China's film industry finally joins the space race

The country's first blockbuster set in space, 'The Wandering Earth,' opens Tuesday amid grandiose expectations that it will represent the dawning of a new era in Chinese filmmaking.

It is one in a series of ambitious, big-budget films tackling a genre that, until now, has been beyond the reach of most filmmakers here - technically and financially. 

Those movies include 'Shanghai Fortress,' about an alien attack on Earth, and 'Pathfinder,' about a spaceship that crashes on a desert planet. "Filmmakers in China see science fiction as a holy grail," said Raymond Zhou, an independent critic, who noted that Hollywood had set the technological standards, and thus audience expectations, very high.

'The Wandering Earth,' shown in 3D, takes place in a distant future in which the sun is about to expand into a red giant and devour the Earth. The impending peril forces the world's engineers to devise a plan to move the planet to a new solar system using giant thrusters. Things go very badly when Earth has to pass Jupiter, setting off a desperate scramble to save humanity from annihilation. 

The special effects - like the apocalyptic climatic changes that would occur if Earth suddenly moved out of its cozy orbit - are certain to be measured against Hollywood's, as ever here. And the preliminary reviews have been positive. "It's like the coming-of-age of the industry," Zhou said.

'The Wandering Earth' opens with the Lunar New Year, the beginning of an official, weeklong holiday that is traditionally a peak box-office period in China. It has a limited release in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.