Asteroid

I'm not surprised that many people blasted this movie;

some folks just seem to think that action flicks like this are

supposed to be realistic. Sorry to disappoint, but they're

supposed to be larger than life. You want life, watch a

documentary.

Michael Biehn is one of my favorite action stars and he

doesn't get nearly the attention he should. Yes, there were

some very bad actors and writing in parts of this one, but it

was still a fun couple of hours. The TV version is way too

long; the VHS version has been trimmed down and it's a

good thing.

I was impressed by the special fx in this. For a tv movie they were really good. Some of it was typical diasaster cheese but all in all a pretty good asteroid flick. Not as gripping and exciting as Armageddon but still very good.

This film has gained a certain infamy for stupidity. It's discussed as a laughing stock for the complete mutilation of science and even basic logic.

It's not a matter of a low budget. It's not that we are just being picky and expect it to be "too" accurate. I can accept a certain level of inaccuracy. This film goes way beyond that level into the absurd. It has about the scientific realism of spilling a bucket of water and having all the houses on the block carried away in the resulting flood.

There's no defending or rationalizing this level of stupidity. Even the "human drama" elements were mediocre at best and downright simplistic and boring for most of the film. The last half of the film dragged.

There's no reason a film should be made this poorly just because it's made for TV. It's not poor by comparison to other flicks or big budget movies; it's just poor. Even the good performances of some of the actors couldn't save this one.

Being an astrophysics major, the first hour of this movie made me want to throw-up over the inaccuracies. Every scene involving a telescope was inaccurate for any modern observatory. ( Telescopes have been guided by computers for some time now, especially at observatories that get funding as the one depicted.) It gets better after that. and if you don't know a lick of science then it wont bother you anyway. The plot is pretty cheesy at times. (I don't think the FEMA director would really jump onto a burning building.) But it is a good story about human drama. I think they did an o.k. job portraying how people would react in a situation like this.

A real disappointment!

First, credibility approaches zero, as a trillion-ton rock, moving at 15 miles per second is stopped by the LASER beams of two small aircraft on earth. Has anyone read physics? It is as if a mosquito would stop an express train.

Meteorites rain on the same spot for hours, even though earth rotates.

Meteorites are seen entering earth's atmosphere several minutes before they hit ground. Are there parachutes attached to them?

In the two more well-known films on this subject, Armageddon and Deep Impact, the meteor is stopped by bombing it with thermonuclear devices - a completely sensible theory. I like Science Fiction, but 'Asteroids' isn't SciFi, the film violates every possible physical law, the creators treating the observers as imbecills.

Every building and vehicle in the film seems to be filled with gasoline - everything explodes (by the way - when will we see a film where cars and houses don't explode and diesel oil doesn´t catch fire?).

The second part of the film is an endless display of fires, roaming people and military vehicles. This would certainly put you to sleep were it not for the monotonous engine noise and fire sound.

And in every dramatic scene you are faced with the difficult and thrilling questions: "Will they find each other???", "Will the hero survive???".

I long for a meteor movie that blasts everything away, killing everyone including the hero.