ALL SCI-FI

[Gord Green]

( Info from Wikipedia, IDm and others )

Deep Impact is a 1998 American science-fiction disaster film directed by Mimi Leder, written by Bruce Joel Rubin and Michael Tolkin, and starring Robert Duvall, Téa Leoni, Elijah Wood, Vanessa Redgrave, Maximilian Schell, and Morgan Freeman. Steven Spielberg served as an executive producer of this film.

It was released by Paramount Pictures in North America and by DreamWorks Pictures internationally on May 8, 1998. The film depicts the attempts to prepare for and destroy a 7-mile (11 km) wide comet set to collide with Earth and cause a mass extinction.

Deep Impact was released in the same summer as a similarly themed film, Armageddon, which fared better at the box office, while astronomers described Deep Impact as being more scientifically accurate. Both films were similarly received by critics, with Armageddon scoring 39% and Deep Impact scoring 44% on Rotten Tomatoes, with Deep Impact grossing over $349 million worldwide on an $80 million production budget.
It was the final film by cinematographer Dietrich Lohmann, who died before the film's release.

THE STORY :

On May 10, 1998, teenage amateur astronomer Leo Biederman discovers an unusual object near the stars Mizar and Alcor at a star party. His teacher has Leo take a picture of the object that he then sends to astronomer Dr. Marcus Wolf. Wolf realizes that the object is a comet on a collision course with Earth.

Unfortunately, Wolf dies in a car accident on his way to try to alert the authorities.

One year later, MSNBC journalist Jenny Lerner investigates the sudden resignation of Secretary of the Treasury Alan Rittenhouse and his connection to "Ellie", supposedly a mistress.

After interviewing Rittenhouse, she is taken by the FBI to see President Tom Beck. After this, she finds out that Ellie is really an acronym: "E.L.E." ("extinction-level event").

Due to Lerner's investigation, President Beck makes an announcement earlier than planned: the comet, that has been named Wolf-Biederman, is headed for Earth and it is 7 miles (11 km) long, large enough to cause a mass extinction, and possibly wipe out humanity.

He also reveals that the United States and Russia have been constructing an Orion spacecraft called the Messiah in orbit that will transport a team, led by Mission Commander Oren Monash and including veteran astronaut Captain Spurgeon "Fish" Tanner, to the comet, hoping to alter its path with nuclear weapons.

SPOILERS !

After a few comments from me.
The MESSIAH SPACECRAFT is one of the best and most realistic crafts until the ships in THE MARTIAN.
Simply a beautiful craft!













After landing on the comet, the crew rigs nuclear bombs beneath the surface, but are caught in outgassing explosions when sunlight heats up the comet.

Monash is permanently blinded by unfiltered sunlight and suffers severe facial burns, while Dr. Gus Partenza is flung into space by an outflow of gas. When the bombs detonate, the ship is damaged by the blast and the team loses contact with Earth.

President Beck announces that the bombs only split the comet into two smaller pieces, nicknamed "Biederman" (1.5 miles (2.4 km) long) and "Wolf" (6 miles (9.7 km) long), both still heading for Earth.

Beck then imposes martial law and reveals that governments worldwide have been building underground shelters. The United States' shelter is in the limestone caves of Missouri. A lottery selects 800,000 Americans under age 50 to join 200,000 selected individuals, as well as a massive supply of food, genetically viable populations of significant animals, and the seeds of every plant species. Lerner and the Biederman family are chosen, but Leo's girlfriend Sarah Hotchner and her family are not. Leo marries Sarah to try to save her family but fails. Sarah refuses to leave without her parents.

A last-ditch effort to deflect the comets with ICBMs fails. Biederman will strike the Atlantic Ocean off Cape Hatteras, generating megatsunamis of 3,500 ft (1,100 m) high. Wolf will hit western Canada, creating a huge cloud of dust and molten particles that will block out the Sun for two years, killing all life on the surface in only a matter of weeks.

Leo returns home looking for Sarah, but her family has left for the Appalachian Mountains and are stuck in a massive traffic jam. Leo catches up to them on a motorcycle. Sarah's parents tell Leo to take Sarah and her baby brother to higher ground.

Meanwhile, Lerner gives up her seat in the last evacuation helicopter to her friend Beth and Beth's young daughter. She joins her estranged father Jason at their family beach house, where they reconcile.

Biederman hits the water, creating a megatsunami that destroys the Eastern Seaboard of the United States. Lerner, Jason, and Sarah's parents are among the thousands that are killed by the tsunami.

