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BradH812
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
1294 Posts |
 Posted - 06/15/2008 : 11:02:38 PM
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This review was first posted in March of ‘05, then deleted when the message board was purged several months later. Hopefully the memory buffer on the site is big enough now that this’ll stay around longer. As I write this intro, I haven’t edited it, and don’t expect to do very much. A little trimming, a little padding (naturally), and maybe some updating. At least 95% of the review will be untouched. Actually, I’m kind of re-posting this to set up something I’m thinking of writing later on. (Management: oh, ye gods, not another shameless promo.) Here’s a teaser: it features a certain sound effect this movie has, it has a certain musical instrument in its score, and it’s no more accurate in its science than tonight’s movie was. It’s also one of my all-time favorite movies, one I swore I’d never write a review for on this site. But since writing up 2010, I can now use the Movies I Like loophole. Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!
But for now....
Let’s see, what should I add to this intro (and notice how I was much quicker with these things three years ago)? After posting the review, I got into an e-mail conversation with a gentleman who had met director Ronald Neame once or twice. My e-mail had some trouble a couple of years back, so I lost the correspondence and don’t remember this man’s name. If you read this, let me know who you are, so I can thank you for the info you gave me. Let me preface the review by mentioning that I will refer to Ronald Neame in the past tense quite a lot. Neame, as of this writing (mid June 2008), is alive and well (as of the last couple of years), but he is now 97 years old and hasn’t directed a film in over 25 years, so it’s safe to assume he’s firmly retired. I’m not familiar with his other work, beyond The Poseidon Adventure and Scrooge, but from what I can tell, he got good performances from his actors (and was the consumate gentleman toward them), and he had a good eye, or at least he was smart enough to bring in gifted cinematographers and art directors. The upshot: a movie directed by Ronald Neame will look good and be well acted. He may not be one of the great stylists, but he was reliable and professional. Neame appears to be more in the Michael Curtiz camp: give him a good script and budget, and he’ll give you a good movie; end of story. Give him a bad script.... Need I go further? I’m gonna be pretty hard on Mr. Neame in this review, but the fellow I talked to hinted that Neame himself would agree with at least 90% of what I’ll say; he now considers Meteor to be a blotch on an otherwise solid body of work. Give him credit; he’s man enough to admit to making a mistake.
Since I don’t have the knowledge or equipment for putting vidcaps in here (and once again, some of this crap needs to be seen to be believed), let’s do what I did when reviewing Buck Rogers. Right-click on this link — http://www.coolcinematrash.com/movies/meteor.htm — and when I do the old CHECK IT OUT thing, do just that to see a vidcap. And now, a little blast from the past!
Big-Ass Rocks, Boneheaded Scripts, and the Blaster Beam! BWWWWRRRRRAAAAAANNNNNNGGGG!!!
First things first. The DVD’s cover features Sean Connery and Natalie Wood in the foreground, and in the background....is the World Trade Center blowing up. The DVD itself has a picture of the towers blowing up as well. MGM released this DVD in 2000, over a year before 9/11, so I’ll try not to hold it against the movie.
Now, on with the show.
The first thing we see is the logo for American International, the studio behind horror b-movies and stuff like “Beach Blanket Bingo.” Not a good sign. And they got someone to put $16 million up for this. That was a big chunka change in 1979.
We open on a generic starfield, and we see a comet rise up from the bottom of the screen, heading off into space. Funny thing is, that comet looks a lot like a fog machine. If you live in the South, you know what I’m talking about: the one that used to drive by and spit out gouts of fog in the summer, which all the little kids would play in...not knowing that the fog was pesticide. I was one of those kids, and I’m happy to report that it didn’t cause any dain bramage. Anyway, over this *cough* comet, the main actors’ names shoot off into the distance, each with its musical sting. I think I’ll let this slide, seeing as, if memory serves, Hitchcock himself did this sort of thing once or twice.
Then we have a stock astronomy photo. A narrator begins. “Outer...space.... Limitless...and timeless.” Oh, good God help me. This is gonna be a long night. The narrator continues: “Filled with cosmic explosions and endless turbulence.” Huh? And we see one of those cosmic explosions — a fiery one. In a vacuum. The narration goes on, giving a remedial course about comets...and every word sounds wrong. Typical is the claim that we “greet comets like old friends.” [see Immortal Dialogue for the complete text of this narration.] Uh, no we don’t. This feels like the writers skimmed over an astronomy book, latched onto a couple of key terms, and plugged them in. This goes on over some cheap-looking black-and-white photography of comets passing planets, passing stars, passing each other (!) All with their tails lagging behind them.
Science Fun Fact #1: Comet tails do not trail behind them; they always point away from the Sun.
The narration mentions one particular comet, saying it comes from “behind the Sun (?), travelling at 108,000 miles and hour, and has never before been seen by Man.” Hmmmm, is that the fog machine we saw?
Cut to a stock picture of the Crab Nebula, then we see “the Asteroid Belt. A vast junkyard of metal and rock orbiting the Sun between Jupiter and Mars.” And there it is. Chunks of rock all over the place. CHECK IT OUT.
Science Fun Fact #2: While there are indeed thousands of asteroids in the Belt, the Asteroid Belt is so large, and the asteroids so thinly spread out, that you can go straight through the belt in most places without seeing a single asteroid. It is not a “cluttered junkyard.”
We center in one a particular asteroid: “Orpheus. 20 miles in diameter and undisturbed for countless generations....until now.” The asteroid zooms toward us, filling the screen! And the title shoots toward us, in a broken letter font...with cartoon motion lines coming off one end! (I’m not making this up.) BumbumBUM! That wasn’t me; that was the soundtrack. It literally does a bumbumBUM! [Long pause to build suspense]
The soundtrack does a bumbumBUM with the BLASTER BEAM!* Ohhhhh, RIGHT! RIGHT! Okay, you bastards, it’s go time!
*[The Blaster Beam, for those of you who don’t know, is a musical instrument designed by Craig Huxley (or Hundley, I’ve seen both spellings) which is fifteen feet long, played with artillery shells, and looks a little bit like a steel guitar on steroids. Sound weird? Yep, in both senses. But it sounds cool. Go watch Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Whenever Vejur is on-screen and you hear a strange metallic, “springy” sound, that’s the Blaster Beam. It sounds great — in the hands of a really capable composer. That’s not the case in this movie. There some more info on the Blaster Beam in Wikipedia, and it has a link to Kitaro’s website, which shows a pic of this thing.]
We cut abruptly from the title to a starfield with a sailboat superimposed over it. The starfield then fades out to reveal the sailboat is on a dark stretch of water. This should have been a beautiful dissolve, a la Citizen Kane, but the filmmakers apparently cut the first part out. You know the movie’s in big trouble when they botch a nice touch like that.
As we go through the opening credits, we are introduced to the boat’s captain, Dr. Paul Bradley (Sean Connery). He’s got two things going for him already: he’s played by Sean Connery, and he shares my name (okay, it’s my first and his last, but....) The music here sounds a lot like the theme from Fantasy Island. Not a surprise; this movie’s composer, Laurence Rosenthal, wrote the theme for that show. Rosenthal has worked mostly in TV, and from what I gather, he’s pretty decent at it, but he’s way out of his league when composing for a movie...and it shows here, mostly notably when he tries to use the Blaster Beam. More on that later. (2008 Brad: Per IMDb, Rosenthal was brought in at the last minute, after John Williams bowed out. Smart man, John Williams.)
The credits end with “Directed by Ronald Neame.” Neame is no stranger to disaster flicks, having directed The Poseidon Adventure. Poseidon is the consummate disaster epic, for better and worse, and as cheesy as it is, it’s honestly a lot of fun. Since Neame’s behind the wheel for this one, that’s a good sign, right? Think again.
A Coast Guard cutter pulls up alongside Bradley’s boat and flags Bradley down. Bradley resists at first (here’s a hint, Paul: if a Coast Guard cutter comes up and asks you to go with them, don’t be a smart-ass), but he realizes they mean business, folds up his sails, and comes aboard. And we see the title “MONDAY”... In the broken-letter font with cartoon streamers. Please don’t tell me they’re gonna do this for every day that goes by. [Future Brad: yup. They’re gonna do it.]
Once on land, Coast Guard Guy leads Bradley to a waiting car, where Bradley will be escorted to Houston. Bradley tries to get snarky with the Coast Guard Guy, but CGG calmly cuts him off at the heels. We then have a bit of filler where Bradley travels to the Johnson Space Center. He goes inside to chat with a secretary for a moment and notices that a packed suitcase is waiting for him.
Bradley then goes into a meeting room in the Center, which is *cough* tastefully adorned with all sorts of space-y objets d’art, including telescopes and spaceship models. I’ve never been to the Johnson Space Center, but I suspect a meeting room there would look just like a meeting room anywhere else, i.e., sans astro-trinkets. Anyway, Bradley meets up with Harry Sherwood (Karl Malden), General Easton (Joseph Campanella), and two nameless NASA techs. I recognize one of the technicians. I’m gonna call him L&O Guy, because I remember him as the villain in one of the better Law & Order episodes. He played a sleazy junk-bond trader (does Hollywood know any other kind?) who, when he learned the D.A. was going after him on suspicion of murder, uttered one of the single best lines in the entire series: “Heavens to Betsy, Claire, what a dreadful idea!” (His real name was Michael Zaslow. I’m going to mention actors’ names whenever I get a chance, because the acting is one of the few decent things in this movie.)
We learn that Bradley and his wife are separated (but he left some of his clothes at home; his wife packed the suitcase at Sherwood’s request), then Sherwood offers Bradley a Scotch (there’s a good deal of drinking going on during this movie). While preparing the drink, Sherwood states, “An awful lot’s been happening here, Paul. And none of it good.” Well, that’s prophetic. Sherwood does not offer the two techs a drink; I liked L&O Guy giving Sherwood a dirty look when he realized Sherwood only fixed drinks for the name actors. Then there’s some Basil-Exposition-type dialogue (you know the kind, when one character begins with “As you know....”) where we learn the following: Bradley left NASA five years ago, it wasn’t a happy parting, then Sherwood tells Bradley that, seven days before, a new comet was discovered, heading for the Asteroid Belt. When they called Sherwood “it was a couple hundred thousand miles from the Belt, give or take a few. Challenger II, our space probe to Mars [as opposed to Challenger II, their probe to Jupiter?] was in the vicinity; General Easton’s son Tom was commanding [like Bradley doesn’t know all of this].” At this point, I believe Tom Easton will be going to that great Z-movie land in the sky shortly. Sherwood continues. “We got in touch with them, then we... I... changed their program. That was last Friday.”
Science Fun Fact #3: The Asteroid Belt is NOT in the vicinity of Mars. It begins about 50 million miles away and ends about 200 million miles away. These figures are very rough, but you get the idea. I’ll get specific in a moment. By the way, some of my numbers may be off from time to time; my knowledge of astronomical distances is rustier than Madonna’s chastity belt. But I guarantee you it’s better than the writers’ astro-know-how.
We then cut to a sweeping shot of Challenger II. Ta-daaaah! Seriously, that’s what the musical score says. I’m Not Kidding. The score then segues into a bombastic version of the music heard when Bradley was sailin’ the briny sea, as we view this magnificent spaceship.
It’s Skylab.
The famous Mars probe is a space station that could not leave Earth orbit, complete with Apollo command and service modules. More accurately, it’s an obvious model of Skylab, no more than a few feet long. The camera passes lovingly over the model, making it obvious just how fake the damn thing looks. No quick cuts to hide bad FX, no sirree, not here! (Seriously, I wonder if this was made from an Ertl model kit that would probably be available in hobby stores around that time. CHECK IT OUT.)
We then goes to the sequence in Mission Control where Sherwood (along with Easton, L&O Guy, and Other Guy) contacts the crew of the model spaceship.
Science Fun Fact #4: Mars is, at its nearest point, at least 45 million miles from Earth. Real-time radio conversations are physically impossible.
So, Mission Control and Challenger II break the laws of physics and have a real-time chat, dropping little science-y tidbits and jargon which sounds like the writers did it again; they grabbed some cool-sounding words from a science textbook glossary, threw them in, and hoped they would sound good. They refer to 50-million-mile trek out to the Asteroid Belt as a “slight detour” that’ll take a couple of days. And my brain starts to turn to mush.
Tom Easton ends the conversation by telling L&O Guy to “say hi to my old man for me.” Well, tell him yourself, Junior! Pops is standing three feet away from the radio, a dumb grin on his face, looking like he’s about to turn into Foghorn Leghorn: “That’s, ah say, that’s mah boy thar, that’s mah boy!!”
A quick return to the meeting room where Sherwood skips ahead to where Challenger II entered the Asteroid Belt, and then we have another shot of Challenger II, silhouetted against the Sun. Well, more accurately, it’s sillhouetted against a Kleig light subbing for the Sun: you can see its lampshade! (I recommend you rent this movie, if only to see this shot; it’s priceless.) A few more shots of the model ship badly matted in, plunging into this cluttered field of rocks. Another real-time conversation, where Mission Control tells Easton Jr. and Co. to zoom in on Orpheus, “the big one in the center.” Thanks, guys, I’d’ve never guessed. The zoom-in looks suspicously like a track-in. I swear, I swear. Then both parties decide to “get some measurements.” Of what? Playmate of the Year?? It is established that Orpheus is near Vesta, a real asteroid. Unfortunately, this will help to pinpoint another scientific whopper this movie lays on us later. By the way, this scene and the scene in the meeting room lay out the situation for us...making that narration at the beginning completely unneccesary!
Back to the conference room. Sherwood tells Bradley, “For the next hour and-a-half, they read the belt for us. Then what we were waiting for finally appeared.” Finally?? In astronomical terms, two hours is NOT a long time to wait for something.
