Moonfall

The film was theatrically released in North America on February 4, 2022, by Lionsgate, and in the United Kingdom on the same day by Entertainment Film Distributors. It was a box-office bomb, grossing $67 million worldwide, and received mixed reviews from critics.

Ten years later, conspiracy theorist K.C. Houseman, who believes that the Moon is an artificial megastructure, secretly uses a research telescope. He discovers that the Moon’s orbit is veering closer to Earth, and tries to share his findings with the disgraced Brian. NASA also discovers the anomaly, but K.C. goes public on social media, leading to a global panic. Jo is now NASA’s deputy director, launching a spacecraft on an SLS Block 1 rocket to investigate the abnormality. The same alien swarm attacks, killing all three lunar astronauts after they drop a probe into a kilometers-deep artificial shaft that has opened up on the Moon’s surface.

As the lunar orbit deteriorates, the Moon falls closer and closer to the Earth, causing seismic and gravitational disturbances. Jo meets former NASA official Holdenfield, who reveals that Brian was discredited due to a NASA coverup dating back to Apollo 11; during the first Moon landing, a two-minute radio blackout was meant to conceal evidence of pulsating lights on the surface. Apollo 12 revealed that the Moon is hollow, and a military EMP device created to kill the swarm was abandoned for budgetary reasons.

With help from her ex-husband General Doug Davidson, Air Force Chief of Staff, Jo requisitions the EMP and rescues retired Space Shuttle Endeavour from a museum to serve the new mission: to correct the Moon’s orbit and destroy the swarm. Brian, K.C., and Jo launch with the EMP, narrowly escaping to orbit as a tsunami destroys Vandenberg Air Force Base.

They reach the interior of the Moon, revealed to be a Dyson sphere powered by a white dwarf at its center. The Dyson sphere’s AI operating system explains to Brian that billions of years ago, humanity’s technologically advanced ancestors were eradicated by a rogue AI; they built the Moon as an Interstellar ark to create and seed life on Earth, but the swarm — the malicious AI — discovered the Moon and is siphoning energy from its power source, destabilizing its orbit.

Meanwhile, Brian’s son Sonny, Jo’s son Jimmy, and his caretaker Michelle try to reach Doug’s military bunker in the Colorado mountains, finding Brian’s ex-wife and Sonny’s mother Brenda, her husband Tom, and their step-family. Escaping disasters caused by the Moon’s proximity and fighting off other survivors, the group finds safety in a mountain tunnel. When his youngest daughter runs out of oxygen, an injured Tom gives her his own, suffocating to death as the Moon strips away the local atmosphere. The president orders a nuclear strike on the approaching Moon, but Doug refuses to comply, with debris collapsing the bunker shortly thereafter, presumably killing Doug and everyone inside.

As the swarm only attacks organic life in the presence of electronic activity, K.C. lures the swarm away from their spacecraft with their lunar module, sacrificing himself to detonate the EMP. Jo and Brian return to Earth, reuniting with their families, and the Moon’s power is restored, returning to its regular orbit, but now shed of its rocky exterior. Reconstructing K.C.’s consciousness, the Moon’s operating system appears to him as his cat, Fuzz Aldrin, and his mother, remarking that they must now “get started”.