Day 145 - 5/25/09 - Movie #145
BEFORE: Today is Memorial Day, so it's a good time to pause and reflect on those who have made the ultimate sacrifice in service of others - protecting us from giant asteroids. Yes, the alien invasion may be over, but our planet is still in cinematic jeopardy. I got lucky with this one, I just put it on my want list last week after watching "Meteor", and one of the pay channels happened to be running it.
THE PLOT: When an asteroid the size of Texas is headed for Earth, the world's best deep-core drilling team is sent to nuke the rock from the inside.
AFTER: It often happens that two Hollywood studios put out similar films around the same time - "Antz" and "A Bug's Life", "Red Planet" and "Mission to Mars", "Volcano" and "Dante's Peak". In 1998 we had 2 giant asteroid films, "Armageddon" and "Deep Impact" in theatres, and I opted for "Deep Impact". "Armageddon" seemed like the flashier, noisier, more hyped-up, star-studded and melodromatic (and less scientifically-accurate) of the two, so I avoided it.
The film is all those things and more, but it's also action-packed and very entertaining, like a roller-coaster that knocks you around, but also gives you the adrenaline rush. Each of the ragtag misfits, from Steve Buscemi to William Fichtner to Michael Clarke Duncan, gets a chance to be heroic, and it comes down to a testosterone match between Ben Affleck and Bruce Willis to see who can be more macho in the end. I wish they had given Liv Tyler something to do besides sit in the control room and be weepy, though.
That Michael Bay sure loves to blow stuff up, don't he? I do wonder if the space shuttle could actually travel to the moon, though - I'm guessing that's a Hollywood invention.
RATING: 8 out of 10 drill-bits
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You're review pretty much sums up the movie. While I never saw this one in the theater, I also never got around to seeing Deep Impact at all. It didn't have any draw for me. Does scientific accuracy really play a role in your viewing choices? If so, there are quite a few things about a particular science fiction film I would like to bring to your attention...
ReplyDeleteAs for the space shuttle flying to the moon, the real key is that you would have to strap it to a Saturn V rocket. After that, it seems plausable, but rather pointless, since it doesn't have a landing craft, plus the absence of runways on the moon.
Scientific accuracy does not always factor into the equation, but it did when I was selecting between the 2 asteroid films playing in theaters at the time. Plus "Deep Impact" had Morgan Freeman playing the U.S. president - back when a black president seemed like a novel idea...
ReplyDeleteI found out there are so many inaccuracies in "Armageddon", that NASA supposedly has recruits watch it to see how many they can spot.
Ex. - Shuttle can't go to the moon by itself, there's no gravity on an asteroid, shuttle could land on the asteroid but not take off again, etc. etc.
Ummm... here's a huge difference between the two movies. Unless I'm way off base here, doesn't the asteroid actually hit the planet in Deep Impact?
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