsky), who is killed by the spacecraft's automated security measures. Liu Peiqiang arrives in the control room, but his clearances are revoked due to his acts of insubordination, and he can do little to override the escape process. Liu Qi's group arrive at Sulawesi to find that the engine was already fully restored. Globally, most of the planetary Thrusters have been repaired as well. However, the gravitational pull from Jupiter is too great and Earth continues to move toward it, approaching the planet's Roche limit. Liu Qi, inspired by recollections of his father's explanation of the Thrusters' mechanics as a child, proposes to ignite Jupiter's hydrogen abundant atmosphere to blow Earth away (since Jupiter's gravity is siphoning off Earth's oxygen, the resulting mix is now super combustible with the resultant explosion strong enough to push Earth out of its orbit). Li Yiyi proposes to concentrate the Sulawesi engine's power to fire a beam high enough to ignite Jupiter. The group overcome various challenges, such as renewed aftershock tremors that injure several members, and are able to mostly reconfigure the engine to carry out the plan, however they are not able to push the firing pin of the engine to ignite it. Liu Peiqiang, learning of this, is able to persuade the United Earth Government to use its communication channels to call assistance for the party at Sulawesi, even though MOSS reveals that the solution being attempted was already proposed by others and has no chance of success based on probability calculations. Other rescue and repair parties arrive, and the engine is fired up, but it falls short of being able to ignite the hydrogen. Liu Peiqiang decides to use the space station's engine itself to ignite Jupiter's hydrogen; after disabling MOSS using a fire started with vodka that Makarov smuggled on-board, he pilots the spacecraft into the cloud between Jupiter and Earth, sacrificing himself as the ignition succeeds. Earth is saved from destruction and continues to move towards the destination star system. As the film ends, Liu Qi recounts and envisions the stages of Earth's migration, a process to take 2,500 years and still bound with uncertainty, in a hopeful tone.
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