We then go into another flashback, starting with a VERY bad shot of the Asteroid Belt, Orpheus in the center. Really. It’s one big rock surrounded by lotsa little rocks. That’s the asteroid belt. And here comes the comet, heading straight for Orpheus, rumbling loudly enough to shake the window of the spacecraft.
Science Fun Fact #5: Sound does not travel in space. Okay, the only movie I can remember that really gets this one right was 2001: A Space Odyssey. Even Apollo 13 had sounds in the outer space scenes. But that can usually be chalked up to artistic license. Most outer-space movies do not show, say, characters reacting to sounds in space, sound transmitting over a radio, or sounds rattling equipment. (I won’t mention Star Trek VI if you won’t.) This movie shows all three.
One of the other two astronauts comments, “It’ll go straight through like a dose of salts.” I don’t think I want to know what that means. That comet DOES look a little like a chunk of salt thrown over black construction paper, though. Hey, it wouldn’t’ve looked much worse.
So, after three or four different angles of the comet heading right for Orpheus, Junior yells, “It’s gonna hit!” Thanks, Tommy, we couldn’t see that for ourselves.
And the comet hits. PLAAAAAAA-BWAAAAAAH!!!* L&O Guy whispers, “Get away from there!” The asteroid comes apart in a million pieces. And Junior yells, “It’s coming apart in a million pieces!” He’s observant, our Tom.
*[This is the movie’s first Plabwah™. Around the mid-1970’s, filmmakers started to latch onto the idea that it was cool to blow stuff up. Back then, the explosion sound effects library was, shall we say, limited, since explosions weren’t required in everything but Merchant Ivory movies. One of the most popular sounds at the time was the plabwah. Actually, its real title was “Underwater Explosion with Splash and Avalanche.” I’ve seen the sound-effects record it was on. The “splash” was the part that was used, since it was a really nice double-explosion sound. I call it the Plabwah because that’s how it sounded: PLAAAAAAA-BWAAAAAAH!!! Go watch the pilot for The Incredible Hulk. There are a couple of good Plabwahs near the end, when the lab blows itself to hell. Although it sounded great, it fell out of favor after the early ‘80’s. The Plabwah was so overused that it became a cliche. Meteor is one of the worst offenders, using Plabwahs left and right.]
Mission Control watches in horror, and we hear sounds of the asteroid continuing to explode in the vacuum of space.
Science Fun Fact #6: colliding rocks and ice do NOT continue to explode.
We see one fragment of the asteroid heading right for Challenger II. This time, the editors realized that the *cough* special effects weren’t up to snuff, and they used quick cuts to show the spacecraft being destroyed. In Mission Control, General Easton stands frozen, a look of shock on his face. The zoom-in on Easton was fairly effective, I thought.
Back to the conference room. Sherwood makes a half-hearted apology for sending General Easton’s son to his death. Easton tells Sherwood it wasn’t his fault. Actually, General, it WAS his fault. Let’s assume the Asteroid Belt is really as cluttered as depicted in the movie. What the hell was Sherwood doing sending a spaceship designed for a trip to Mars into THAT?! Why not park about a half-million miles away, get the best telescopes and cameras on the ship ready, then watch from there? They’d have more time to “Get away from there!” if they had to. Also, we learn that the public hasn’t been informed about this little misadventure.
Finally, Sherwood tells Bradley why he’s been called in. “There’s a chunk of Orpheus heading towards Earth, a pretty big one. There a lot of little pieces coming along with it and in front of it [remember that], but it’s the big one we’re worried about. The figures haven’t been worked out yet, but six days from now, we could be hit.” Bradley says, “That is precisely why we put Hercules up there!” Sherwood tells Bradley that there will be a meeting the next day in Washington with some of Bradley’s old colleagues. Karl Malden turns his overacting gauge to 11, telling Bradley, “I want you to come to that meeting!” Bradley grudgingly agrees to go to the meeting. Sherwood gives him “up-to-date material on Hercules” and tells him all the travel arrangements have been made.
Bradley then gives the best line in the movie, one I fully intend to steal when I write my million-dollar screenplay: “Why don’t you stick a broom up my ass? I can sweep the carpet on the way out.”
Sherwood grins and says, “Haven’t changed, have you?” Imagine you’re General Easton. You’ve just heard a retelling of how your son died a pretty gruesome death the day before. Now the guy who sent your son to his death is grinning and joking. If I were Easton, I’d want to clop that smug bastard right in the honker.
We get more filler scenes of Bradley arriving at the hotel in Washington, then watching a TV show replaying the sailboat race he was in at the beginning. He notices a note his wife left for him: “What’s going on?” He calls her up.
Helen Bradley is played by Bibi Besch, who is probably best known for playing Dr. Carol Marcus in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. She was a solid character actress, a very attractive lady who gave the impression that she had a brain in her head, and she died much too young. Unfortunately, she’s not this movie’s only cast member with that distinction.
The first line is very badly staged. Helen is supposed to interrupt Paul, but she waits about a second too late, letting Connery draw out his last word. Sloppy. This one’s on Ronald Neame. You could handle this on the set while shooting, or you could slip and slide the sound editing to get this right. There is NO excuse for screwing this bit up.
The conversation goes nowhere, but we do learn that Bradley has two kids. This will be a problem later on. We also learn (as if we didn’t already know), that they are estranged, that they just never talk anymore. Helen pries Bradley for info on why he’s in Washington, but Bradley evades it. He ends the conversation abruptly, and, after fifty glorious seconds, Mrs. Helen Bradley is out of the movie. Too bad; Connery and Besch were pretty good as an estranged couple, and the conversation was more believable than anything we’ve seen up to this point.
Bradley then lies on the bed and starts reading the “up-to-date material on Hercules.” [In a couple of minutes, we’ll learn that Bradley already knows everything he needs to know about Hercules. That booklet Sherwood gave him must’ve been pretty short.] He then looks up at the *cough* modern chandelier, which dissolves to an orbital view of Hercules. We’ll learn shortly that Hercules is a satellite armed with fourteen nuclear missles. But in this shot, it looks like a really big toothbrush. There are several long, loving shots of Hercules, accompanied by a repeat of the Challenger II music.
We then get a slow zoom in on Bradley staring intently at the chandelier as a flashback of Sherwood’s dire prediction of a “chunk of Orpheus” hitting Earth plays on the soundtrack, as if we were asleep five minutes ago. Wait a minute, that’s entirely possible.
And then the big intro. The first of many looooong, lingering shots of (ta dum) the Meteor!! It passes Mars, lumbering along on its way toward Earth. The music in this scene is laughable, and I’m being generous.... Wait. Wait a minute. What’s that I hear? Do mine ears deceive me? Could it be? Could it? Yep.
This sucker has its own theme music. And it’s a hoot! I swear, I think Laurence Rosenthal got Craig Huxley to bang out some really LOUD random notes on the Blaster Beam, recorded that, and that was the meteor’s theme. Only it sounds worse.
Cut to a shot of Washington; the Capitol dome’s in the background, and the broken-letter cartoon-streamer font says “TUESDAY.” (I’m going to just call it the Meteor Font from now on.) We go inside a car, where Bradley is in the back seat reading the paper. The headline is of the Challenger II disaster; a sub-heading reads, “What Went Wrong?” The producers probably thought the same thing when this movie was finished.
We then go to a meeting room in NASA HQ, where Bradley comes in, notices no one else is there, and sits down and waits. After all of ten seconds, Sherwood enters, apologizing for being late, then reveals no one else is coming to the meeting; he wanted to talk to Bradley alone. Question: why spend all this time getting to Washington and having a “secret meeting?” Why not just meet in a hallway somewhere?
We then get some more Basil Expositioning, and we learn that Bradley designed Hercules as a safeguard against a large meteor threatening Earth, that the big bad military took it over and turned it into a weapon with “fourteen warheads pointed down at Russia” (an early Star-Wars defense weapon, maybe?), and that Bradley left NASA in protest.
Bradley and Sherwood argue over nothing for a moment, then Sherwood overacts again, yelling, “That meteor is five miles wide and it’s DEFINITELY going to hit us!!” Bradley’s response: “Sh!t! Five miles?!” That’s what the man said, Paul. We then learn that Hercules is currently being run by one General Adlon. Sherwood says that Adlon is a good man, but “he’s two-dimensional.” Hmmmm, sounds like he’ll fit right in here. So the strategy is set: get General Adlon out, get Bradley in (why?), then get the missiles turned around. Malden hams it up again and says, “We have exactly five days.”
Science Fun Fact #7: Orpheus is travelling at 30,000 miles an hour. It started near Vesta, which is at least 156 million miles from Earth at its closest point. It would take seven months, not seven days, to reach Earth. Do the math.
We then get another establishing shot of Hercules, as some pompous “Hercules Theme Music” plays. And while we’re at it, let’s review Sherwood’s remark that the meteor is five miles wide.
Science Fun Fact #8: a piece of rock or metal drifting through space is called a meteoroid. A meteoroid that enters Earth’s atmosphere and burns up is called a meteor.The terms meteor and shooting star describe the same thing. If a meteor doesn’t burn up all the way and hits Earth, it’s called a meteorite. Something five miles wide wouldn’t be called a meteor. It’d still be an asteroid! So why don’t they just call it that? Good question. Well, they never refer to it as an asteroid, and I ain’t gonna call it a meteor anymore. I’ll call it Orpheus, or maybe I’ll just call it what it is - a Big-Ass Rock. |
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BradH812
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
1294 Posts |
Posted - 06/15/2008 : 11:05:15 PM
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We then cut to an observatory in Russia, where some scientists and government types are leaving. One of the scientists is Dubov (Brian Keith). The dialogue here is in Russian, with subtitles. If you heard it in English, you’d laugh; calling it banal is too mild. The gist of it is, Dubov is worried about the Big-Ass Rock (ya think?) and wants to contact NASA. The governent types don’t want him to do that. That’s the entire point of the scene.
Cut to another meeting, this time with Bradley, Sherwood, the Secretary of Defense (Richard Dysart), several military types which I assume are Joint Chiefs of Staff, and General Adlon (Martin Landau). Oh, General Easton is here, too, but he has no dialogue and does nothing more than sit there and look stoic. The upshot of the meeting is simple: Sherwood wants America to admit we have Hercules up there, and Adlon doesn’t. Adlon says that admitting we have a Star-Wars type missile platform in orbit would be a political nightmare. Landau overacts the hell out of his character, but what he’s saying does make sense. It would be a nightmare. His argument may be wrong, but it does deserve to be debated on point. Sherwood fails to do this; instead, he sarcastically suggests that Adlon go after the Big-Ass Rock with “BB guns and slingshots.” (I am really starting to dislike Sherwood. Karl Malden tries to play him as a decent fellow, but when you get to the substance of what he says and does, he’s a self-righteous jerk.) By the way, this conversation has another problem. Hercules is pretty big. Big enough for anyone with a high-powered telescope to see it from Earth. It wouldn’t be a secret for very long.
Then Bradley tells the Joint Chiefs what would happen if the BAR hit. His description is as follows: “Orpheus is five miles wide. Its striking force is equal to 2,500,000 megatons of TNT. That is ten orders of magnitude above the largest earthquake ever recorded. [At this point, we get another view of the BAR, with Blaster Beam accompaniment.] It would throw into the atmosphere five billion tons of earth, and would reduce solar radiation for decades to come. [Back to the conference room.] It could start another ice age.” The problem with all of this is, a five-mile asteroid hitting the Earth would be much worse. I remember reading about the asteroid that is believed to have ended the career of the dinosaurs; my jaw dropped, and I thought, “That can’t be right.” But it was right. Seriously, something like this would be beyond comprehension, the word “apocalypse” would be fitting (I am NOT gonna use that OTHER “A” word, thank you very much). Also, when Mount St. Helens blew its stack in 1980, it threw five billion tons of rock into the atmosphere, and St. Helens’s eruption was a fraction of the size of Krakatoa or Tambora; I imagine an asteroid throwing a helluva lot more up. Finally, whaddaya mean “it could start another ice age”?! It’d start another ice age if we were LUCKY! Hey, here’s an idea. If the writers couldn’t be bothered to get all the details, they could sum it up nicely. Make the asteroid six miles wide. Bradley could make his speech nice and quick: “Here’s the short version. Orpheus is six miles wide. The same size as the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs. That’s what we’re dealing with.” Then he could just sit back and let it sink in.
Of course, Adlon plays devil’s advocate. “What if the thing doesn’t hit?” Sherwood starts to say that’s been ruled out, and Adlon shouts, “You have been wrong before! You were DEAD wrong when you sent Challenger II off its course!!” The thing is, Adlon’s right. Not that Sherwood will admit to it now. Y’know, something just occured to me. Why not have Adlon be the one whose son was killed on the Mars probe? Then he could know full well what was going on, and he could have a personal stake in it, but he would also know that the whole Hercules matter was a political football, and he’d need to deal with that. Add to that, he’d have a legitimate ax to grind with Sherwood. Whoa. We’d have a real interpersonal conflict between these two, and we’d have a well-drawn and even sympathetic foil for Bradley and Sherwood to go up against. Of course, we’d have all of the stupid scentific errors to deal with, but a writer who devoted enough time to put in three-dimensional characters in the story would probably also take the time to actually crack open an astronomy book or two to make sure he got his facts straight.
After Adlon’s outburst, the Joint Chiefs start some “Watermelon, watermelon” arguing, and a disgusted Bradley gets up to leave. Before he goes, he gives the response that Sherwood should have given Adlon: “I don’t give a damn what Russia says about America or vice versa. I you told what’s gonna happen when that meteor hits!” He then proceeds to the bar across the street. I’d be drinkin’ if I were in this movie, too. The Secretary of Defense then says he needs to go to the President with this. Um, then what was the point of this whole meeting?? And Sherwood has a ham sandwich, telling the Secretary we need to make a decision “in time. Because there’s damned LITTLE time.” And we have another shot of the BAR lumbering along.
