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, Leelee Sobieski, and Morgan Freeman. Steven Spielberg served as an executive producer of this film. It was released by Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks in the United States on May 8, 1998. The film depicts the attempts to prepare for and destroy a 7-mile-wide comet set to collide with the Earth and cause a mass extinction.
Deep Impact was released during the same summer as a similarly themed rival, Armageddon, which fared better at the box office, while astronomers described Deep Impact as being more scientifically accurate. Deep Impact grossed over $349 million worldwide on an $80 million production budget.
This is the final film of cinematographer Dietrich Lohmann.
Plot
On May 10, 1998, teenage amateur astronomer Leo Beiderman (Elijah Wood) discovers an unusual object near the stars Mizar and Alcor at a star party in Richmond, Virginia with his school's astronomy club. His teacher alerts astronomer Dr. Marcus Wolf (Charles Martin Smith), who realizes that the object is a comet on a collision course with Earth. Wolf tries to get the information out, but dies in a car accident before he can alert the world.
One year later, MSNBC journalist Jenny Lerner (Téa Leoni) investigates the sudden resignation of Secretary of the Treasury Alan Rittenhouse (James Cromwell) and his connection to "Ellie," supposedly a mistress. On the ride back from interviewing Rittenhouse, she is intercepted by the FBI and brought before President Tom Beck (Morgan Freeman). Lerner soon realizes that Ellie is not a mistress but an acronym: "E.L.E.", for "Extinction-Level Event". Due to Lerner's investigation, President Beck makes an announcement earlier than planned: the comet named Wolf-Beiderman (named after its discoverers Wolf and Beiderman, the latter of whom was erroneously believed killed in the earlier car accident) is 7 miles (11 km) longâ€"large enough to cause a mass extinction, and possibly wipe out humanity, if it hits Earth. He also reveals that the United States and Russia have been secretly constructing an Orion spacecraft called Messiah in orbit, in order to transport a team led by Oren Monash (Ron Eldard) and including veteran astronaut Spurgeon Tanner (Robert Duvall) to the comet, so that its path toward Earth can be diverted using nuclear weapons. Leo even speaks before his town following the error of the White House thinking that he died with Dr. Wolf.
After landing on the comet, the crew members plant nuclear bombs 100 meters beneath the surface. While returning to the space vehicle, Monash is blinded due to direct unfiltered sunlight and suffers severe facial burns while Gus Partenza (Jon Favreau) is ejected from the surface by an outflow of gas. When the bombs are detonated, the ship is damaged and the team loses contact with Earth. Instead of being knocked off course or destroyed, the comet splits into two smaller rocks nicknamed "Beiderman" (1.5 miles (2.4Â km) long) and "Wolf" (6 miles (9.7Â km) long), both heading for Earth.
President Beck announces the Messiah crew's failure, declares martial law, and reveals that governments worldwide have been building underground shelters. The United States' shelter is in the limestone caves of Missouri. The US government conducts a lottery to select 800,000 ordinary Americans under age 50 to join 200,000 pre-selected scientists, engineers, teachers, artists, soldiers, and officials as well as two of every animal and the seeds of every plant life. Lerner and the Beiderman family are pre-selected, but Leo's girlfriend Sarah Hotchner (Leelee Sobieski) and her family are not. Leo marries Sarah to save her family, but the Hotchners are mistakenly left off the evacuee list. Sarah refuses to leave without her parents.
A last-ditch effort to use Earth's missile-borne nuclear weapons to deflect the comets fails. President Beck reports on this and reveals the final trajectories of the comets. The Beiderman fragment will impact the Atlantic Ocean off Cape Hatteras as the people that would be in it's way are advised to leave now while they still can. President Beck then states that the Wolf fragment will impact western Canada creating a cloud of dust that will block out the sun for two years, destroying most life on Earth. Leo returns home looking for Sarah, but her family has left for the Appalachian Mountains and is trapped in a traffic jam. Leo catches up to the family using a small motorcycle from the Hotchners' garage. Sarah's parents urge Leo to take Sarah and her baby brother to high ground. Lerner gives up her seat in the last evacuation helicopter to her friend Beth (Laura Innes) and her young daughter. She joins her estranged father Jason (Maximilian Schell) at their childhood beach house where they reconcile.
