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Meteor (1979)

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Meteor (1979) Empty Meteor (1979)

Post  BoG Tue Dec 21, 2010 6:25 pm


Meteor (1979) 7299642_f520
Meteor (1979) Meteor
SEAN CONNERY*NATALIE WOOD*KARL MALDEN*BRIAN KEITH*HENRY FONDA*JOSEPH CAMPANELLA*TREVOR HOWARD*MARTIN LANDAU
Meteor (1979) Meteor0
Much earlier, there was WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE (1951). Much later, there was DEEP IMPACT (1998). But, in between, there was... METEOR!!!!! Exclamation  Exclamation  Exclamation  Going by this pattern, we may see another version of this story (big rock heading for Earth) in theaters a decade from now, around year 2020, probably directed by Roland Emmerich... that is, if we really haven't been hit by then - yes, this may not be all a laughing matter; a scientific version of this post may explain that the strategy employed here to destruct the approaching rock is not advisable. Tell that, also, to the makers of DEEP IMPACT and ARMAGEDDON.
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ABOVE: actor Bo Brundin as one of the technicians monitoring the approaching asteroid in METEOR.
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ABOVE: Hong Kong harbor, just before a tidal wave hits it.
In this tale of threats from outer space, a comet hits the asteroid belt located between Mars and Jupiter. One of our spacecraft is out there, the 3 astronauts witnessing this strike; they shouldn't have been observing so closely. A big rock named Orpheus makes a beeline for Earth. Karl Malden is the head scientist at NASA; he calls in short-tempered expert Sean Connery, as well as Soviet cosmologists Brian Keith & Natalie Wood (Wood could actually speak Russian, but Keith had to speak all his lines phonetically - not entirely successful). Henry Fonda is the President (his 2nd or 3rd time in such a role - see FAIL SAFE '64). Martin Landau is the short-tempered military general who is very skeptical. The USA & the Soviet Union need to team up in this one - or else! As a matter of record, the rock here is 5 miles in size; the one in DEEP IMPACT was, I believe, 7 miles in size. In the next version, they'll make it 9 miles in size, I would suppose.
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This film was at the tail-end of the disaster movie cycle of the seventies and was not very successful, either commercially or artistically. It made under $9 million at the box office back then; adjusted for inflation, that's about $25 million today. By comparison, DEEP IMPACT made about $140 million in 1998. I even read that the actors involved knew that they were making a dud during filming; that may be. It's not quite as laughable as THE SWARM (1978), but it's also dull. I saw this in a theater, back in '79, and I still remember the repetitive shots of the space rock on its way to Earth, accompanied by sound FX/music which tried to convey the impression of a huge breathing monster bearing down on the planet. That's about as creative as it gets here. Yet, there is the attraction of watching such an ultimate threat to our species; and, the later films mentioned above merely copied the plot - our planet is hit with smaller rocks, causing avalanches & tidal waves. There is no other way to really tell the tale, is there?
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Near the climax, the last rock fragment manages to strike New York City. It is a dark irony that this scene is now the one truly disturbing set of images... as the collision destroys the twin towers of the World Trade Center, an eerie recreation/harbinger of actual events which did occur 22 years later. If such a rock did hit NYC, however - it's probably about 300 feet in length - I think more than the twin towers & Central Park would be destroyed (in the film, the rock 'luckily' targets the park, not most of the buildings).  This sequence also contains stock footage of actual demolition of some buildings, kind of hokey. Or, would such a 'small' rock explode in the air before hitting the surface? We need an expert on this! BoG's Score: 5 out of 10

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