Bradley sits in a bar — which is surprisingly full for a Tuesday afternoon — watching a BBC report on TV, confirming that the BAR is heading for us. (I read on IMDb that the reporter was played by Simon Cadell, who also provided the voice of Blackberry, the clever MacGuyver-type rabbit, in the great Watership Down.) After the report ends, the bartender switches over to a football game. In the middle of the afternoon on a workday. [Rolling my eyes. Remember, this was in the days before ESPN.] Sherwood approaches and tells Bradley about the Secretary going to the Pres, then sits down and orders up a Scotch (he’ll chase it with a Filler Genuine Draft). Bradley wonders what will happen if the President says no. Sherwood then tells Bradley a little story about his son going to the hospital with appendicitis several years before. It’s pure filler, but I’ll give Karl Malden credit for dialing back the histrionics and playing this scene nicely.
After the story ends, Sherwood gets a phone call from the Defense Sec, and they leave the bar for an anonymous computer lab, where Bradley waits with intensity while a printout comes up. Sherwood is on the horn with the Defense Secretary and asks Bradley for the verdict. Bradley states, “Confirmed. Hercules is light.” Don’t go away, we’re about to find out what he meant.
Now we’re in the Oval Office, with Bradley, Sherwood, Adlon, Defense Sec, and the President, played, natch, by Henry Fonda. Oh goody! The upshot of the meeting is that Hercules’s missiles are not enough to stop the BAR. They put this satellite up there and it doesn’t have the firepower to do what it’s supposed to do?? Well, that’s thinking ahead, kids! Sherwood offers a solution: the Russians have their own version of Hercules (the Pres confirms this). Oh, joy. Bradley says that the U.S. and Russia will have to join forces. Adlon states, “They’ll never admit they’ve got the thing.” Sherwood says we’ll make them admit it, and Adlon asks how. Rather than answer his question, which deserves an answer IMO, they ignore him. The Pres then takes Adlon out of control and puts Bradley in control of Hercules. I ask again, why do this? Why not have Bradley on as an advisor and keep Adlon on as leader? Adlon should know better than to disobey an order from the President (even if the BAR misses us, his career would be in a shambles if he tried anything), and he doesn’t deserve to be humiliated like this. Oh, wait, Bradley is being played by Sean Connery, that’s why. I’m gonna take a dig or two at Connery in this review, and I’ll reveal why in the Afterthoughts section. The President then says he thinks he can solve this little bugaboo about us having an illegal weapon up in space, and he tells the others to watch his press conference tonight.
So, as Bradley and Sherwood fly to New York, they watch the press conference. Admittedly, the Pres does a decent bit of political spin, admitting we have Hercules but saying its missiles are pointed at outer space (Bradley says, “Right name, wrong direction.”) and revealing that the Russians “in their wisdom” have their own anti-BAR defense system. He ends the conference by saying he’s about to get on the phone with the Russians and ask them to “combine their nuclear power with ours so that together, we will be able to deal with the meteor, to strike it with irresistable force, and to end forever its potential danger to us all.
The Russian Premier watches the press conference on TV in Moscow, as Dubov sits around waiting. The Premier’s first line isn’t bad: “They’ve elected an alchemist for President. He can turn hypocricy into diplomacy.” But the subtitled dialogue gets silly pretty fast. He then tells Dubov to “discuss” the idea of turning the missiles around, but keep it in the area of discussion. Dubov makes an aside that it’s not enough; I guess he’s supposed to be the Russian counterpart to Bradley.
Cut to, yes, another shot of the BAR lumbering along. Behind it is a planet eclipsing the Sun. Um, didn’t Orifice, uh, Orpheus pass Mars a day ago? Also, while we see the Sun eclipsed, directly behind the BAR, the BAR is lit fairly brightly from the side. And there’s a bluish cast over the BAR. And there’s a thin blue line around it. In his review of Jaws 3-D, Ken Begg called attention to the bad blue-screen work in that movie. Meteor’s blue-screen work is just as bad if not worse; it’s really horrendous. (Don’t believe me? CHECK IT OUT.
We now have an establishing shot of New York City. “WEDNESDAY” appears in the Meteor Font. Bradley and Sherwood enter the AT&T Building and head for the elevator. It seems the Hercules Command Center is right below the building (!) Sherwood tells Bradley (and the audience) that the Center is “right next to an old subway station. A section that runs under the Hudson.” Plot Point Alert!! Bradley asks why they would have the Command Center here, of all places (a good question). Sherwood’s answer is, “This is easy access to a total telecommunications setup right above our heads. And nobody in their right minds would think of putting their most important emergency striking power right under the busiest city in the world.” Um, dude, there’s a very good reason for that, namely you’re putting your “important striking power” right below a primary target! And how much of a secret IS this Command Center, anyway? It’s listed on the button in the elevator! Sheesh!! So they go underground and go into the Center, after a brief bit of filler as Bradley gets waved through by the guard.
I know nothing about the layout of a military base, but Hercules Command does look pretty impressive. In fact, it may be overkill, but then Wargames did the same thing. Adlon, of course, waits for Bradley and Sherwood when they arrive. He hands Sherwood a message and tells Bradley, “Normally we work with 25, but since it’s been called an emergency, I’ve brought up a full crew.” (We don’t ever see more than 25 people around, so I imagine that he must’ve been able to call each of the full crew himself.) Sherwood’s message delights him: “Oh, good news! The Russians are coming!” Adlon states (in a stern but level voice): “I would like to go on record that I consider allowing the Russions to come into this center to be a grave error, which one day the United States may bitterly regret.” Hmmmm, this is 1979, the Cold War is still on, and the USSR isn’t exactly known for treating dissenters well (Andrei Sakharov comes to mind). So, whoever comes here will either have an armed escort to keep them in line, or they’ll be loyal Soviet citizens. And we’re letting them into a top secret missile base. Adlon is supposed to be the Big Bad Hard-Headed Military Man, but right now he’s making perfect sense! And Martin Landau isn’t hamming it up here; General Adlon comes across as the smartest man in the room in this scene.
While Sherwood goes off to use the phone, we get some introductions to various members of the Hercules crew. First up is Chief Technician Rolf Manheim (Bo Brundin), whom I’m going to call German Bearded Guy; after this scene, he’ll have nothing to do except rattle off mediocre technical dialogue. GBG reveals that his nephew is one of Bradley’s students at MIT; as he states this, he literally looks upward trying to remember his dialogue. (By the way, the fact that Bradley knows his nephew is a bad sign. I think GBG is gonna buy it before the end.) Next up is Jan Watkins (Katherine De Hetre), a technician of some sort, although we never really learn exactly what she does. She and Bradley exchange some *cough* technical jargon, and we meet her assistant, Alan Marshall (James G. Richardson). For now, I’m going to call Jan and Alan Blonde Chick and Boyfriend, because, well, it’s obvious. Finally, we meet Bill Hunter, whose job is basically to answer the videophone (I’m Not Kidding) and let Bradley and others know they have a call. I’d refer to Hunter as Token Black Guy, but at least he has more to do than most of the crew here. In fact, these four are the only crew members with any dialogue. Hunter tells Bradley he has a call from Sir Michael Hughes from the Jodrell Bank Observatory. Sir Michael is played by Trevor Howard. Oh, the slumming! Bradley and Sir Michael (he is ALWAYS referred to that way) talk a bit over nothing, and Sir Michael tells Bradley, “We can expect the first splinters [small bits of rock that can accurately be called meteors] in twenty-four hours. Doubtful if we can track them unless they’re in clusters, but we’ll do our best.” And that’s the end of the conversation. [Future Brad: Trevor Howard appears in only two more brief scenes, and he is only directly on-camera, sans videophone, for a few seconds. Howard was no dummy; I’ll bet he spent thirty minutes memorizing his “dialogue,” got his part done with in an afternoon, and pocketed a nice paycheck.] Finally, Sherwood comes back into the picture, revealing that Dr. Dubov (whom Bradley specifically requested) is arriving in Washington that evening. So, they go hoppin’ on back to Washington to meet him.
Now we have a *cough* stylish rack focus, going from a fence in the foreground to a red star of a Russian plane in the background. There’s a militaristic fanfare here which I’m going to call the Russian March. The entire setup of the Russians getting off the plane and going down the ramp to meet Sherwood is for two lines: Sherwood says, “Dr. Dubov, are we glad to see you here!” And Dubov says, “Thank you.” Actually, the whole thing is related by Dubov’s translator, played by Natalie Wood. The whole scene was for them to greet Sherwood, get in the car, and drive off. And now we truck on back up to New York.
While waiting for this filler to get done with, let me ask: do I need to remind anyone what a damn shame it is we lost Natalie Wood at such a young age? She was a gifted actress, and God Almighty, she was a beautiful woman. Note that I said “woman.” She was a grown-up by now, and you had a feeling she had a decent mind in that pretty head of hers. That’s more than you can say for one or two of the teeny-bopper “actresses” we have today.
Back to Hercules Command. The Meteor font helpfully informs us it is “THURSDAY”, and we see a big board reading “Meteor Trajectory.” Ay-yi-yi. The Trajectory is a straight diagonal line heading for Earth with dates on it, counting down to when the BAR is gonna hit. The blinking light is now on December 4; the BAR will hit on Sunday, December 7. I imagine anyone who was at Pearl Harbor will feel, uh, annoyed by this. A bigger problem is this: we now know that Bradley, who teaches at MIT, was off on a sailboat race. On a school day in December. [In my best Gumby voice] My brain hurts! It will have to come out!
Dubov, his translator, Adlon, and Adlon’s translator get together for a tete-a-tete in an office which happens to have a big globe with a model of Hercules positioned above it pointing toward Russia (supposedly; in truth, it’s at an angle, pointing off into space). The conversation between Dubov and Adlon is carried out vis-a-vis both translators, speaking at the same time. Dubov wants to know if this is an accurate depiction of Hercules and it’s direction, and Adlon prefers to have Sherwood and Bradley tell him that. On cue, Bradley and Sherwood come in, and Bradley confirms - rather cavalierly, IMO - that Hercules has 14 rockets, each with a 100-megaton bomb. Were not even close to having a 100-megaton bomb today. Both of the translators start their simultaneous bit again, which is, I guess supposed to be ridiculous. Well, they did it too well. Bradley says, “Welcome to New York, Dr. Dubov, I’m glad you’re here,” and shakes Dubov’s hand. And Dubov grins. Finally, someone asks why we have two interpreters here. Adlon says it’s standard procedure: “How else do we know we’re interpreted properly?” Uh huh, yeah, right. I know nothing about diplomatic procedure, but I don’t buy it; it just seems, how shall I say it, stupid. Why would an interpreter mislead someone? It’s illogical. [Growing pointy ears and a greenish face] Bradley counters, “I think we could all start by trusting each other. Otherwise, what’s the point?” And Dubov grins. Bradley continues: “And if it’s a matter of choosing, I’ll take the pretty one.” Dubov’s lovely assistant translates. And Dubov chuckles. And grins. Get used to Dubov grinning. 99% of Brian Keith’s dialogue is in Russian, and he has absolutely nothing else to do in the course of the picture. Why have an above-the-title actor shoehorned into a role like this? So we can have a beautiful lady translating, of course. We then learn the full name of Dubov’s interpreter: Tatiana Nikolaevna Donskaya. Sherwood reveals that Tatiana is Dubov’s interpreter and “an astrophysicist.” I buy Natalie Wood as an interpreter: her parents were Russian immigrants, and she spoke Russian fluently. I do not buy her as an astrophysicist. Adlon, seeing he’s being sidelined again, leaves in a huff, taking his assistant with him, but he bends Sherwood’s ear. Sherwood, Adlon, and nameless interpreter leave, Dubov mutters something in Russian, and Tatiana translates: “He thinks General Adlon is not pleased to see him.” Gee, Doc, what was your first clue?
Outside the office, Adlon reveals to Sherwood that the Defense Secretary just sent him a memo, reading “There will be no change in the direction of our rockets until the Russians admit they’ve got their own rockets, and until they also agree to re-align them.” Supposedly, he’s being Pig-Headed Military Man again, but it would be pointless to argue with him here. If the Russians won’t play ball, we won’t be able to stop the BAR anyway, so why bother turning Hercules around? (And lest we forget, we did extend the first olive branch, admitting we had Herc in the first place.) Sherwood goes into a mini-diatribe about government bureaucracy, directing his anger at, surprise surprise, Adlon. Uh, Sherwood, never mind the point I just made. The guy’s just doing his job, following the Defense Sec’s orders, and his tone here, while not very nice, was reasonable. It should’ve been painfully obvious long ago that Sherwood was our Designated Hero; if not, it is now. (Bradley sometimes acts the same way, but at least he can be reasoned with.) See IMMORTAL DIALOGUE for the full text of this conversation.
