Moonfall is exactly the kind of disaster movie we’ve come to expect from director Roland Emmerich. Creator of iconic movies like The Day After Tomorrow and Independence Day, his latest combines the two worlds he knows best and brings us a movie that is exactly what you’d expect out of the premise. In my own review of it, I talked about how going into the movie with an open heart would prove to be a good time, and talking with star Eme Ikwuakor about the film, he seems to have the same mentality.
Playing Doug Davidson in the film, Ikwuakor’s character is on the sidelines, while his ex-wife Jo (played by Halle Berry) is taken to save the world—something that clearly inspired Ikwuakor to do the project in the first place, given his love of the Will Smith or Roland Emmerich action movies of the ’90s.
“I just think that they’re so much fun and especially since I’ve been following Roland Emmerich since I was a kid,” Ikwuakor said about joining Moonfall. “And so when I got the opportunity to be a part of this film and this world, and especially with actors that I watched growing up, like Halle Berry, and Patrick Wilson and like these new people that are coming on board, it was, it was, it was a no brainer.”
Swapping roles
For a character like Doug, he is, for the most part, the Vivica A. Fox role in Independence Day to Halle Berry’s Will Smith. Jo is in space working to stop the Moon from falling and destroying Earth, and she’s working against the clock as the military wants to use bombs to course correct what’s happening. But seeing as Doug plays the supportive other-half on the sidelines, it is clear that it is a gender-swapped idea of the action stereotypes of the ’90s and early ’00s.
I asked Ikwuakor about his approach to the role and that dynamic, and he talked about using his quarantine to his advantage. “Literally for five to six hours a day, I’m working out and I needed to get to a point that life was hard and you couldn’t ask for help,” he said about working in the imposed quarantine on the cast. “And so I had to use that distinction and then I realized, well, if you couldn’t ask for help, the only people that you can get help from are the people that you’re around most of the day, which is your work.”
And that desperation comes through in his performance as Doug, as we see him frantically trying to get to his son while giving Jo the support she needs on earth. Doug may be limited in space to a bunker while the world is falling apart around him, but he’s trying to do the best he can by his family in whatever ways possible.
You can see our full interview with Eme Ikwuakor here:
Moonfall is in theaters now!
(image: Lionsgate)
