BY JAMES HIBBERD | HollywoodReporter.Com
Troy Warren for CNT #Entertainment
The actor breaks down that surprisingly emotional climax and gives his take on the film’s cryptic final line.
[This story contains a major spoiler about the ending of the 2022 film Moonfall.]
If 20 minutes into Roland Emmerich’s apocalyptic disaster film Moonfall you attempted to guess the film’s ending, you certainly would never have bet that the film’s conspiracy theorist C.K. Houseman would heroically sacrifice himself to save the planet and end up with his consciousness replicated in an AI supercomputer in the moon’s core, chatting with avatars of his mother and cat. In a film that otherwise follows familiar disaster movie tropes, the left-field twist is arguably its strongest part.
Houseman actor John Bradley previously discussed with The Hollywood Reporter being cast the film and his upcoming role in Netflix’s Three-Body Problem. But we couldn’t resist also inquiring about Moonfall’s wild ending.
“It was a complete left turn for me. I was totally blindsided by it in a way that I hope the audience will be as well,” Bradley says. “Because all the way through, [Patrick Wilson’s character, Brian Harper] was set up to be the hero. Patrick looks like a hero. He acts like a hero. It’d be a satisfying narrative arc for his character – who is plagued by self-doubt and going through a rough patch – to have that redemptive heroic sacrifice at the end.”
“That the moment goes to K.C. instead, it almost comes out of nowhere,” Bradley continues. “But when I thought about it leading up to doing the final goodbye scene with Patrick, it made more and more sense. K.C. was completely alone. He had no family, no friends. His dad died, his mom had dementia and didn’t recognize him, and was fixated with space. There’s nothing left for him to come back to. He finally got to space and his life was never going to get any better than that. Also, he knows what it’s like to grow up missing a parent, and he didn’t want Brian’s son to go through the same pain he went through. So the seeds were all planted.”
And then there’s the film’s cryptic final line that says Houseman is about to “get started” doing … something. But what, exactly?
“Roland left the door open to a sequel, so we’ll have to see if that happens, but my theory is the moon isn’t the full extent of this,” Bradley says. “Maybe the moon is a part of a grand plan and whatever is in charge of the moon and that technology might have infested the entire solar system, the entire universe. So K.C. may be called into action for a couple more missions on a much grander scale.”
Emmerich previously told THR he planned on filming Moonfall 2 and 3 back-to-back, with a big cliffhanger in between the films, should the first one be a big success. Bradley is ready, should he be called into action again.
Says the actor: “Moonfall is an ambitious movie. But if Roland goes down the direction that he wants to, the second the third movie maybe even more batshit crazy than the first.”
Moonfall is now in theaters.
