Like Monster and Alien Invasion movies, there’re a couple of rules that must be followed when it comes to Humanity Wipe films like those asteroid events.
#1: The big asteroid must be preceded by numerous smaller ones that will hit Earth first.
#2: And those small asteroids must hit all the major tourist attractions LOL.
#3: But Disneyland must not be hit (Everything else is fair game).
#4: Launching nukes at the asteroid must be tried but they must never work!
Thing is, those asteroid event movies do work on at least one level – they scare people. I mean, I don’t think many people would believe a Godzilla or King Kong will suddenly surface from somewhere and proceed to stomp through the city, or that we’d be invaded by aliens in the near future. After all, we’ve got most of Earth’s surface nicely mapped out, and there’s always http://maps.google.com if you want to see whether there’re any monster lairs on some island.
But asteroids hitting earth, now that’s a real possibility – no thanks to those occasional news reports reporting so matter-of-fact that so-and-so asteroid just missed Earth.
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There’re two such films in memory. Both of them released at the same time frame, very different in mood, but neither of them really any good.
Most of us would remember Michael Bay’s Armageddon (1998) for certain, and what a joke of a film that was. You had Bay’s usual self-indulgent style: slo-mos with the astronauts marching with the American flag in full view. Patriotic music. And lots of things exploding, usually disaportionate to the amount of explosive power suggested in the scene.
And then you had the cast: such talent, but such mind numbing dialog. Bruce Willis, Bay favorite Steve Buscemi, Liv Tyler, Owen Wilson and Ben Affleck who’d show up again in the even more dull Pearl Harbor that Bay put out 3 years after Armageddon.
Then there was the logic and coherence. Never mind all that stuff about the absence of sound and oxygen in deep space, or of gravity on an asteroid. A rock the size of Texas is about to hit Earth, and Earth’s only hope is a bunch of misfits who just coincidentally happen to be oil drillers. Was that supposed to be a joke in itself…?
At least the visuals were nice – sorta. There was that memorable scene where the two Space Shuttles fly through the debris field of the asteroid. Lots of excitement especially when one of the two shuttles suffer catastrophic damage and crashes.
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Like Edward Zwick, Mimi Leder hasn’t directed a lot of films. But I especially liked The Peacemaker, a thriller starring George Clooney and the very yummy Nicole Kidman the year just before she made Deep Impact.
I’m not certain if Paramount / Dreamworks were aware that Touchstone Pictures was already producing Armageddon. So, whether by coincidence or intention, Deep Impact was at least a much more serious film that at least had better factual grounding that the Armageddon farce.
The film also benefited from two older actors who well-known and regarded for super acting: Morgan Freeman and Robert Duvall (wished he’d do more Western films too), and they didn’t disappoint in their respective roles as the US President and the Commander of the space shuttle sent on a suicide mission.
Unlike Armageddon too, Deep Impact was less about whim bang action and concerned itself more with the humanity plans to ensure survival of the species. In other words, the entire tenor was that the asteroid impact couldn’t be entirely avoided – all one could do was to try to minimize the expected devastation.
That didn’t please everyone of course: for those of us who liked violent things happening on a per second on screen, Deep Impact was a little, well, boring. And personally, I think the movie could had done with more, well, violent action. I still think Deep Impact was the better film, it’s Armageddon that I rewatch more often LOL.
In any case…
Armageddon: 
Deep Impact:
Next in the series… Disaster – Bad Weather, Bad Earth! LOL.
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