Leo, Sarah, and her baby brother are able to reach the higher grounds of the Appalachian Mountains safely.

Unable to safely attempt a second landing, the crew of Messiah decide to obliterate Wolf by undertaking a suicide mission. After they say goodbye to their loved ones by video conference, they fly directly into a large deep crevasse created by out-gassing, and use their remaining nuclear warheads to blow Wolf into smaller pieces that burn up harmlessly in Earth's atmosphere.

After the waters recede, President Beck speaks to a large crowd at the US Capitol which is being rebuilt, encouraging them to remember and honor the heroes for their sacrifice.

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TRIVIA :
A line was edited in the President's press conference scene. President Beck stated "Life will go on, we will prevail." Originally, President Beck said "Life will go on, we will prevail...THIS IS NOT ARMAGEDDON!" The producers later realized that the movie was going to be in box-office competition with the movie Armageddon (1998).

The scene where Jenny Lerner (Téa Leoni) first meets President Beck (Morgan Freeman), was filmed in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel, where Senator Robert Francis Kennedy was assassinated in 1968, while campaigning for the Presidency of the United States.

One of the N.A.S.A. officials in the movie is played by Gerry Griffin, who is a former N.A.S.A. Flight Director. Griffin presided over the Apollo 12 mission, and later became Director of the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

During the school assembly, one student makes the observation "You're going to have more sex than anyone else in our class!" to Leo Biederman. This line was improvised by Jason Dohring, and the reactions from the other students are genuine.

The ship that goes to destroy the comet is called "The Messiah". This is not only an appropriate name, but also an inside joke. When the first space shuttle was being conceived, N.A.S.A. constructed a full-scale, wooden mock up of the S.T.S. Orbiter. It was nicknamed "The Messiah" because, according to Flight Controller Jerry Greene, everyone who walked into it said, "Jesus Christ!" in reference to its size.

Just before the movie's release, astronomers announced that the asteroid 1997 XF11, about one mile across, will impact the Earth at a speed of over one hundred thousand miles (one hundred sixty-one thousand kilometers) per hour at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, October 26, 2028, greatly boosting ticket sales. Just after the movie's release, a new orbit (based on a sighting from many years before) predicted that 1997 XF11 will miss by six hundred thousand miles (nine hundred sixty-five thousand kilometers).

"Deep Impact" was a N.A.S.A. space probe designed to study the composition of the interior of the comet Tempel 1. On July 4, 2005, one section of the Deep Impact probe successfully impacted the comet's nucleus. This is coincidental, as the scientists behind the mission, and the creators of the movie, devised the name independently of each other, at around the same time.

Highly classified federal sites, such as the White House Situation Room, and strategic planning rooms in the basement of the Pentagon, were amongst the locations, to which Bruce Joel Rubin gained access, while doing research for initial drafts of the screenplay. In The Dialogue: An Interview with Screenwriter Bruce Joel Rubin (2007), Rubin attributes this level of government cooperation to the prominence of Steven Spielberg, who originally planned to direct.

Jon Favreau said that it was so uncomfortable for the cast to film in the astronaut suits, that during breaks, they had to be hung on a rack in their suits and brought outside to get air. This led to some awkward moments whenever a studio tour bus came by.

In a 2016 interview with the New York Times, Lori McCreary (President of the PGA, and Morgan Freeman's producing partner) recounted that when Mimi Leder wanted to cast Freeman as the U.S. President, the studio objected, on the basis that it wasn't realistic to cast a black person as President. McCreary recalled that one studio executive said, "we're not making a science fiction movie. You can't have Morgan Freeman play the President." Aside from the obvious racism present in the notion that a black President is inherently unrealistic (just a decade after this movie's release, the United States did elect a black President), the executive was also mistaken about Deep Impact not being a science fiction movie.

The movie came into being when Producers Richard D. Zanuck and David Brown proposed a remake of When Worlds Collide (1951) to Steven Spielberg, with whom they had worked on Jaws (1975). However, Spielberg had just optioned the 1993 novel "The Hammer of God" by Arthur C. Clarke, about an asteroid on a collision course for Earth, and humanity's attempts to stop it. They decided to merge the two projects together, and came up with this movie. Although the premise remained the same, the final screenplay for this movie was different enough from Clarke's novel, that he received no on-screen credit.