Back in the office, Dubov, via Tatiana, chides Bradley on the US’s decision to turn Hercules into a weapon against Russia. Bradley says, “We call ours Hercules. What do you call yours?” Dubov acts all innocent, but Bradley asks, “Then who the hell put up this thing called Peter the Great, its warheads pointing at the United States?” Question: how does Bradley know the thing is called Peter the Great?! I thought all we knew about it was that it was there! And the diagram he shows of the different satellites orbiting Earth has an unmarked red star - which Bradley lights up (!) - designating the Russian missile platform. Gaghck! Brain freeze! And I’m not eating ice cream! (Oh, and did I mention that Brian Keith’s dialogue is in Russian and that all Natalie Wood is doing is playing inter— Okay, I mentioned that. I wonder who should feel put out more, Keith or Wood. I’m going with Keith; at least people are actually listening to what Natalie Wood is saying.) Dubov’s response? “Chinese, perhaps.” And Dubov Grins. Bradley then brings up a good point: if the Russians don’t have this weapon, we’re all dead. He grills Dubov on the finer points of Peter the Great, adding that they are only speaking *wink wink* theoretically. They reassure each other that this is “theoretical,” and Dubov somehow understands which word “theoretically” is without Tatiana’s help, because he repeats it. Well, at least Keith had one word in English. Finally, he reveals that, “theoretically,” he would design Peter the Great to have “16 warheads, each with megatonnage same as your own.” Bradley says, “That’d give us a billion plus!” Hmmm. Hercules’s 14 warheads would deliver 1,400 megatons of TNT altogether, so it has a billion plus right there. With Peter the Great in tow, it’d be three billion! The movie not only fails its science classes, it’s also very inconsistent, no? Finally, he adds, “Theoretically.” Dubov repeats, “Theoretically.” And Dubov Grins.
And now it is “FRIDAY.” We are outside a rustic hut in a remote forest somewhere up north. [Future Brad: it’s in Siberia. Read on.] At least, it’s supposed to be a remote forest; what it really is is an unconvincing set. Strangely, we hear a low hum on the soundtrack, like a small plane is going by overhead, but we never learn what the hum is. A Nameless Guy trudges into the scene, decked out for the winter. He has Asian features, though I’m terrible with nationalities. There is superimposed snow blowing like it’s a blizzard, but Nameless Guy has no snow on his coat, face, or hair, his hair isn’t picked up by the “wind,” he doesn’t appear to be the least bit cold...and the smoke coming out of the hut’s chimney rises vertically. Whoops. NG is about to go inside the hut, but he looks up and sees, via an unconvincing matte shot (like this movie has any other kind), a bright red light in the sky. BumbumBUM. He pays it no heed, though, and goes into the hut, where his wife and two adorable children are eating dinner. NG is about to take a bite of his dinner, but he looks out the open door to his hut (shut the door, man! You’ll let all the warm air out!) to see it is bright as day outside. And we hear a musical sting that sounds like it came right out of a Road Runner cartoon (if you remember any shot where the Coyote realized the rock was gonna crush him and not his hoped-for dinner, you know exactly how this sting sounds). NG goes out to take a look, sees that the red light now has a fiery trail behind it, heading this way. He calls Wife out, and they whisper to each other in a foreign dialect, wondering what that thing up there is. Then the wind picks up. (Why would an approaching small meteor cause a windstorm?) NG and Wife grab the kids and start running. Where, I don’t know. The meteor splinter goes behind a mountain ridge and impacts with a bright flash of light. Amazingly, the FX work for this shot wasn’t bad for 1979. NG and his family are still running, and they drop to their knees. I presume this means they were somehow killed by the impact. Some problems, though. First, we don’t see anything actually happen to them; for all we know, they stumbled, got back up, and started running again. Second, the impact was behind a tall mountain range, which I imagine would provide good shielding for the family. Finally, we’ve known these people for all of ninety seconds, so it’s somewhat difficult to feel any emotions for them. [Future Brad: We’re gonna get more of this.]
We go to the UN Building, where the General Council is meeting. The Canadian representative states that a powerful earthquake was recorded in Siberia (hmmmmmm, I wonder why?). He then asks the Russian delegate if he has any more information. The Russian delegate gives the diplomat’s version of “No comment.” Why did they spend so much time on this scene? All that was needed was a title card establishing that the earlier scene took place in Siberia, right? Why have this scene at all? To introduce the Russian diplomat. [Future Brad: There’s another reason. The end credits say that the Canadian rep and the British rep are one of the writers and the director! So THAT’s why!]
And we have another shot of the BAR comin’ for us, with bad music along for the ride, natch. These shots never get old, do they?
Back to Hercules Command. Another shot of the Meteor Trajectory board *snicker*, showing that, why yes, we have two days to impact. We then have a brief walk-and-talk between Blonde Chick and Boyfriend, in which Boyfriend reveals he played gin rummy the night before (three days before the end of the world). They then have the following exchange:
Boyfriend: What’s the Russian girl like?
Blonde Chick: Very nice, very bright, and forget it.
[Me: Huh?]
Boyfriend: I missed you.
They then share a quick kiss. Not exactly professional behavior in the main area of a military base.
Blonde Chick then goes into another office, where Bradley is studying some readouts with Dubov (I presume the readout is in English AND Russian), and Tatiana works at a computer console. If Adlon came in here, he’d hit the ceiling. I thought Tatiana’s primary job was interpreter, so what the hell is she doing with a sophisticated *cough* computer that’s presumably hooked up to a mainframe somewhere?! Oh, right, she’s also an astrophysicist. Uh huh, yeah. Security isn’t a priority around here, is it. Anyhoo, Blonde Chick gives Bradley a computer printout, “with compliments.” She then makes some quick girl-talk with Tatiana, revealing she’s had the blankets and soap in Tatiana’s quarters replaced. Tatiana makes a comment on Blonde Chick’s scarf (remember this), and Blonde Chick thanks her and leaves. Actually, I’m not going to call her Blonde Chick, I’m gonna call her Jan (I’ll extend the same courtesy for Boyfr—, uh, Alan). Jan seems to be a competent worker as well as a genuinely warm and pleasant person, showing small kindnesses to Tatiana. One gets the feeling she wouldn’t be hard to work with, even if she wasn’t easy on the eyes. It’s too bad she wasn’t given much to do, because Katherine De Hetre seemed to be doing her best to turn in a professional performance. Unfortunately, she is given a little bit of personality; I say unfortunately, because that could mean she’s not long for this world. After Jan leaves, Dubov mutters in Russian (translated by Tatiana) about not being able to deal with jet lag, and he flops down on a convenient cot. We then get thirty seconds of filler as Tatiana expertly *cough* types data into the computer as Bradley sits back and, um, enjoys the view. I noticed that Natalie Wood’s hands were visible, clearly faking the typing, but that was okay, since when she gets the printout ready and gives it to Bradley, he holds it upside down and reads it! Oops.
Bradley then asks Tatiana how long she has worked with Dubov. Tatiana proceeds to give him the Cliff’s-Notes version of her life. I imagine the scene in The Great Muppet Caper when Miss Piggy asked Diana Rigg why she was volunteering all this info about her wayward brother, and Diana Rigg answered, “Plot exposition. It has to go somewhere.” This scene nails home why I buy Tatiana as an interpreter but NOT as an astrophysicist. The timeline she gives had me crossing my eyes, and this movie would have us believe that a couple of years in college and Presto! You’re an astrophysicist! (Why couldn’t they have just said she’s an interpreter who knows something about astrophysics? After all, wouldn’t she pick up a thing or two working for Dubov for so long?) In addition, she makes a remark that Dubov is “on his fourth wife now.” Ah, see, he’s Bradley’s counterpart! He’s a workaholic who alienates his family! That’s as good as Dubov’s characterization gets. Then we get to the good stuff:
Bradley: You know, it’s very nice talking with you.
Tatiana: Thank you, but we’ve been talking for almost two days.
Bradley: No. I’ve been talking with you Dubov. I mean talking with you you. Very attractive.
Coming from Sean Connery, this actually works. Hey, the guy’s a born charmer. [Envious grumbling from yours truly.] We then learn that Tatiana was married once to a cosmonaut who died during “an exploratory mission.” Bradley, finally getting to the point, asks if she’s seeing anyone, and she answers, “Nothing serious. Not really.”
So, the whole point was for Bradley to start hitting on her. Considering we got a BAR about to hit us in two days, this is completely inappropriate. Okay, now that I’ve said all this, I liked this scene! Badly written and the timing stinks, but it has two things going for it: Sean Connery and Natalie Wood. They actually pull the the dialogue off well enough for the scene to work, no bells or whistles, just solid acting. And they have great chemistry; one gets the feeling these two genuinely enjoyed working together. Another thing: when they shot this scene, Connery was 48 and Wood was 41. They were adults. God, I wish there were more scenes like this in the movie; it actually came to life for a couple of minutes. [I wasn’t alone in this wish. See AFTERTHOUGHTS.] |
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BradH812
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
1294 Posts |
Posted - 06/15/2008 : 11:09:22 PM
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Unfortunately, we have to get back to this pesky business of a BAR headin’ our way. Sir Michael gets on the videophone and tells Bradley that more splinters are coming in; this time it’s a “cluster,” a big meteor shower over Italy, just south of Pisa.
The scene of panic in all of Italy is shown as follows: three rows of cars, about five or six cars deep, stopped on a road; people get out, look up, kinda scared, as red lights play along their faces. The crowd of *cough* panicked Italians total maybe twenty people. INK. Their view? What looks like a bunch of glowing red cotton balls zooming in over horribly-matted in still photographs of buildings and landmarks. The POV shots have to be seen to be believed; vidcaps wouldn’t do it justice, you need to see this in motion to grasp just how clumsy it looks. For good measure, we get some Blaster Beam effects in the background, but for once they’re fairly subtle. After about a minute of this, the meteors all burn up. And Sir Michael informs us, “They’ve burned up! The clusters evaporated! Not one of them got through! The whole thing’s been nothing more than a gigantic fireworks display!” Thanks for the heads-up, Mike.
Well, now that the first publicly-reported meteor hit turn out to be a false alarm, it’s time for Adlon to go into full meltdown mode. And for once, he’s WRONG, thinking that a five-mile-wide asteroid would do nothing more than light up the sky for a few seconds! For once, Sherwood is right to talk down to the guy! The writers did their best to make Adlon look as stupid as possible, and they did it too well; I was wondering, how in the hell did this drama queen make GENERAL?! He then has a full-blown hissy fit, takes his football, and goes home [see IMMORTAL DIALOGUE].
Now that Adlon has taken a powder, Dubov throws his own tantrum. Entirely in Russian. Imagine you’re Brian Keith. You have a good body of work in movies and TV, and you’re known as a solid actor. Along comes a producer, dangling a mighty big carrot in front of you: a big-budget sci-fi disaster movie, SUPPOSEDLY grounded in realism, with a big-name cast headed up by Sean Connery, directed by a guy who should know what he’s doing. And your name is above the title. You sign the contract without thinking, committing yourself. And then you read the script. Not only is it a big pile of horse manure, you have the single worst role in the whole damned thing; all you do is mutter in Russian every now and then and grin like an idiot on cue! A tantrum scene like this must’ve been REALLY easy for Brian Keith to perform. This moment where Dubov has his blow out is supposed to turn him into the “comic relief,” but I was depressed watching it; I really felt sorry for Keith. What’s worse, Dubov goes into an office where we can see but not hear him, and he continues to rant and rave. Har har. A few cutaways show the other characters in stunned silence; I imagine this was their reaction after they read the script. (2008 Brad: I read in a couple of places that this wasn’t too far off; most of the actors realized early on they’d dropped themselves into a big fat Butterball Thanksgiving turkey.) Finally, Tatiana reveals what Dubov’s carrying on about: he wants to call the Russian Embassy. Whoopee, the Russians are working with us now. Hooray. Yay. By the way, Tatiana is translating what Dubov is saying AFTER he goes into the glassed-in office...where he can’t be heard. [Pounding the sides of my head with my fists.] Sherwood goes into the office to help Dubov make the call, they pantomime for a few seconds, then the call goes through.... And Dubov Grins.
At the UN, the Russian delegate puts his own spin, saying that Peter the Great was developed before Hercules, “solely” for the purpose of knocking BAR’s out of the sky. This might have been a good commentary on political spin by one side and another...if it were handled competently...and if anyone actually gave a damn at this point. Also, why are guys like Adlon so worried? If all it takes is a *cough* well-written speech at a press conference or a carefully worded statement at the UN.... Oh, hell, forget it and marvel at the model of Peter the Great, being shown for the first time to that stupid Russian March music.
Back at Hercules Command, Bradley, Sherwood, Dubov, and Tatiana toast Peter the Great - with vodka, no less. Dubov then gives his own little toast, quoting a phrase he heard from a taxi driver last time he was in America: “F&%# the Dodgers!” Oh, dear merciful God in Heaven. That’s about 40% of Dubov’s total English dialogue in this whole mess. I imagine Brian Keith cried himself to sleep the night after this scene was shot. Seriously, I wanted to get into a time machine, go back to 1979, find Keith, take him aside, put my arm around his shoulder, and make like Robin Williams in Good Will Hunting. “It’s not your fault, Brian. It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault.”
And now we join our heroes watching Peter the Great realigns itself, pointing skyward. Strike that. It realigns itself slowly... very... very... ssssslllllooooowwwwwlllllyyyyy. We are treated to shots of people looking at the video monitors and the model of Peter the Great turning itself around for almost two minutes!! All the while, my head explodes in slow motion! [Eeeeeewwwww!!!] Actually, this scene isn’t QUITE as horrible as it should be. The music is something we haven’t heard, a somber, stately minor-key fanfare that was really nice. It’s by far the best music in the entire movie (and it’s a damnsight better than that stupid Russian March). GBG notes, “Attitude correction complete, situation nominal.” (Thanks for the news flash, mein freund.) Tatiana translates. And Dubov Grins.
Now we switch over to Hercules. Oh, sweet Baby Jesus, no.
Yep. That’s right, sports fans, we’re gonna go through the whole damn thing all over again with Hercules! With that bloody Hercules fanfare to boot!* I keep having all these Fillers, and I’m gonna be really drunk tonight, and I’ll be hung over tomorrow. Shoot, I may get drunk on my own tonight, and I hardly ever even DRINK!
