Over the last decade, Chinese cinema has made giant leaps and bounds in terms of quality and sophistication of their films, especially in sci-fi genre. The Wandering Earth and this prequel, The Wandering Earth II, is a significant milestone. As a prequel, it has more depth in the story than the first, though the premise behind the main conflict is a bit shallow to be believed, as if "digital life" and survival of the planet are mutually exclusive. Pizza OR pepperoni? What kind of a decision is that? You still need the pizza, with or without the pepperoni.

But like its predecessor, the problem is pacing. The story is grand, an epic tale of an audacious plan to save mankind and Earth from the dying sun. But the pacing is so ridiculously fast, that it's difficult to enjoy and appreciate it. It's so focused on the crisis from all angles that it feels like every scene and every shot is less than two seconds long. For subtitle readers, it's even worse to follow. On top of that, there is visual information overload, with names flashing on the screen. There is so much going on, you will be afraid to blink and miss an important plot point.

And then there are the annoying tropes. I think this is the third or fourth Chinese film and TV show I've recently watched that has a shrill little girl/daughter yelling and crying "Baba! Baba!" to stoke our sympathy and emotional attachment to. And, where do they find these foreign actors?!? They cannot act and they are loud. Perhaps this is how they want to portray westerners, but there are plenty of international films shown in China--they have to know how bad these actors are, right? With so many actors (waiters) in Hollywood looking for work, you'd think it'd be easy to find more passable supporting cast.

Despite all this, you're not going to watch The Wandering Earth series for the acting--this is a CGI spectacle. It's gorgeous, and if you treat it like cut scenes from a triple-A video game, you'll enjoy it a lot.

It's a catastrophical & sci-fic film with a novel epic narrative. The Wandering Earth 2 is more about the values of a community of shared future that unites all mankind. The special effects, needless to say, were a huge improvement over the first film, and the plot filled in the first film's shortcomings. At the same time, as the second of the series, it did not regress like most movies, but made obvious progress,. The overall score is 9 points, looking forward to the third part to bring us a better story.

There are three lines in the movie which build a wonderful construction. I promise it deserves one ticket.

By the way, it's a prequel. However,it doesn't matter to me.

This one is better than the first movie, which is very rare these days. The story lines are great. Although there are some plots that do not make a lot sense, it doesn't affect the overall rating at all. It doesn't make me feel it's a 3hr movie at all. This is actually the best Si-Fi movie I have watched in the last 3 years (and I've watched a lot lol) and I think it's fair to say it's better than 70% of the Hollywood Si-Fi movies these days.

I'm looking forward to the third one now given there are some flash forward scenes hinting at the next story line. Also, don't miss the credits at the end. I left early and have to read up on the end credit scenes online afterwards.