METEOR
During the summer of 1998 America came under the
assault of two movies with the same plot. It wasn'tt the first time such a thing has
happened (it happened the year before in fact) but it was the first time that a disaster
movie was made in which the disaster was a giant rock hurtling perilously towards the
earth.
Since I posses apsolutly no interest in falling rock
movies I saw nether of these movies in the theater. Instead I waited until they
where available on tape I do however have cable so I was able to cash this old from the
decade of bad clothes, disco, and a superhero Godzilla.
For those of you who did see Deep Impact or Armageddon then Meteor won't be
much of a surprise to you. It could be considered an amalgam of both movies, except for
the fact that it was made 19 years ago.
The story begins as Dr. Paul Bradley (Sean Connery,
looking like an old James Bond) who is pulled of his boat and taken to the Kennedy (here
the Linden Johnson) space center. There he learns that, two days before the movie takes
place, a comet struck an asteroid at the center of the asteroid belt that surrounds our
solar system. Whats left of the asteroid, named Orpheus for reasons unknown, is 5
miles wide, headed towards earth, and will hit us in 6 days unless the government finds
some way to stop it.
What is a world to do? Will the send astronauts up
into space to plant a bomb on the asteroids service? Will they send a bunch of rowdy Texan
oil drillers to drill a hole through it and then plant a nuke. NO! In this movie
humanity got smart and actually build a counter measure in case something like this
happened. Two of them in fact. The USA, and Dr. Bradley, built a satellite called Hercules
that carries 14 one megaton bombs. The USSR (this is 1979, after all) built a satellite
called Peter the Great that carries about the same number. Together, with the nukes from
both satellites, the planet earth can save itself from destruction by just shooting the
roid out of the sky.
Unfortunatly, Bradley has to argue that case with
Washington bureaucrats (Hercules is a black ops project so no one wants to admit it even
exists, much less use it), his counter part in Russia, Dr. Alexei Dubov, and get
everything ready before the roid opens up a 150 mile wide crater in the earth's
surface.
And did I mention the several small asteroids that
proceed the big one? They crash into the earth too. And in the process Hong Kong, New
York, and part of the Swiss Alps are wiped off the map.
Let me say right now that the movie isnt as
exciting as it sounds. There are a lot of scenes where people stand around and talk about
the asteroid, far more then there are of actual destruction. And I think it would have
been a little nicer if we had actually gotten to know some of the people in the cites that
where destroyed. As it stands the destruction dosent inspire much feeling for the
people that where killed, instead it inspires you to go "Cool special effects."
Even with our main characters there isnt much
in the way of character development. At the end of the movie all of these people get into
a life threatening situation (like Im gonna tell you what it is) but instead of
being tense the scene is actually boring because you dont care about the people who
are about to die.
Granted, this movie is suppose to take place in the
space of 6 days. Not a lot can happen in terms of character development in 6 days. Still
it would have been nice is Sean Connery could have showed some emotion other then
cynicalness.
But the pluses out weight the negatives. One of
those pluses is the script. Tightly written and damn good Stanley Mann should still get a
pat on the back for it. While it doesnt go far in the way of chracter development it
does have some damn good lines and some interesting characters along the way.
Also something to look for is the appearance of
Henry Fonda (and old Henry Fonda) as the President of the US. He adds some real
depth to his role, even if he only gets about 5 minuets of actual screen time. Shows you
what a good actor he is.
In the end Meteor is a good movie. Nothing
special, but good. I just hope that Deep Impact can live up to this (I know Armageddon didn't) Though without Sean Connery
thats gonna be tough.
RATING(OUT OF A
POSSIBLE FIVE)
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NOT BAD AT ALL.
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