*[I have to admit one thing. As hard as I’ve been on the Hercules fanfare, it’s not bad. Not great, but not bad. It would work pretty well if it were played once or twice in the movie. Played over and over, though.... Well....]
So here’s Herc turning around sssslllloooowwwwllllyyyy. It should be sheer torture by now, but four things pop up to amuse us. (1) The computer simulation of Herc turning around doesn’t match the actual maneuver the satellite performs. (2) We get to mull over the question: If we can see an exterior view of this thing turning around, where is that camera?? (3) We are treated to a silhouette of Hercules against the Kleig-lamp subbing for the Sun. And look, it’s still got its lampshade on! Hi, guy, glad to see ya again! Finally, (4) the kicker. Halfway through its turnaround, Herc stops. Radio chatter informs us that something has gone wrong. That’s right; a satellite floating in outer space did an orbital maneuver and....GOT STUCK!!!
Science Fun Fac— Oh, the hell with it!
After about five seconds of *cough* suspense, we hear radio chatter that Herc’s back on track, and they’ll compensate for the hang-up (which is....?) by delaying the firing time on Hercules’s missiles. Remember this. Whew, glad THAT crisis has been averted! And as Herc finishes its maneuver...can you guess? Dubov Grins!! And Brian Keith is visibly gritting his teeth!!
Now that all the political crap is taken care of and we’ve gotten our big guns turned around, we get the following:
Sherwood: Now we wait until we see the whites of its eyes.
Bradley: 0700 Sunday.
So, in other words, we got a big-ass rock comin’ for us, gonna hit the Earth and cause all sorts of catastrophes. We have an armed satellite to deal with this, the Russians have one of their own. So we convince ourselves and each other to get our missles turned back skyward. Then we wait for the rock to come knockin’ on our front door and we send it a nuclear-powered singing telegram.
And that’s the story. The whole story!!! No wonder this movie has so much filler! Somebody get me in a straitjacket, I need it! It hurts us, Precious, it HURTS US! Cruel Hobbitses, subjecting us to bad movieses!
And speaking of filler.... SATURDAY.
Saturday is Snow Day. Literally. We’re in a Swiss village, the Alps rising majestically in the distant background. Some stock shots of skiers, then.... We focus in on one particular skier, Girl Skier [it says so in the credits!] making her way from the slopes to the village. Girl Skier is played by an almost unrecognizable Sybil Danning. Unrecognizable because (1) Danning is best known for two things, neither of which she shows us, and (2) here she has brown hair and looks a million miles away from the Teutonic B movie Ice Queen look she would adopt a few years later. Personally, I prefer this version of her; she looks like the girl next door, the kind you wouldn’t have a problem taking home to meet Mom and Dad. Girl Skier says hi to some friends, sees her boyfriend hanging out in a nearby cafe, hangs up the skis, and goes into the cafe to join her boyfriend and a couple of buddies for lunch. [This is, by the way, less than twenty-four hours before the BAR hits. The complete lack of attention people are paying to the threat of global disaster will occur again and again, and I won’t go into individual cases. I’ll address this particular problem as a whole in the Afterthoughts section.]
Let’s see.... Exotic location we haven’t seen before, characters we haven’t met before, who are speaking in German (I think) sans subtitles.... I do believe we are about to have a visitor!
Ah, there it is, right on cue! A splinter comes boppin’ on in and hits the top of the mountain behind the village. PLAAAAAAA-BWAAAAAAH!!! When a meteor hits the top of a snow-covered mountain, guess what happens next. If you said “Volcanic Eruption,” get out of the classroom. Give yourself a chocolate if you said what I’m about to say: It’s Avalanche Time! Yaaaay y-y-y-y!!
There are several shots of the snow falling and snowballing [sorry] into a full-fledged avalanche. Several shots of a skier trying to outrun the snowslide were, I hear, lifted directly from the movie Avalanche! You can tell, too. Those shots actually look somewhat competent.
The avalanche descends on the village! And we notice that, although the mountain where the avalanche started is directly behind the village, the snow is piling in from the LEFT. And the avalanche is badly matted in, needless to say, complete with visible bluescreen lines. CHECK IT OUT.
Girl Skier and boyfriend rush out to see what’s going on, then run like hell along with the rest of the villagers (unlike the *ahem* meteor shower in Italy, this scene actually has a decent-sized crowd). A few quick, unconvincing shots of the snow blowing down some buildings, and we join Girl Skier and boyfriend trying to hide from the snow in a church. We see the avalanche surrounding then breaking into the church, and then Girl Skier and boyfriend are buried under a whole lot of white confetti. INK.
Well, now we know the format. Go to an exotic locale, have a splinter hit, pick a random disaster out from the menu, put in a nameless character or two to give “emotional impact,” and presto! Instant filler! And in this disaster movie, we get not one, not two, but THREE, yes, THREE (so far) disasters for the price of one! Order now! We’ve had an avalanche and an earthquake so far, plus the fact that a hulked-out pebble is chuggin’ along on its merry way to Earth. What’s next? Hmmmm, a flood, methinks. Or a fire. I wonder which one will hit New York. (Come on, you really think that’s NOT gonna happen?)
Later in the day, a reporter covers the disaster, showing the aftermath. Bradley and Company watch the report at Herc Command, and we see a slow zoom in on the TV, which the zoom of the optical effect of the newscast on the TV almost matches. In the Oval Office, the Pres watches the same newscast, along with the Defense Secretary and Sherwood. The news report shows the massive damage and high casualties, noting that the avalanche killed 12,000 skiers participating in a cross country marathon at the time of the impact! We’re treated to a stock shot of a big skiing race during this part of the newscast.
The reporter finishes, “And what about the big one, due Sunday, closing on Earth at 30,000 miles an hour?” Hmmm, yes, what of that? The reporter throws the news back to the anchor desk in New York, but the Pres turns the TV off during the five seconds of dead air following the report!
The President asks Sherwood what the next step is. (Um, Mr. P, shouldn’t you already know this?) Sherwood gives some Basil Exposition:
Sherwood: The satellites are orbiting with Earth [sic] 22,500 miles out in space. Since they are in different orbits, and in order for them to reach the target together, they will have to be fired at different times, Peter the Great first, and then forty minutes later Hercules. [Um, wasn’t the delayed firing time due to some glitch in Hercules’s realignment?] Approximately two hours after that, they will explode at a designated distance from the target [remember this; the writers don’t].
The Pres: Can anything go wrong?
Sherwood: Well.... [Me: aw, naw] Once the rockets have been launched, they switch over to their own decision-making systems. And if these systems perform perfectly, well, then, there’s no problem. But if there’s a malfunction....
The Pres: What are the odds?
Sherwood: Mr. President, you know we’ve never done this before? The odds? Your guess is as good as mine.
The Pres: If you fail?
Sherwood: The meteor will hit Earth two hours later. [Please note that this means zero hour is about 11:30 Eastern time Sunday morning. More inconsistencies in just a moment.]
This is your celebrated defense system? You’re putting all your hopes behind missiles whose guidance systems could “malfunction?” Did you guys ever bother to TEST those guidance systems? What the hell kind of Mickey Mouse operation IS this, anyway?!?! That idea of using BB guns and slingshots is looking better and better! [Actually, one line, count ‘em, ONE, is dead-on accurate, when Sherwood says there’s no way of knowing the odds. But it’s for the wrong reason. See Afterthoughts.] And the President gives his official order: “Hit it, Mr. Sherwood. Get rid of it!” Thanks, Mr. Pres, we didn’t know we needed to do that.
By the way, Sherwood says that Hercules is in geosynchronous orbit, 22,500 miles out in space. But every shot of Hercules makes it look like the satellite is in low orbit. [Shaking my head in amazement.]
And we’re treated to another shot of the BAR. Whew, hadn’t seen it in a while. I was beginning to think it’d decided to change its course. The BAR is now passing the moon. Now, assuming this is just before midnight Saturday night, the BAR is about 350,000 miles away. Do the math.
Science Fun Fact #10.5: The Moon is about 240,000 miles from Earth. So they’re only off about 90,000 miles. Hey, in THIS movie, that’s progress!
We are then treated to a minute or two of people passing the time at Hercules Command. (I swear, this movie has more filler than a dentist’s office.) Alan plays solitaire, Bradley paces moodily, some crew catnap, GBG plays chess with Dubov, all the kind of stuff that makes for riveting viewing. Oops, GBG almost made a blunder at the chessboard, but Dubov holds up a finger and warns him off, because he’s just that kind of guy. And Dubov Grins. There’s a musical sting as we whip-pan up to the *snicker* Meteor Trajectory board. It changes from December 6 to 7 (with a visible jump cut between the two), and in case we don’t get it, we have the title “SUNDAY.” I am happy to report that this is the last we will see of that damned Meteor font!
Back in space, we’re treated to another shot of the BAR moseying our way, Earth now prominent in the background. And the Blaster Beam goes BWWWWRRRRRAAAAANNNNNGGGG!!! That was the final straw. I broke down into helpless peals of laughter and had to pause the DVD at this point while I giggled like an idiot and made juvenile attempts to mimic the Blaster Beam’s sound. Poor Craig Huxley, he must’ve felt nauseated at what he was being forced to do with his instrument. I can imagine Morgan Freeman in Lean On Me telling Huxley why he shouldn’t work on movies like this — and why guys like me shouldn’t watch them: “It kills your brain cells, boy, it kills your brain cells!!!”
Back to Hercules Command. Tatiana is adjusting a scarf in the mirror, and we see a note confirming that the scarf is a gift from Jan. Again, this is actually a nice touch, and I wish they’d given Jan more screen time, but it just cements my suspicion that Jan’s gonna be toast before the final frame. Tatiana goes to Bradley’s quarters and offers to take him to dinner; note that Bradley is wearing a leisure suit(!) Bradley notices the scarf, but he doesn’t seem to realize that it used to be Jan’s. Observant fellow, isn’t he.
The next bit of dialogue between Tatiana and Bradley is kinda nice if taken on its own, but it causes a HUGE problem. Tatiana casually asks Bradley how many children he has, and Bradley answers that he has two. This is the second time in the whole movie that he even mentions that he has children, and we have gotten no indication whatsoever that he has so much as said “hi” to them during this whole business! For the most part, I’ve liked Bradley, but this one line makes him look like a selfish, callous bastard. Not to mention a horrible father. I’m going to TRY to put it out of my mind, because this scene, on its own, is really nice. [Of course, in context, it’s seriously inappropriate.]
Bradley and Tatiana go into the cafeteria, get a couple of salads, and start eating, all the while discussing Bradley’s marriage, which is for all intents over. Also, we learned that Sherwood turned into a Chatty Cathy, telling Tatiana all about Bradley’s separation. Ah, yes, now I remember; Sherwood’s a king-sized ass. This is obviously a “first date” scene, and as such it works pretty well, for the same reasons the earlier scene between Bradley and Tatiana worked. We are able to relax and watch some good actors do what they do best during a quiet moment. It makes me wish that they had chucked the whole idea of a big rock threatening us and made a low-key, slice-of-life type romance, with Connery and Wood playing the leads. I can guarantee you it’d be a better moneymaker than this movie turned out to be.
I do need to mention one problem. I’ll just touch on it now, but I’ll go into detail in Afterthoughts. Bradley casually mentions to Tatiana she should think about moving to America. Just keep it in mind.
An announcement from Bill Hunter reports that another splinter has been reported. Bradley goes to the videophone to talk with the Hong Kong station. The director of that station is played by Clyde Kusatsu (yay!). Clyde (yes, that’s his character’s name, too) reports that an airliner has reported an explosion in the ocean big enough to knock out one of their engines, and they’re making an emergency landing. The splinter has hit, and kicked up a tidal wave (not a tsunami, mind you) 100 feet high, “headed directly for Hong Kong.” And there it is, a big tidal wave. And there’s Hong Kong. Question: why is it that the little meteor splinters always go for big cities? Okay, the first one hit a remote area, but we’ve had hits in Zurich and Hong Kong now. (And can New York be far behind?) Okay, we’ve had an earthquake, an avalanche, and an asteroid; now we got ourselves a tidal wave!
Admittedly, the panicking crowd scenes in Hong Kong aren’t bad. Of course, you could make puh-lenty of Godzilla jokes about this scene, but I’m gonna let that go. One of the people in the crowd is a Nameless Fisherman. Well, here we go again. I give this guy about three minutes.
The scenes of the crowd running like hell are intercut with footage of the *cough* tidal wave. (Admittedly, the wave DOES look nice and big, but it doesn’t look anywhere near 100 feet high.) Oh, yes, and we see a couple of hilarious [rolling my eyes] shots of some looting during the panic: a guy steals a painting, and a kid steals an apple. Hoo hooo hoo ha ha.
NF spots his Wife in their apartment. He goes in, and they have a hurried conversation. We don’t get any subtitles, but anyone can figure out what they’re saying. Wife grabs the baby, and NF grabs the family dog, and they run out. All things considered, this scene wasn’t too bad; the actors were believable, and the filmmakers had the sense not to put in unnecessary subtitles. But there’s that little problem: we’ve seen these characters for all of ninety seconds. Not a lot of time to get us involved with them. Of course, I’m not ashamed to admit I wept like a baby when I saw an elderly couple — whom I hadn’t seen before — clutching one another as the water rushed into their cabin in Titanic. Well, Ronald Neame is no James Cameron.
The tidal wave hits! The first effect of the wave hitting the city WOULD be pretty good, except that the water droplets are too big to be the right scale. Hey, getting water and model work to jibe well is tough; I’ll give this shot points, considering it was made in 1979. I can’t say the same about the rest of the shots, which feature some more bad blue-screen and matte work.
