Moonfall's proactive new trailer is the disaster movie answer to fatalism of 'Don't Look Up'

Did Adam McKay's Don't Look Up leave you a cynical and hopeless husk of your former self with no hope for our future as a species? Us too. Not to worry, though! Roland Emmerich has just the antidote for those disaster movie blues with the latest trailer for his new apocalyptic adventure: Moonfall.

Yes, humanity still waits until the last possible minute to take action when the moon is suddenly knocked out of its orbit by a malevolent artificial intelligence swarm, but Emmerich's vision is a shade more optimistic than the aforementioned doomsday satire fronted by Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence. From comedic quips to the use of CCR's "Bad Moon Rising," Moonfall goes for the Armageddon approach, enlisting three somewhat regular people — two disgraced astronauts played by Halle Berry (Die Another Day) and Patrick Wilson (Aquaman) — and a conspiracy theorist (Game of Thrones' John Bradley) to save the planet from certain destruction.

Watch the new trailer below:

Breaking down the fresh footage for Entertainment Weekly, Emmerich (who co-wrote the movie with Spenser Cohen and fellow producer Harold Kloser) revealed that the lunar judgement day rests on the shoulders of NASA, which decided to withhold earth-shattering — and we do mean that quite literally — secrets from the American public for over five decades.

"NASA is hiding stuff on a very high level because even the second-in-command doesn't know about it," the writer-director explained. "It started with Apollo 11, where there was this two-minute radio silence. During that time, they saw light emanating from the moon's surface. That's when they first realized the moon was hollow."

Despite his decades-long affinity for disaster cinema, the filmmaker insisted that this project is distinctly separate from his previous end-of-the-world outings like The Day After Tomorrow (an allegory for climate change) and 2012 (a modern day retelling of the Noah's Ark story). "On the one hand, this is a disaster movie, but it's also a space movie; it's about space exploration and doing crazy things like flying inside the moon," he said. "On the other hand, on Earth, their kids are getting into serious trouble. It's the best of both worlds."

Michael Peña (Ant-Man and the Wasp), Charlie Plummer, (All the Money in the World), Kelly Yu (So Young), Eme Ikwuakor (Concussion), Carolina Bartczak (X-Men: Apocalypse), and Donald Sutherland (Ad Astra) round out the main cast.

Moonfall arrives exclusively in theaters Friday, Feb. 4. Click here to watch the first five minutes.

Photo: Lionsgate