Deep Impact
| Deep Impact | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Ocean Rises. Cities Fall. Hope Survives.
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Deep Impact is a 1998 American sci-fi, disaster film directed by Mimi Leder, written by Bruce Joel Rubin and Michael Tolkin. The film stars Robert Duvall, Téa Leoni, Elijah Wood, Vanessa Redgrave, Maximilian Schell, and Morgan Freeman. Steven Spielberg served as an executive producer of this film. The film was released by Paramount Pictures in North America and by DreamWorks Pictures internationally on May 8, 1998.
Plot
A comet is hurtling toward Earth and could mean the end of all human life. The U.S. government keeps the crisis under wraps, but crack reporter Jenny Lerner (Tea Leoni) uncovers the truth -- forcing U.S. President Beck (Morgan Freeman) to announce his plan. Grizzled astronaut Spurgeon "Fish" Tanner (Robert Duvall) and his team will land on the comet and lay explosives, hopefully deterring the object from its doomsday course. If not, humanity will have to prepare for the worst.
Why Oceans Rise, Cities Fall, and Hope Survives
- It is one of the disaster films that didn't suck, almost unlike most disaster films that try to copy any disaster film, or have just plain ridiculous, or generic writing like any other disaster film, Deep Impact is actually at least, a pretty decent disaster film that tries to do it’s own decent take on the protagonists facing a deadly asteroid.
- The storyline is pretty decent.
- It does at least, stay very accurate to scientists about how dangerous that an asteroid impact can be.
- The CGI effects for the tsunami have aged surprisingly well.
- Pretty good, and sad scenes, like shortly before the tsunami strikes on the east coast, The kids saying goodbye to their family just before they meet their fate by the tsunami.
- Decent acting, especially for Robert Duvall, Tea Leoni, and Elijah Wood (who would star in The Lord of the Rings trilogy).
- Decent direction by Mimi Leder.
- Beautiful soundtrack that was performed by James Horner, who also previously made a soundtrack from Titanic.
- Memorable characters, especially for Jenny Lerner as well.
- Great cinematography that was made by German cinematographer, Dietrich Lohmann which is his final film before his death in 1997.
- The famous scene, near the end of the film, where the comment strikes the Earth at the east coast and destroying New York City is pretty epic and very iconic.
- The ending is pretty good, but it's pretty sad, giving a farewell to the astronauts giving a suicide run to the asteroid to save planet Earth.
Bad Qualities
- The film suffers from being cliche, generic and predictable.
- There are some rather cheesy moments throughout the film.
Reception
The reviews of Deep Impact were not that bad as 1998's Armageddon, although Deep Impact did receive mixed reviews from critics, with a 45% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The website's critical consensus reads, "A tidal wave of melodrama sinks Deep Impact's chance at being the memorable disaster flick it aspires to be.". On Metacritic, the film holds a 40/100 rating, indicating "mixed or average reviews" with a 5.6/10 user score rating on that same website. On IMDb, the film holds a 6.2/10 rating.
While Armageddon fared better at the box office, while astronomers described Deep Impact as being more scientifically accurate. A lot of people claimed that Deep Impact is actually better than Armageddon, to this day.