NF and his family run along with the crowd, and they are intercepted (bumbumBUM) by the tidal wave, which was apparently hiding behind the building on the corner lying in wait. No kiddin’. NF and family are killed when they are drowned by a badly-matted-in shot of the tidal wave washing over them. And we shed a tear for them. No we don’t. CHECK IT OUT.
Inside the Hong Kong control room, Clyde continues to call out reports to Bradley, as a blue-screen effect puts the tidal wave right outside their window. Bradley tells Clyde to get out of there, and Clyde says, “No use! Get the big one, Paul! Get it!” And be sure to yell “Vengeance is MINE!” when you get the big one! The tidal wave destroys the Hong Kong center and drowns everyone in there. And we feel a complete lack of emotion for the characters, although we do get to see Bradley looking downcast after seeing (presumably) someone he knew well enough to be on a first-name basis with. By the way, the effect of the tidal wave hitting the HK center was pretty decent. I’ll give Ronald Neame this much; he was usually pretty good with practical effects, and he certainly seemed more comfortable with them than with blue-screen work.
We then go to a few panoramic helicopter shots of dawn over New York, and we hear the following voice-over from the Pres: “Fifteen minutes from now, the Russian rockets will be launched, and forty minutes after, our own rockets will be sent to join them. They will strike the meteor [hmmmm, not explode at a designated distance from it, like Sherwood said earlier?], sending it into a harmless orbit [remember this], nevermore to menace Earth. It is Sunday. Stay in your homes. Have faith. There is nothing we can do but wait. We will let you know when the danger has passed.” This is one of the VERY few indications we have that the good people of Earth even KNOW there’s a big rock headed our way.
And, just for variety, we get another shot of the BAR. Complete with bad Blaster— Oh, you guessed already. Okay.
Next up, we have a long, drawn-out launch sequence as Peter the Great’s missiles prepare themselves, complete with some very simplistic computer readouts. The movie seems to be trying to draw out the suspense: will the missiles actually launch? Seriously. So, Bradley paces, Tatiana and Dubov look intently at the computer screens, and we pop open a Filler High Life. An on-radio technician states, “Ignition. Liftoff!” Liftoff? From an orbital platform?? Peter the Great’s missiles launch. They look very much like BIG matchsticks lit at the wrong end. I’m Not Kidding. The missiles go into Earth orbit, chugging along, and the lighting of the Earth and the lighting on the missiles do not match at all. Huuuuggggghhhhnnnnn!! The thrust from the missiles look like thin gray clouds coming out of them; it’s truly pitiful. Then we see a shot of four missiles moving in line, HUP two three four, HUP two three four!
At the Command Center, GBG states, “No problems. We are on our way.” Thanks, guy, I didn’t realize that. For once, Dubov DOESN’T grin! I suspect Brian Keith finally got tired of it.
At this point, Adlon shows up, tail between his legs. He gives his congratulations to Dubov (for what?) and then states, “My apologies, Bradley, I was very wrong.” Ah, well, that’s okay, Martin; keep on giving us work like you did in Ed Wood and all’s forgiv— Oh, he was apologizing to Sean Connery’s character, not to me. Never mind. Now that Adlon can’t do anything, he tells everyone, “I’ll be in my office if you need me.” I guess it’s the thought that counts.
Some more helicopter shots of Manhattan, favoring the WTC and Central Park. Oh, gee, I wonder what’s gonna happen NEXT??
So, a while later, a large group of Hercules Command employees sit around the cafeteria, eating, making small talk, you know, all those things you do when you’re about to launch a missile attack that may or may not save Earth. GBG announces, “Hercules launch, minus three minutes.” Um, ex squeeze me. Three minutes from launch, these guy would already need to be at their stations, ready to go. Now THIS is something Adlon would be good for; hey, where is he, anyway? Still in his office?
Sir Michael calls on the videophone, stating, “I’m afraid I’ve got some rather serious news.” Those Brits, so proper and reserved, especially considering what this serious news is. Hmmmmm, I WONDER. By the way, I swear Trevor Howard wears the SAME shirt, tie, and sweater in his three appearances. Mr. Neame, let me introduce you to the concepts of “continuity” and “passage of time.” Bradley and Sir Michael have the following exchange:
Michael: We’ve picked up another splinter. A big one.
Bradley: Direction?
Sir Michael: The United States. The Eastern Seaboard.
Bradley: You mean us?
[Me: Of course, what’d you expect?]
Sir Michael: Near enough.
Bradley: Due when?
Sir Michael: Just about... now.
BumbumBUM! And we see a shot of the big splinter heading for Earth. Goody! Yep, visible blue line around the splinter, check.
Sir Michael wants to know if Bradley wants to go ahead and launch the missiles NOW, before the splinter hits. Bradley refuses, then tells everyone in the center, “We wait.” Sherwood cautions Bradley, “If we don’t fire them, Paul, and we go out of action, the Russian rockets aren’t enough to do the job.” Hold on. You mean if something happens to put Hercules Command out of commission, you don’t have any sort of back up plan?! No one else can give the launch order?! [tapping my temple] Thinking ahead, boys, I told ya, think-ing a-head!
Bradley is adamant on waiting. So we have a few moments of *cough* suspense as the countdown to launch, uh, counts down to launch. WILL we fire in time?! WILL the splinter hit before we launch?! WILL the BAR kill us all?! DID I leave the water running in the bathroom?! Yikes! Hold that thought!
[Grumble grumble] now I’m gonna have a spike in my water bill.... But I did pass a minute of filler as the command crew waits around for the countdown to hit zero. Above it all, Adlon stands outside his office, looking down on the Command Center, watching and waiting apprehensively. Jan and Alan clasp hands (okay, we get it, one of ‘em’s gonna die!). Finally, the rockets do indeed launch. Once launched, the rockets look either like spoons or sperm (I’m Not Kidding), depending on how dirty your mind is. Tell ya where mine is, I’m opting for them looking like sperm. For some reason, the score replays its “suspense” cue, as if we’re supposed to wonder if the Herc missiles are even gonna lift off when they’re supposed to! And the crew watches and waits. Please note that during one shot of the launch, you can see stars in the background through the missiles’ thrusters.
Finally, they’re away! And we get a loving shot of the Hercules satellite, now emptied of missiles. Again, we wonder, where is that camera? And now there’s a shot of Herc’s missiles, plodding along the same way Peter’s missiles were. CHECK IT OUT.
And here comes the splinter, coming in over New York, passing right by the Statue of Liberty! (Sir Michael wasn’t kidding when he said it’d be “near enough” New York, eh, what what?) In this shot, the splinter is a glowing white light, at most twenty feet wide and going MAYBE sixty or seventy miles an hour. It closes in on Manhattan, and....
The splinter takes out the World Trade Center. Both towers. With a plabwah. (I just couldn’t sound it out for this shot.) Okay, this shot was done in ‘79. The thing is, most of the establishing shots we saw earlier had the WTC in them. I get the feeling that the filmmakers were saying, “Boy, this is going to be so COOL!” Ahem, no, uh uh. Maybe I’m just offended too easily, and maybe I wouldn’t be thinking these things if I’d seen this before 9/11. One way or the other, though, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Thankfully, the shot is very quick, and the FX are so bad it’s hard to tell what it is if you turn away for a sec. (By the way, I think the splinter would have to travel in an S-curve to hit both towers then plow into Manhattan the way it does. Why wasn’t Oliver Stone on the case, spouting theories about a “magic splinter”??)
The splinter passes over New York! In the Command Center, everything shakes like it’s an earthquake! (Why?) And the splinter hits another building! PLAAAAAAA-BWAAAAAAH!!! We then intercut between the Command Center still doin’ a whole lotta shakin’ and coming apart at the seams, stock shots of fiery explosions and burning buildings, and (the corker)... a series of stock shots of building demolitions tinted red!* PLAAAAAAA-BWAAAAAAH!!! So, it’s like this: Herc Command falling apart, stock explosion, stock building demo, do it all again. And THAT’s the destruction of New York, complete with plabwahs galore! Okay, I’ll admit, the inside shots of Herc Command getting trashed aren’t half bad; again, Neame knows how to work with practical effects. Hey, I’m gonna play director! Here’s what I’d do: Have the entire destruction of New York sequence take place INSIDE the Herc Command Center! Have the whole place get an Extreme Home Makeover while we hear rumbling and explosions outside. After things quiet down, we can have someone say, “My God! What happened out there?!” We can then save all the special effects money for one master shot, a big reveal of the destruction of New York at the end. So, am I a little Kubrick? Am I? Don’t answer that.
*[This footage — or similar stuff — was used, to much greater effect, in the documentary Koyaanisqatsi, which showed it as what it was: a failed housing project being blown down.]
Of course, the Command Center blowout has one problem: we see people running around panicking, but the only real injury we see is GBG having a console fall on him, either breaking his legs or (more likely) his back.
More stock explosions (the same ones used a moment ago), and more plabwahs. It’s like instructions on a shampoo bottle: Lather, Rinse, Repeat. For variety, we get stock footage of a bridge being demolished. |
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BradH812
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
1294 Posts |
Posted - 06/15/2008 : 11:12:15 PM
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Well, now that New York’s had its fun, it’s time to go back up to....the missiles! Still plodding along in orbit. Ah, nothin’ like repetition to keep things lively! I noticed that the sound effects for the thrusters were the same sound effects used in the Stargate sequence of 2001. Now if only the visuals were as good....
Back to the wreckage of Herc Command. Bradley and Sherwood try to help GBG out from under the console as, in the distance, we hear another plabwah. Cut to ANOTHER red-tinted stock shot...you know the drill, except that for THIS stock shot, the camera is tilted! Hey, an artsy shot! *snicker* Other than GBG, most of the people in the Command Center seem to be okay. Dubov has a bump on the head which Tatiana artfully bandages, and that’s about as bad as it gets.
One nice touch: stuff keeps falling, small fires break out and such, as the earth around the center settles, even after all the splinter-hitting-New York business is done. This actually makes their upcoming desire to get out of Dodge fairly credible. Bradley watches as a couple of techs put out a fire, which doesn’t hurt anyone. Another crisis averted, I guess. He and Sherwood look up to the elevator entrance, Sherwood says, “Check it out,” and Bradley does, indeed, check it out. On his way up to the elevator, he notices General Adlon lying dead nearby. Farewell, Martin, I’m sure you’re glad to be out of this. This disaster movie has the lowest body count I can remember. Adlon is the only character (with a name, anyway) I’ve actually seen get killed. I don’t mean to be callous, but I thought the whole idea behind a disaster movie was to have a body count. A name actor has a good death scene, people get to mourn, deal with the character’s passing, that sort of thing. Again, look at The Poseidon Adventure. We get none of that; all we get is Bradley looking down, seeing Adlon’s body, then heading up to the elevator. (By the way, Martin Landau wasn’t perfectly still in his “dead body” moment. Must’ve been itching to get as far away from this set as possible.) Bradley forces the elevator doors open, but it’s obvious what’s left of the elevator can’t get them out of there. He then stares up intently, and we have (ooooh, arty!) a zoom-in on his eyes. Cut to.....
The Big Ass Rock! And more shots of the missiles still in orbit! It’s filler time!
Cut to a tracking station, where General Easton is in charge. Why is General Easton in charge of a radio telescope? Well, they paid Joseph Campanella, so they may as well have him around for another scene or two, right? Easton is on the horn to the White House, talking to the Defense Sec, and he relays that the missiles are doing just fine, thank you. Glad to hear it. He also notes that no one has been able to contact New York. The Defense Sec says, he’s heard “nothing from the Center. The rest of the city is a shambles.”
Cut to New York, which is in shambles. Huh. Imagine that. A long trail of destruction cuts through the heart of Manhattan, ending in a giant crater...in the middle of Central Park. This is partly obscured by clouds of smoke, placed there by the FX crew to hide the bad matte job. Oh well, they tried.
Back at the Command Center, Bradley confirms to the rest of the crew that the elevator’s a no-go. Sherwood runs off, presumably to find another way out. Unfortunately, security guards caught Karl Malden. “Oh, no, buddy, you signed a contract, you’re gonna FINISH this movie!” In the meantime, Bradley checks on Dubov and Tatiana. Alan is standing nearby, and he meekly calls Bradley over (the actor did a pretty good job of portraying someone in shock, I thought). Guess what. Bradley joins him and sees a woman’s hand sticking out from the rubble. Bradley moves the rubble aside to find Jan’s dead body there. Dammit, why couldn’t it have been Sherwood? Considering the fact that she was crushed by falling rocks, Jan looks way too good.
(2008 Brad: Warning! Dated joke directly ahead! Remember, I wrote this thing in early March 2005.)
Jan then sits up and asks, “Is this because I’m a lesbian?” Wait, no no no, she doesn’t do that, she’s dead. Sorry, folks, wrong blonde! Crikey, it’s been over two months now, and I’m still mad as hell over Law & Order taking a SCREAMING LEAP OVER THE FREAKING SHARK!!! WHAT KIND OF IDIOT DO THEY THINK I AM?!?!?! THOSE MORONS!!! I— Uh, hm. Ahem. Would you excuse me for just one moment? [Dunking my head in a bucket of ice water.] Ah, that’s better. Now, where were we? Oh yeah, big pile of rubble. The Command Center, not the script.
Anyway, Jan’s dead, and Bradley looks downcast because we’re supposed to be really sad and stuff. And we would, too, if they actually gave Jan some screen time. Sherwood announces to the rest of the crowd, “The exit to the canteen has been blocked. But we can get out through the support room. And we’ll need some flashlights.” He then tells Bradley to be the leader; Sherwood’ll get the stragglers. There is a nice moment where Tatiana gives a downcast look at the scarf Jan gave her as Bradley quietly leads Alan away; in the next shot, she’s wearing the scarf. Too bad this wasn’t in a better movie.
