“The Wandering Earth 2”

“The Wandering Earth 2” can be seen as a prequel to “The Wandering Earth”.

“The Wandering Earth” tells the story of the imminent destruction of the sun, and the launch of the‘Wandering Earth’ project to move the Earth out of the solar system in search of a new home.

In “The Wandering Earth”, the nostalgia for their homeland inhibited the characters from taking the spaceship to escape the Earth, instead choosing to ‘wander’ together with it. In the creation process of “The Wandering Earth 2”, we pay more attention to digging into the inner world of the characters and expressing how much they cherish their families and miss their loved ones.

“The Wandering Earth 2” focuses on the experience of human beings in the early stage of the solar crisis, on how they worked to overcome the difficulties before the earth began its ‘wandering’. Under the guise of science fiction, “The Wandering Earth 2” has a very delicate emotional expression. The love of the two protagonists for their family permeates the film, and helps flesh out the epic narrative of pushing the Earth out of the solar system; the philosophical and sociological discussions of virtuality and reality, freedom and responsibility, individual heroism and collective heroism, and the ethics of AI are also perfectly integrated with the film.

From “The Wandering Earth” to “The Wandering Earth 2”, one thing in common is that they are all rooted in Chinese culture.

“The Wandering Earth 2” cost 500 million yuan to produce, much of which was spent on blade props. Using   props, costumes, special effects of exquisite quality, the film is a determined attempt at telling a Chinese science fiction story. The architecture and detail of its worldview has reached the peak of Chinese movie productions, with many people directly claiming that it is the best movie of the year.

Leading domestic single studio of 10,000 square meters

More than 900,000 square meters of landscape expansion area

40 top international-standard photo studios

More than 95,000 props and costumes

Nearly 100,000 storyboards

5310 conceptual design drafts

32 filming sets

It took more than 1,400 days

With the help of these exaggerated numbers, so many wonderful shots got to appear on the screen.

In order to capture more realistic shots, most props are made in a 1:1 ratio, such as this enemy drone, which is actually the real deal. The aircraft has a wingspan of 8.3 meters, is 8 meters long and about 1.9 meters high, undoubtedly a super big piece of iron. In order to make the overall effect more real, the set is built to give a futuristic, science fiction feel. This effect can never be reproduced even by the best special effects.

The scenes with the breathtaking space elevator are also mostly actually built. The astronaut maneuver device is processed and assembled by more than 2000 parts. What’s amazing is that it can really be connected with a variety of mechanical arm components.

The cries for these items to be sold as merchandise are also very loud. Mechanical dog Benben, MOSS, digital life card merchandise crowdfunding has reached more than 78 million.

“The Wandering Earth 2” presents wonderful visual effects such as space elevators and lunar debris falling to the ground. The scenes are diverse and numerous, and the number of involved actors is even more. The film uses 3D printing, digital lathe, laser engraving and many other technologies to make the production of film props more efficient and more refined.

“The Wandering Earth 2”, props and derivatives