I started out getting my joint Michael Pare/sci-fi fix with the Canadian-made Space Fury (1999), which aka'd in the good ol' USA on video as In the Dead of Space, but came to enjoy this not-so-bad asteroid-hits-the-Earth rip a hell of a lot more.
Once upon a time, producer Richard Zanuck and David Brown pitched Paramount Pictures with a remake of the studio's proto-disaster film, When Worlds Collide (1951). That late '70s-proposed project went through several screenplay drafts until it landed in "development hell." Zanuck and Brown's next attempt to get the film off the ground in the early '90s came by the way of Steven Spielberg. However, Spielberg has his own asteroid movie in the works when he bought the rights to Arthur C. Clarke's novel, The Hammer of God (1993) -- which itself reminds of Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's award-winning novel, Lucifer's Hammer (1977), itself a post-apocalypse tale concerned with a rogue comet striking Earth. As result: both projects were combined as one film.
Sadly, that theatrical version of Clarke's work -- set in the year 2109, replete with rich characters, layered plot, political intrigue, and religious zealotry (the asteroid's arrival mixed with warmongering spawned a new world religion) -- was lost amid a series of rewrites that left us with a run-of-the-mill, present-day asteroid flick known as Deep Impact (1998). Then Disney's Touchstone Pictures developed their counter-programming Armageddon (1998) -- complete with Liv Tyler's perpetual-weeping eyes.
That backstory on Deep Impact brings us to this Roger Corman's New Horizon's Pictures-backed production originally known as The Cusp. Produced by Starfield Independent Studios for TMN-The Movie Network, a Canadian premium television network, they spent a mere $2 million -- against the $80 million for Deep Impact. The Cusp was the first of four sci-fi/space films by the joint venture. The others were Future Fear (1997; with Jeff Wincott) and Shepherd (1998; C. Thomas Howell and Roddy Piper), and Cybermaster (1999; aka Shepherd II, starring C. Thomas Howell and Heidi von Palleske, who also stars, here). Now, I haven't watched the other three films, but rest assure: there's prop and set recycling afoot. Plus, reading the synopsis on each: they share subplots of religious cults fighting against technology.
In the end: the closest you'll get to a theatrical version of the plot-complex The Hammer of God is The Cusp, which -- in a shorter, 80-minute joint US video and cable television release -- is known as the more common sense title of Falling Fire.
Set in the year 2051, the ISA (The International Space Agency) sends mining vessels to retrieve asteroids by using a series of detonations to guide them into Earth orbit for mineral stripping. Does it harm the environment? Maybe. But it creates millions of jobs in the process.
During the mission of the Spirit of 49's retrieval of MT-27, the crew begins to experience a series of questionable accidents; a double-agent from the "Children of Gaia," a religious-cum-environmental terrorist organization, is on board. Her orders, which include seducing Micheal Pare (in a sub-zero gravity sex scene one-upping the lame "Dance the Night Away" scene in 2000's Mission to Mars), is sending the asteroid -- and the vessel with its nuke armaments -- into the Earth as a form of "spiritual cleansing."
See, this sound a hell of lot better than putting up with two hours of Tea Leoni's and Elijah Wood's relationship drivel as Morgan Freeman croaks about an "Ark in the mountains" before the inevitable, happens.
Yeah, The Cusp takes a while to get going, but once it gets over the first-act set-up hump, a great story is discovered. The script offers interesting layers and where-is-this-going plot twists, and, most importantly: the relationship subplot between Pare's space-bound Daryl Boden and Heidi von Pallaeske as Pare's Earth-bound CIA agent-wife battling the religious terrorists (that have depth and aren't just slobbering maniacs) on Earth, doesn't derail the action.
What does derail one's watch: the poor CGI spaceship exteriors and asteroid, which, almost, made me turn off the movie. However, the wide-shot (the wider, the better in this case) space and asteroid walk scenes, and the related space suits, are as good any major studio sci-fi film. In addition, the Tubi upload was a grainy, VHS-emulsion scratched copy that's slightly fuzzy, throughout. Not every film can have a 4K digital restore, so beware.
All in all, this wasn't a bad Tubi discovery. As long as one goes in not comparing it to its Hollywood inspirations -- and, most importantly, watch the longer, easier-to-follow Canadian-cut under The Cusp, and not the shorter, Corman-cut known as Falling Fire -- you'll be entertained.