The crew heads out, lead by Bradley. Now, Bradley’s a NASA scientest, not a rescue tech. So why is he leading them? Because he’s Sean Connery, of course. He and a nameless tech go off exploring the old subway tunnel the crew will try to use to get to the surface; the tunnel is lit WAY too well to be believable. They see a pile of rubble ahead, blocking the tunnel, and Bradley has to go into hero mode, checking out what’s on the other side.
Back in outer space, we see something we’ve never seen before: Peter the Great’s missiles! Oh, wait, we’ve seen ‘em. Well, look at ‘em again, now they’re heading out of Earth orbit, in perfect formation. And a repeat of the four missiles in HUP-two-three-four formation.... Uh oh! One of the missiles cuts off and starts drifting off course! Then another one: the light bulbs powering its thrusters burn out! I’m not exaggeratin’, you can see the light bulbs! Now that it’s powered down, the missile does NOT continue straight on course; it tumbles end over end. Stupid movie.
General Easton helpfully explains what we just saw: two of Pete’s missiles, uh, malfunctioned (question: would there be a danger that those things could find their way back to Earth?). Then Easton and the Defense Sec say the following:
Defense Secretary: How bad is that?
Easton: There’s a safety margin of five. After the rockets join up,
they’ll attack the meteor in three waves. Time to impact - thirty-
five minutes, forty-two seconds.
Ahem. Attack the rock? The damn thing ain’t alive, General. And they’re still Basil-Expositioning fifteen minutes from the end of the movie (some Defense Sec, not knowing.... aw, you get the idea).
Another shot of the BAR, and we return to Bradley in the subway tunnel, passing by a crack in the tunnel wall. The camera zooms in lovingly on the crack, where muddy water seeps out. BumbumBUM!
Back to outer space. Herc’s missiles head our way. Interestingly, in one shot, two of the missiles look like they’re about to collide with one another. A shot of the Russian missiles *giggle giggle*, and another one of the American missiles *snicker* doing the same HUP-two-three-four bit the Russian missles did earlier. Never gets old, does it? Why didn’t Mystery Science Theater 3000 never take this movie on? I can imagine those guys making up conversations for the missiles to have with each other during these shots.
The matchstick missiles and the sperm missiles meet and come into formation, all to suspenseful *snicker* music. I can imagine the dialogue between the missiles now: Red Ten standing by.... Red Two standing by.... Red Nine standing by.... I’m sure that’s what the writers *cough* had in mind. “But wait,” you say. “The Death Star scene had manned fighter craft taking on a 100-mile-wide battle station! This movie has unmanned missiles going up against a really big piece of pumice.” Ah, yes, and you are correct. Now consider that the writers got PAID for this. Is your head exploding yet? Good, join the club. This is the second time tonight that my head has exploded; I’m gonna need to scrub down the walls tomorrow. While pondering this, note that one scene of the missiles in formation has four missiles looking like they’re going to collide.
And for variety.... Look, if you haven’t guessed I’m gonna say it’s another shot of that damned rock, just pack it in and go to bed. But there is something new here; the BAR is accompanied by thruster sound effects!
In the subway, Bradley climbs back over the pile of rubble and tells Sherwood and a nameless technician that, “It’s okay, but there’s a subway car blocking the tunnel.” Uh, didn’t you guys make a big point of how this was an unused subway tunnel earlier?? Sherwood goes back to get the others, and Bradley heads back past the crack dripping water and through the subway car, where we see two bodies.
Bradley finally makes it through the tunnel to the subway station, where there is another crack iin the wall dripping mud. Bradley peers up the escalator then starts back for the tunnel, when, surprise surprise, the river breaks through! Bradley is drenched — off-screen. We see him running away from the deluge, his hair now covered in brown slime (Ewwwwww!) And it’s amazing how quickly the water fills up the area; one second it’s dry, in the NEXT SHOT, its filled up enough for Bradley to have to wade through and run out! This is supposedly the Hudson River breaking through, but it look a lot more like a whole lotta Nestle Quik; that cartoon rabbit couldn’t drink alla THIS stuff fast!
Bradley runs through the subway car, where he meets Sherwood. He says, “Harry, the river’s breaking through!” I guess Sherwood might have thought Bradley had taken a swim through some chocolate pudding; that’s what the stuff looks like. By the way, the subway car is a few yards away from the subway station! Sherwood runs back, telling everyone to haul it through the car and into the station, but before he can, the crack that got a loving zoom-in on earlier gives way. More rich chocolate Ovaltine, please! This area fills with water pretty fast, too; it’s two or three feet deep in a couple of seconds, and the Herc crew gets soaked. I hope these extras and actors got paid a lot of money for this. Apparently, the producers or director thought it would be really nice to see Natalie Wood drenched, her clothes clinging to her. That in itself is a nice thought... but not when the water she’s drenched in is the Hudson River!! I say again: Ewwwwwww!! Okay, here’s the run-down: earthquake, avalanche, tidal wave, smallish rock crashes on NYC, and now we have our flood. The crew scrambles through the flood, through the car, and makes for the subway station. Bradley gets a nice bit here: he gets to carry Tatiana through the flood. Oh, how romantic. Or not.
Out in space.... Yeah, it’s the BAR. I find myself acting like a child, imitating that stupid Blaster Beam whenever I hear it now. Bwaaaah, Bwaaaang, Bwwwaannng, BRRRRWWWWAAAANNNNGGG!! You know this movie’s bad when it has me referring to the Blaster Beam (an instrument I love to hear) as “stupid.” Another shot of missiles, okay, we know they’re still there, and....
Back to the tunnel. Two crewmembers try to carry GBG through the flood, and they slip and drop him. His head slips beneath the surface, and they dive in, trying to find him. But after they’ve looked for about three seconds, Sherwood yells, “It’s no use!” and motions for them to get moving. Dammit, and I was starting to like the guy.
Finally, the whole crew gets through the flood, up the escalator, and into the station proper. We now have a total body count of three: Adlon, Jan, and German Bearded Guy.
Sherwood is the last one of the crew to make for the station, but another torrent of water knocks him down. Bradley has to go in, rescue him, drag his ass through the tunnel, up the escalator, and into the station. Frankly, I would’ve left this guy to his fate. Hey, he did it to GBG.
Another shot of the missiles heading for the rock, with *cough* stirring Hercules theme music playing. A repeat of the four-missiles-almost colliding shot, and then one of Herc’s missiles goes off course. Back at the tracking station, Easton informs us, “We’re losing one from Hercules.” The missile’s engine shuts down, which shouldn’t have an effect, since it’ll eventually hit... Oh, enough with the science.
In the subway station, a very tired and wet command crew gathers with everyday citizens already there (I’d love to know what the townspeople thought of this raggedy crowd coming in). Bradley and Sherwood join the rest of the crew, and Bradley goes to Tatiana and Dubov, who are sitting on a bench, exhausted. Dubov looks particularly disgusted (or maybe it’s just Brian Keith. Or maybe it’s ME looking disgusted). He looks at Bradley and mutters something in Russian, and Tatiana translates: “One day, you will come to Moscow, and you will see a clean subway.” Poor Brian Keith. I thought this was a nice bit of gallows humor, and his character got to say it... in Russian. In another area of the subway, workers in hard hats (convenient, no?) try to clear debris from the subway entrance.
We get yet another series of shots of the missiles heading to the right, the BAR heading for the left, okay they’re heading for each other, we get it, thank you.
In the subway station, a teenager walks through the crowd carrying a small AM radio. This tiny radio is loud enough to be heard in the entire station. The reporter on the radio gives details of the “tremendous damage New York has suffered,” thereby saving the movie a few bucks on more *cough* special effects shots. Bradley checks his watch and says the missiles will hit the BAR “any second now.” About damn time.
Back to outer space. More shots of the missiles, more shots of the BAR. At long last, we see missiles and rock in the same frame, and the BAR, which is supposed to be going about eight miles per second is barely moving! Throughout this *cough* suspenseful buildup, I’m playing MST3K, imagining missiles and BAR trading insults:
American missile: Hey! You! Yeah, you, Rocky! Get outta here!
Orpheus: Whut’s dis, a giant sperm? And what are DOSE?
Matchsticks?!
Russian missile: Don’t underestimate us, comrade!
American missile: This ain’t your turf, you overgrown
paperweight! Now buzz off before we open up a can o’ whoop-
ass on ya!
Orpheus: You wanna piece a me?!
American missile: Yeah!!
Russian missile: Da!!!
Orpheus: Okay, gimme your best shot, let’s PARTY!!!
And at long last, the first wave of missiles hits! PLAAAAAAA BWAAAAAAH!!! I don’t think nuclear missiles go plabwah when hitting something. And these have to be the wimpiest nuclear explosions I’ve ever seen. A flare-up of light, a close-up of, uh, red matter around the BAR (it looks more like footage of a Hawaiian volcano), and the BAR glows a bit in one spot. How does this work, anyway? Do the first two waves of missile WEAKEN the thing, then the last wave finishes the job? (Actually, that’s EXACTLY what happens.) The BAR says, “That was nothing! Just a scratch!” (Hey, I can dream, right?)
The second wave comes in... and they’re in a ring! I expect them to be singing, “Ashes, ashes, we all fall down!” Then the missiles shoot toward the BAR; one imagines the first one yelling, “Follow me, boys!” More wimpy explosions. PLAAAAAAA-BWAAAAAAH!!! More bad volcano-like effects. Then, for variety, we get a big fiery explosion, almost the size of the BAR itself. Ah, that’s more like it! Hold on. Fire in space? And it’s the same explosion we saw in the opening narration, one of those “cosmic explosions” that occur so often in space *snicker*. Now the BAR has TWO glowing spots on it, and it must be saying, “‘Tis but a flesh wound!”
The music confirms it: this is the Final Confrontation! Man against Man! No! It’s Missile against Rock! Oh, the suspense is killing me! The last wave of missiles goes in! The head missile prepares its photon torpedoes as a disembodied voice tells Luke to use the Force! (Not really.) We get (I’m Not Kidding) four jump-cuts between American and Russian missiles, facing directly at us, playing their own game of red-light green-light!
And, at long last, THE MISSILES HIT! And this giant explosion we’ve all been waiting for.....
Is a strobe light.
I’m. Not. Kidding.
White frames alternating with black frames (with a tiny little sparkle in them). And two more final PLAAAAAAA-BWAAAAAAHS!!!
The next shot is of a heavily red-tinted, very-badly-lensed explosion. Or splash in the water. Or sack of flour being dropped on the floor. It’s that blurry and indistinct. After about thirty seconds, this dissipates, leaving a shot of some glowing gasses drifting through space. So the missiles destroyed the rock. After we were told they were just going to knock it off course. Oh well, at least this movie’s consistent about its inconsistencies.
Dissolve to a bad matte showing the devastation of New York. Finally, back to the subway station. The radio announcer confirms that the big rock ain’t payin’ us a call after all. Everyone breathes a big sigh of relief. Bradley gives Dubov an “OK” sign with his thumb and forefinger (and I do believe that the circle with thumb and forefinger is a vulgar gesture in Europe. Oh well). Dubov gives Bradley a little clap and smiles tiredly. Notice that I didn’t say Dubov Grins. For once, the smile is appropriate and doesn’t look forced. Brian Keith must’ve been relieved to have a scene where he didn’t look like a complete id— Sorry, I forgot he is covered head to toe in mud in this scene. Poor guy.
Outside, the sound of jackhammers can be heard, and we know that Our Heroes will be rescued! Everyone looks expectantly toward the subway entrance. The shots of the crew are meant, I suppose, to emulate the scene at the end of The Poseidon Adventure. Of course, that was a pretty good movie.... Among the faces, we see two hookers near the back, sitting around looking bored. I know how you feel, ladies.
Cut to a shot of an American flag and a Soviet flag draped side by side. Ah, glasnost. A crowd cheers as Bradley and Sherwood escort Dubov and Tatiana down a red carpet — literally — to their plane. The Russian march is played... by an on-screen band. Dubov carries a shopping bag; we can’t see what’s in it, except what’s sticking out of the top - a Fozzie Bear doll. Sherwood and Bradley then give Dubov a baseball bat, “with the compliments of the Dodgers.” Har de har. Dubov accepts the bat, then, sounding for all the world like Billy Bob Thornton in Sling Blade, says, “Dodgers, ha ha, baseball.” He then uses the bat to clobber the filmmakers. Well, I’ll bet he wished he had, anyway.
As Dubov heads up the stairs to the plane, Bradley finally kisses Tatiana. We see a brief shot of Alan in the crowd to remind us that Jan is dead, and we’re supposed to feel emotions for that and stuff. Tatiana heads up the stairs to join Dubov, who tells her, in Russian, “I think you’ll come back one day.” Tatiana answers, “Perhaps.” Just pointing this out; I’ll bring this up again in Afterthoughts.
As the plane takes off for Mother Russia, a title is superimposed on the screen, and the opening narrator is back, reading the titles in case the audience can’t read:
“In 1968, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a plan was designed to deal with the possibility of a giant meteor on a collision course with Earth. This plan is named: PROJECT ICARUS.” So now they’re saying this movie was based on an actual project. Well, not really. I’ll get into this in Afterthoughts as well.
It’s not over: there’s one last insult to the intelligence. The closing credits include the following:
Special Thanks to
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and MIT Press
The California Institute of Technology
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Griffith Park Observatory
Polaris Observatory Association
U. S. Coast Guard
Controlled Demolition, Inc.