Maximilian Schell starred in The Black Hole (1979). One of that film's science fiction competitors in theaters was Meteor (1979), another movie about the Earth being threatened by an impact with an astronomical object.

In eerie imagery, the twin towers of the World Trade Center are the only structure still standing above sea level after the destruction of New York City, by the tidal wave at the end of the movie.



A reviewer wrote:
"All in all, this movie is not one to be missed. Keep an open mind while watching this movie: don't watch it with the misconception that it's just going to be another one of those big-budget dull blockbuster films that gets churned out every summer. This one dares to avoid the seemingly standard clichés set by other films of the genre, which makes it a truly unique film to experience."
And I heartily agree.
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There comes a time, thief, when gold loses its lustre, and the gems cease to sparkle, and the throne room becomes a prison; and all that is left is a father's love for his child.

[Bud Brewster]

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Magnificent post, Gord!

I was surprised (but not shocked) that All Sci-Fi didn't have a thread for this movie. I guess no one was any more eager to discuss it than I was. We undoubtedly had one on the old board (2007 to 2014), but it just never generated much interest here.

Thanks for rectifying the error!
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Gord Green]

I think that one of the things I really enjoyed in this movie was the layers of the story as it unfolded. At first it looked like it was going to be a media/political drama and then spun into other fields.

The fact too that it centered chiefly on three different aspects of the problem and showed some very real world issues. The outstanding performances by all the actors sealed the deal for me too.
_________________
There comes a time, thief, when gold loses its lustre, and the gems cease to sparkle, and the throne room becomes a prison; and all that is left is a father's love for his child.

[Bud Brewster]

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IMDB has several interesting trivia items for this production.
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~ After discovering the comet, one of the astronomers is killed in an automobile accident. This mirrors the real-life automobile accident death (July 18, 1997, in the Australian outback) of astronomer Eugene Shoemaker, who helped discover the Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet that collided with Jupiter in 1994 and was a source of inspiration for this film.

Note from me: That . . . is spooky!

~ A line was edited in the President's press conference scene. President Beck stated "Life will go on, we will prevail." Originally, President Beck said "Life will go on, we will prevail...THIS IS NOT ARMAGEDDON!" The producers later realized that the movie was going to be in box-office competition with the movie Armageddon (1998).

Note from me: And THAT . . . is funny!

~ One of the N.A.S.A. officials in the movie is played by Gerry Griffin, who is a former N.A.S.A. Flight Director. Griffin presided over the Apollo 12 mission, and later became Director of the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Note from me: Good casting! Nobody can accusie that guys not being plausible in the role!

~ During the school assembly, one student makes the observation "You're going to have more sex than anyone else in our class!" to Leo Biederman. This line was improvised by Jason Dohring, and the reactions from the other students are genuine.

Note from me: And nobody can accuse that line of dialog of being unrealistic!

~ The traffic jam scene was filmed on Virginia State Highway 234, a bypass that was under construction at the time. The roughly eighteen hundred vehicles used in the scene, came mostly from volunteers from the Washington, D.C. suburb of Manassas, Virginia.

Note from me: Okay, here's a funny idea: The state police were persuaded to direct hundreds of car to the wrong off ramp, and they ended up stuck on this unfinished highway until the scene was shot!

~ A giant object from space struck the general area of the Eastern Seaboard where "Biederman" impacted in the film. Hitting the Norfolk, Virginia vicinity, it created the huge, now-buried, Chesapeake Bay impact crater.

Note from me: Did the filmmakers pick the impart point because it coincided with a real event . . . or did some astrophysicist discover the coincidence after the movie came out?

~ Just before the movie's release, astronomers announced that the asteroid 1997 XF11, about one mile across, will impact the Earth at a speed of over one hundred thousand miles (one hundred sixty-one thousand kilometers) per hour at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, October 26, 2028, greatly boosting ticket sales.

Just after the movie's release, a new orbit (based on a sighting from many years before) predicted that 1997 XF11 will miss by six hundred thousand miles (nine hundred sixty-five thousand kilometers).

Note from me: Did all those people who bought tickets because of the news mentioned above suddenly demand refunds when they found out the news was wrong?

~ When astronomer Marcus Wolf (Charles Martin Smith) drives down the road to deliver an envelope, we see that it is addressed to Carolyn Shoemaker.

Note from me: Nice touch, mentioning the widow of the man who discovered comet Shoemaker-Levy 9. IMDB says she was also was a technical advisor on this movie!
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)