The Beiderman fragment impacts in the Atlantic Ocean, creating a megatsunami. Lerner, Jason, Sarah's parents, and millions of others are killed as the tsunami destroys the Atlantic coasts of North America, South America, Europe, and Africa. Low on fuel and life support, the crew of Messiah decides to undertake a suicide mission with the remaining nuclear warheads to obliterate the Wolf fragment. After saying goodbye to their loved ones by video conference, the ship reaches the Wolf fragment and enters a fissure to blow itself up, which breaks the fragment into much smaller pieces that burn up in Earth's atmosphere. Leo, Sarah, and her baby brother are among the people that escape the megatsunami.
After the waters recede, President Beck speaks to a large crowd in front of the United States Capitol building (which is undergoing reconstruction) urging the nation and the world to continue their recovery.
Cast
- Robert Duvall as Capt. Spurgeon "Fish" Tanner
- Téa Leoni as Jenny Lerner
- Elijah Wood as Leo Beiderman
- Morgan Freeman as President Tom Beck
- Vanessa Redgrave as Robin Lerner
- Maximilian Schell as Jason Lerner
- Rya Kihlstedt as Chloe
- Leelee Sobieski as Sarah Hotchner
- James Cromwell as Former Secretary of the Treasury Alan Rittenhouse
- Ron Eldard as Dr. Oren Monash
- Aleksandr Baluev as Colonel Michail Tulchinsky
- Jon Favreau as Dr. Gus Partenza
- Laura Innes as Beth Stanley
- Mary McCormack as Andrea "Andy" Baker
- Richard Schiff as Don Beiderman
- Blair Underwood as Mark Simon
- Mike O'Malley as Mike Perry
- Charles Martin Smith as Dr. Marcus Wolf
- Dougray Scott as Eric Vennekor
- Kurtwood Smith as Otis Hefter
- Denise Crosby as Vicky Hotchner
- Jason Dohring as Jason
- Christopher Darga as Section Leader
Production
Jenny Lerner, the character played by Téa Leoni, was originally intended to work for CNN. CNN rejected this because it would be "inappropriate". MSNBC agreed to be featured in the movie instead, seeing it as a way to gain exposure for the then-newly created network.
Director Mimi Leder later explained that she would have liked to travel to other countries to incorporate additional perspectives, but that there ended up being no time or budget to allow it. Visual effects supervisor Scott Farrar felt that coverage of worldwide events would have distracted and detracted from the main characters' stories.
Music
The music for the film was composed and conducted by James Horner. Much of the score used for Deep Impact was recycled and reused in Bicentennial Man, released the following year.
Reception
Deep Impact debuted at the North American box office with $41,000,000 in ticket sales. The movie grossed $140,000,000 in North America and an additional $209,000,000 worldwide for a total gross of $349,000,000. Despite competition in the summer of 1998 from the similar Armageddon (which cost almost twice as much as Deep Impact to make), Deep Impact was still a box office hit and was the higher opener of the two. Domestically, it became the highest grossing film directed by a woman and held that record for a decade until Twilight claimed the record in 2008.
The film had a mixed critical reception. Based on 51 reviews collected by Rotten Tomatoes, 47% of critics enjoyed the film, with an average rating of 5.7/10. Metacritic gave a score of 40 based on 20 reviews. Janet Maslin of The New York Times said that the film "has a more brooding, thoughtful tone than this genre usually calls for", while Rita Kempley and Michael O'Sullivan of the Washington Post criticized what they saw as unemotional performances and a lack of tension.
References
External links
- Deep Impact at the Internet Movie Database
- Deep Impact at the TCM Movie Database
- Deep Impact at Box Office Mojo
- Deep Impact at AllMovie
- Deep Impact at Rotten Tomatoes