Controlled Demolition must’ve been happy to see their stock footage getting a lot of use in this movie. But I imagine that representatives from MIT, Cal Tech, and NASA must’ve walked out of the premiere of this movie (assuming they were invited) shaking their heads, looking at each other, and saying, “We gave these jerks our time and assistance for THAT?!?!” |
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BradH812
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
1294 Posts |
Posted - 06/15/2008 : 11:13:32 PM
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AFTERTHOUGHTS
First off, let me direct you to another website which had a synopsis and trivia about this movie: www.jimusnr.com/Catastropheinthemovies.html (Catastrophes in the Movies). Also, I probably stole a few lines from Cool Cinema Trash without realizing it; my thanks and apologies.
I’ve rambled a lot in this review. I ain’t done yet. [holding my head in my hands] Oh, good Lord, what a mess. I don’t even know where to begin. This movie should be required viewing for every film student as an example of what not to do. Scientific mistakes a twelve-year-old wouldn’t make, terrible special effects, complete lack of interest on the part of the writers, the list goes on and on.
Well, let’s start with an easy one. This movie went out of its way to treat the Russian characters well. Okay, I got no problem with that. My problem was, the movie tried to be ultra-PC in its treatment of the Soviet Union itself, most notably in how the USSR treated dissenters and defectors. Dubov makes a casual comment about being in a taxicab last time he was here, and both he and Bradley casually suggest that Tatiana might think of moving to America. In 1979, glasnost and perestroika weren’t in our vocabulary; Russian citizens would never talk so casually about just packing up and moving out.
And that’s a drop in the bucket here. Let’s get to the root problem, and let me give a comparison. I’ve seen three big-rock-threatens-Earth movies: this, Deep Impact, and Armageddon. Of the three, Deep Impact was the only one I liked. (Badastronomy.com has a couple of good reviews of Deep Impact and Armageddon’s up’s and downs.) Yes, it has soap-opera plotlines, cliches, two-dimensional characters.... but for all it messed up, it got a few things right:
- Here, a comet, not an asteroid, threatens Earth, making for some spectacular — and technically accurate — scenes.
- It took place over two YEARS, not a couple of weeks.
- The spaceship sent up to take out the comet looked like it had been hastily thrown together — which it would have to be, considering how little time NASA had to prepare for the mission.
- There were no “splinter” hits. Instead, they had to the comet break in two and have the smaller piece hit.
- Deep Impact does NOT try to make the comet appear sinister or menacing. It’s not a living character; it’s just a force of nature, and it is treated as such.
- Some nice touches here and there, such as reports of religious attendance skyrocketing and the President growing more and more haggard as zero hour drew near.
- In keeping with the above, the people of Earth acted like they knew that an object capable of causing an apocalypse was heading our way!!!
And this is probably Meteor’s worst failing. We have something that could end life as we know it in a week’s time, and people go on about their business. Not as a coping mechanism, either, but simply because they are IGNORING this big-ass rock heading for us! The examples abound, including Bradley and Tatiana’s flirting and Alan’s comment about having a casual card game. The entire Switzerland sequence is the worst offender.
But then, precious little in this movie’s script really worked. I swear, this is one of the laziest movies I have ever seen. Look at that Deep Impact list. Meteor doesn’t fail to have any of those things — because it DIDN’T EVEN TRY! No subplots, no conflicts beyond Sherwood and Adlon, no character development beyond a couple of scenes with Bradley and Tatiana, no plot twists, no surprises, NOTHING!!! Big rock threatens Earth, US and Russia argue over turning missile satellites around, US and Russian turn said satellites around, some small meteors hit and raise hell, we launch missiles, missiles hit rock, the end. I remember seeing a network TV edit of this movie several years ago. Usually, when a network edits a movie for running time, it hurts the movie, sometimes badly. I remember my jaw hitting the floor when I realized that a network edit of Seven had cut many of the most important scenes in that movie out to get the running time down. Meteor is 107 minutes long. The TV edit was about 90 minutes. And, except for editing out Connery’s broomstick line, the TV edit was actually better than the theatrical one! Not good, just better. It was that easy to find fifteen minutes of pure filler. And the TV version had filler to spare. I’d wager that this movie wouldn’t break the hour mark if all the signing forms or casual-conversation scenes were taken out. Of course, they DID cut out quite a lot of stuff. The Catastrophe in the Movies site says that several scenes fleshing out Tatiana and Bradley’s budding romance were cut out in favor of the “special” effects; Natalie Wood was NOT happy about this, and she let her displeasure be known. I’m with her on this; like I said, these scenes were the closest the movie came to being interesting.
The Catastrophies in the Movies site also states the following: “Producers Theodore Parvin and Arnold Orgolini took 3 years to secure financing for the film. Directing would be Ronald Neame, primarily known for The Poseidon Adventure. Sean Connery was pegged to star, but was unsatisfied with the initial script, as was the director and all concerned. Roanld Neame and Stanley Mann completely re-wrote the script, and Connery agreed to star.” I don’t know their source, but I’m taking these claims at face value, since, unfortunately, they make perfect sense when you say, “Well, that’s Hollywood.” And now we know whom to blame; just add Edmund H. North, the movie’s original writer. Writers, producers, and director spent all this time on the movie, presumably with NASA and Cal Tech folks ready to give technical advise if needed. And not only didn’t any of these geniuses actually CONSULT with any advisors, not one of them bothered to go to a library downtown and do two hours’ worth of research! I’m willing to forgive a slip in science every now and then; God knows I’m no Stephen Hawking, and this isn’t Lyz Kingsley’s website. But these weren’t slips; these were pratfalls. And to make things worse, it’s not even consistent; the movie contradicts itself from scene to scene, and even from line to line! IMDb has the producers not having much to their credit. But Edmund H. North wrote the script for The Day the Earth Stood Still and co-wrote Patton! Mann has a decent list of scripts under his belt. And Neame may not have been David Lean, but he was no slouch. So this movie couldn’t have come about solely through ineptitude. I think it was a mix of laziness and contempt.
Also, and I hate to say this, I have to lay some of the blame at Connery’s door, and that’s why I ragged on him a bit earlier. I can give the other actors the benefit of the doubt and presume they may not have read the script or gotten a really good idea how insulting this whole story was. But Connery, according to the quote above, knew full well what he was getting into, and I’m afraid I believe the quote. Sean Connery is one of our treasures, but he has often shown very poor judgment in what projects he gets involved with. League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, anyone? He damn well should’ve known better.
The real joke is, this premise could have worked! There really was a Project Icarus. The movie neglected to tell us that it was thought up by MIT students, not scientists. But Icarus made a lot more sense than Hercules does. I won’t go into details here; the review’s already way too long. Search for “Project Icarus” in www.thespacereview.com. There’s an interesting article on the real thing; it’s nothing like Hercules. Icarus involved launching nine — count ‘em, nine — Saturn V rockets from Earth, each carrying a 100-megaton bomb. If the filmmakers had simply taken the idea of Project Icarus and written it note-for-note into the movie, it would’ve been fascinating, not to mention visually stunning... and it would be a lot more believable. The fact that the filmmakers trashed the real project and cooked up a missile satellite and some (yawn) political intrigue boggles the mind. By the way, Sherwood was right about not knowing the odds of a missile attack on an asteroid succeeding. According to thespacereview.com, since we know very little about the internal composition or structure of asteroids, and since we have no way of knowing what would happen if a nuclear bomb were detonated in space, there’s really no telling whether the plan would work or not (The Space Review opines that Icarus would probably fail).
If there is one spot where Meteor comes anywhere near working, it’s in the acting. I’m not saying the actors deserve any Oscars, but some Purple Hearts might be in order. The fact that they showed up and carried themselves like professionals says a lot for this bunch. Even Landau and Malden were able to give competent performances when they weren’t in ham-it-up mode. I’ll give Brian Keith a free ride here; he obviously walked through his performance, but Olivier himself couldn’t have made anything out of a character as badly written as Dubov. Most of the name actors came out of this relatively unscathed, and they’d continue to get steady work. This wasn’t the comeback Natalie Wood had been hoping for, but I believe she would have made it back into the A-list, had she not died in ‘81. I repeat, what a damn shame.
The lesser-knowns in the cast cast fared worse. In most cases, I haven’t seen any of these guys since this movie, and it’s too bad. They had precious little to do, but they put on their game face and tried. I especially feel sorry for Katherine De Hetre, who was unfortunate enough to appear in this movie and The Promise back-to-back. Michael Zaslow fared a little better, doing TV guest star work and small parts in movies from time to time before his death in 1998. The only character actor to really succeed was Clyde Kusatsu, who has done done small parts in movies and TV appearances steadily over the past 20+ years; he may be a textbook definition of a good character actor.
Finally, here’s some (not very tasty) food for thought. Meteor was a full-blown disaster at the box office, and deservedly so. But nearly twenty years later, along came Armageddon.... and it could pass for a bastard child of Meteor and Top Gun. It was all here: terrible science, one-note characters, unbelievable situations. It also featured Bruce Willis, Ben Affleck, a truckload of expensive visual effects, and a theme song by Aerosmith. It was the second most popular movie of the year. I should be relieved Saving Private Ryan was #1. But the fact that Armageddon was nipping at Spielberg’s heels leaves me wondering whether I should feel depressed, frightened, or disgusted. I think I’ll take all three.
Immortal Dialogue
Opening Narration
Narrator: Outer space.... limitless and timeless.... filled with cosmic explosions and endless turbulence. An infinite playground for that occasional blazing visitor... the comet. At first, comets terrified Man. He thought they were signals of impending catastrophe. But he got used to them, and he gave names to them, and waited for them to drop by like old friends. This one has come from behind the Sun, moving across the Heavens at 108,000 miles an hour, and has never before been seen by Man. [Long pause.] The Asteroid Belt. A vast junkyard of metal and rock orbiting the Sun between Jupiter and Mars. Thousands of fragments... some as small as a fist... some as large as a city. And amongst these... Orpheus. Twenty miles in diameter and undisturbed for countless generations.... Until now.
Adlon does his job, and Sherwood shoots the messenger
Sherwood: General, I know this is difficult for you, but I—
General Adlon: Mr. Sherwood, fifteen minutes ago, I spoke to the Secretary of Defense, who seems more aware of the complexities of this situation than you do.
Sherwood: But the Secretary—
General Adlon: His orders are, and I quote, “There will be no change of the direction of our rockets until the Russians admit they’ve got their own rockets, and until they also agree to re-align them.” Is that understood?
Sherwood: Look. Why don’t you Xerox a hundred copies of that report, pass them out among a hundred guys in Washington, and then organize a hundred meetings discuss it, and by that time the meteor will have hit, and we won’t have any more problems!
Adlon does a General MacArthur... and Landau goes for the Oscar
[The “fireworks display” over Italy has just ended.]
General Adlon: Bradley! I think we can assume the emergency’s over! This particular one and the emergency in general. It’s a pity the world’s been sent into a state of unnecessary panic! But THAT’s your threat, Dr. Bradley! A fireworks display!
Bradley: Tell this asshole, once and for all, Orpheus will not burn up, it’s too damn big!
Sherwood: We’ve got enough to deal with here, General. We don’t need any additional aggravation from YOU!
General Adlon: Not one promise of calamity has come true! [Pause] And as far as I’m concerned, not a single one WILL!!! [Pause] When COMMON SENSE is restored... and the President... has returned the CONTROL of this center to ME.... I SHALL RETURN.... TO THIS CENTER!!! [Storms out]
Dubov’s English dialogue — ALL of it
Dubov: Theoretically....
Dubov: Theoretically....
Dubov: F%$# the Dodgers!
Dubov: Dodgers! Ha ha! Baseball.
And one more time....
Bradley: Why don’t you stick a broom up my ass? I can sweep the carpet on the way out. |
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Ericb
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
648 Posts |
Posted - 06/16/2008 : 11:24:01 AM
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I know you gave up on listing all the scientific errors but I'll add one you missed. There no way that the BAR could have passed Mars and the Moon and not be affected by either's gravity. They could have even added some "suspense" with this by making the collision dependent on the BAR's trajectory being affected Moon's or Mars' gravity or, well, at least make for some lest repetative filler.
"You talk to us about heavy artillery. Thank God, we don't have any. It's the lightness of its guns that make the French army what it is." - representative of the French General Staff to the budget commission of the Chamber of Deputies, 1909 |
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BradH812
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
1294 Posts |
Posted - 06/16/2008 : 8:22:01 PM
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Actually, Eric, I gave the movie the benefit of the doubt on that one. They weren't sure early on if Duane-Johnson-after-eating-his-Wheaties was gonna hit, so one could assume they hadn't finished crunching the numbers factoring in Mars and the Moon's gravity.
That's the weaselly answer. Truth is, that never occurred to me. Ya got me. Congrats! Hee hee hee! |
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Food
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
342 Posts |
Posted - 06/28/2008 : 11:44:25 PM
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Dude, that kicked ass!
btw...What's wrong with that other 'A' word? :( |
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BradH812
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
1294 Posts |
Posted - 06/29/2008 : 08:59:29 AM
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| Armageddon? I didn't want to gag while mentioning that movie's name? |
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Food
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
342 Posts |
Posted - 06/29/2008 : 09:40:16 AM
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| Ah! Got it. |
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SFfilmfan
Diocesan Ecclesiarch of the Sacred Order of Jabootu
USA
67 Posts |
Posted - 03/18/2009 : 1:20:19 PM
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Though it is not often noted, METEOR was loosely based on the novel Shiva Descending by William Rotsler and Greg Benford, both authors being happy NOT to have their book connected to the awful film version.
The footage Ken mentions probably comes from Roger Corman's TIDAL WAVE starring Lorne Green, which was assembled around the effects footage from THE SUBMERSION OF JAPAN, jettisoning that film's detailed plot and characters to concentrate on the sub-par special effects. |
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Meteor
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