Deep Impact (1999, VHS)

As Douglas Adams so admirably put it, Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space. In reality, it s a good thing that space is as big as it is, because along with our own dearly beloved planet Earth, there s a lot of stuff hurtling about out there. But big as space is, sometimes our Earth (and the rest of the planets in the solar system for that matter) do get pelted by asteroids, comets, and other assorted space debris. Don t believe me? Just ask the dinosaurs. Oh wait. There are no more dinosaurs. Maybe space isn t as big as we thought it was after all.

Such is the premise of 1998 s Deep Impact, one of two films that year (the other being Armageddon) that analyzed the question of how we would face impending doom in the shape of a very large object on a trajectory intersecting with the Earth. Both featured star-studded casts, and although Armageddon was the more glamorous action adventure, Deep Impact is the more realistic and in reality the better film overall.

Jenny Lerner (Tea Leoni) thinks she s stumbled on the story of the decade when she seemingly uncovers an illicit affair between presidential secretary Alan Rittenhouse (James Cromwell) and a mysterious woman named Ellie. But when, after confronting Rittenhouse, she s roughly abducted by a pack of over-zealous FBI agents and whisked away to a clandestine meeting with President Tom Beck (Morgan Freeman), she quickly realizes she s onto something far bigger than a mere cabinet-level fling.

That s because Ellie is not a person, but an event-an E.L.E., or extinction level event. Thinking that Jenny is on to what s really going on, President Beck decides to come clean with the nation, and the world. A recently-discovered comet the size of Mount Everest is on a collision course with the Earth, and when it hits, the results will be nothing short of cataclysmic.

But there is hope. A joint American-Russian project code named Messiah and commanded by Captain Spurgeon Fish Tanner (Robert Duvall) will send the world s first nuclear-powered spaceship on a rendezvous with the comet with the aim of destroying, or at least deflecting, it. But their mission won t be an easy one: land on the rapidly rotating object, drill into its surface to place a series of nuclear warheads, and then navigate back through the debris of the coma in time to get away from the blast area. Failure, however, is not an option. Because unless the comet can be diverted from its current trajectory, billions will die in the greatest disaster mankind has ever witnessed.

Deep Impact is truly a scary film, mostly because the possibility of such an occurrence is greater than you think. And unlike Armageddon, Deep Impact manages to address the matter in a far more serious fashion. It also tries to remain a bit more realistic. Here, the loosely-defined comet is at least of a size we could possibly do something about. In all reality, if an asteroid (generally more dense than a comet) the size of Texas was paying a visit ala Armageddon, it would be adios muchachos for sure.

But Deep Impact addresses other serious concerns as well. Just how would the human race deal with the possibility that, if all attempts to stop such an event failed, the Earth would be rendered unable to support life for years to come? Hard decisions would have to be made to ensure that humanity as a species, if not individually, could survive. That life would go on.

Deep Impact certainly presents the human face of its many characters, if at times it definitely goes over the top emotionally. Jenny s reconciliation with her estranged father (Maximillian Schell), Fish s pensive reflections on his dearly missed departed wife, and Don Biederman s (Richard Schiff) and Vicky Hotchner s (Denise Crosby) tear-jerking attempts to save the lives of their children all see to that.

Special effects are admirable as we see the comet on its way to Earth and the mission to stop it. Best of all, however, are the devastating and quite realistic depictions of an actual impact upon our planet. And while most of the acting here tends to run on the flat side with the notable exception of Robert Duvall, that s in keeping with the overall serious tone of the film.

All in all, Deep Impact is more than simple sci-fi, more than just another doomsday flick. It s certainly the best of the impact films, and well worth checking out.

Do You Want to Know More?

If you would like to read more about the very real possibility that something like the events in Deep Impact could happen, I suggest reading Rogue Asteroids and Doomsday Comets: The Search for the Million Megaton Menace That Threatens Life on Earth . Excellent fictionalized novelizations on this topic can be found in Larry Niven s Lucifer s Hammer and Arthur C. Clarke s The Hammer of God.

If you think that Armageddon and Deep Impact were the first films to broach the topic of an impact, you re wrong. Check out 1979 s Meteor to see how Sean Connery would handle things.

If you just like the idea of the world ending, then you can see the world destroyed by nuclear war and inherited by sentient apes in Planet of the Apes , starring Charlton Heston. He s also around to see us run out of food in Soylent Green .

A virus turns the human race into vampires, with the notable exception of Vincent Price, The Last Man on Earth

Mars invades the Earth in The War of the Worlds (1953) and The War of the Worlds (2005)

The end comes by global warming induced ice age in The Day After Tomorrow

And aliens infiltrate us from within in They Live