A gargantuan success in 2019, Frant Gwo’s The Wandering Earth remains one of the highest grossing non-English films of all time. This hotly anticipated prequel, even more ambitious in scope, follows the catastrophic events leading up to the Earth leaving the solar system in the original hit.

At nearly three hours long, The Wandering Earth II is packed with expository science talk, which gets more convoluted and tiring as the clock ticks on. The gist of the matter is, in the face of imminent ecological disasters, an internationally consolidated government body has hatched a solution to alter the orbit of our planet. It also involves blowing up the moon. As well as resistance from (mostly) western countries, the decades-spanning enterprise is also routinely sabotaged by the rival Digital Life Project, which looks to virtual reality as a new beginning for the human race.

Against the threat of total extinction and the unsettling ubiquity of AI, the question of what it means to be human lies at the heart of this prequel, whose sombre silver-grey colour palette marks a stark departure from the first film. Ironically enough, in this case, characters played by superstars like Wu Jing or Andy Lau take a backseat to the admittedly spectacular CGI effects.

In the end, the emphasis on set pieces over performances renders the collective plight of humanity emotionally distant and impersonal. Various mentions of how machines will take over human jobs also finds a strange echo in the film-making itself: Ng Man-tat died from cancer in 2021, yet his character from The Wandering Earth makes a cameo appearance in this prequel via AI technology. It is a gesture of tribute that, within the context of the film, feels oddly unsettling.

• The Wandering Earth II is released on 27 January in UK cinemas.