Impact (2009) User Reviews

Guilty pleasure

[MartianOctocretr5 · 6/10 · 12 July 2009]

Scientific inaccuracies abound as the moon gets shell-shocked by (ready?) a brown dwarf, making it heavier than the Earth, and causing freakish electro magnetitism, weird gravity, etc.

A guilty pleasure, for sure: I love these "the end of the world threatens" flicks where a bunch of scientists try to save us all from annihilation. It's definitely put your brain on hold stuff, but it's far superior to that "reality" rubbish and most of the other stuff on network TV. This flick "borrowed" elements from Armageddon and other movies, but at least it was free.

Considering the outlandish script, the acting was actually pretty good, including the child actors. The special effects were decent. Characters were clearly developed, and could be identified with. I actually felt sorry for the one that suffered from a debilitating phobia. The director did the most possible with the plot-hole-ridden story, and some of the weird stuff that happens is even fun to watch.

Cinematic fast food that's amusing, and doesn't cost a lot.

Superficial entertainment

[marinus-9 · 5/10 · 18 April 2009]

This is watchable, the acting is mostly decent, the special effects reasonably well done for a TV series and they even took the effort to shoot in Germany and Canada. The cinematography and the directing are actually quite good. CGI is so-so, but there may just not have been enough money to make a train fly through the air in a believable manner.

The scientific part of the story on the other hand is so impossible it hurts. Michael Vickerman, the screenwriter, has no idea of the basics of physics, doesn't know magnetism from gravity and continually mixes them up. Consequently all the effects from the moon coming closer to earth and the final successful solution of the problem are completely wrong.

This production cost more than 10 million to make. Shouldn't the screenwriter at least have asked a hobby astronomer whether the stuff in the story is even remotely possible? Good grief! Still, mostly entertaining and wholesome.

Check your expectations

[thirdimpact1 · 6/10 · 15 June 2009]

That's the best thing you can do. It's a made for TV movie, and believe me it doesn't transcend that stature, nor does it really try to. Once you get it through your head that it won't have the production values of a Michael Bay movie or the big name stars, it's actually alright for what it is. It's a globe spanning disaster movie with a pretty cool premise - the moon hitting the planet.

Because it's on TV, the only thing it asks of you is your time. Honestly, if you don't like it (and you'll know immediately whether or not) you can just as easily click away. I won't blame you if you do, but if you're up for a disaster flick that's halfway decent and free to watch, you can do much, much worse. Yes, the acting can be, well, bad at times, but for the most part it's serviceable. After all, you just need the characters to act shocked and sad at the news and events so yes, they do that well enough.

If I had to pay to see something like this, yeah I'd be upset. But it's free and with the summer TV season in pretty bad shape it's a nice way to blow off four hours. It's completely inoffensive and that's leagues better than most made for TV movies.

As much as I hate to say it, this was fun (sort of) to watch.

[innocuous · 4/10 · 9 November 2009]

Yeah, I kind of got a kick out of it, but not for the reasons the film-makers intended. This is one of the few disaster movies that makes "Armaggeddon" look like it was written by geniuses and "The Core" like it was made as an instructional film for use in college geology courses. The wide liberties taken with actual fact (and common sense) make for a rollicking time, but it scares me that we're failing in educating the youth of today.

I mean, this is only 3 hours long, but in that time you learn that the screenwriters (1) think that the moon has a magnetic field emanating from a core, (2) believe that the "laws of gravity" are that "little objects are attracted to big objects," (3) don't know that cruise missiles are air-breathers and won't operate or even steer in the absence of an atmosphere, (4) don't understand the difference between electromagnetics and gravity, (5) think that it takes longer to walk back to town from a car breakdown than to program, launch, and deliver 87 rockets with nuclear device payloads all the way to the moon, (6) have some bizarre ideas about what a brown dwarf star is, and so forth.

But it IS entertaining. Just make sure to have a chat with your kids afterwards to make sure that (a) your son didn't spend the entire movie following Natsha Henstridge's boobs, and (b) that your daughter understands that the science end of it was all BS so she won't be afraid to get her graduate degree in physics. After all, any exposure to the "scientists" in this film is an almost guaranteed turn-off for budding researchers.

Several physical impossibilities

[kennethfrankel · 22 June 2009]

As was already pointed out, a brown dwarf is a small star about 13 or more times the mass of Jupiter. A white dwarf is a collapsed object with very dense matter - they would not have been able to hoist a piece with a crane. They made the statement that the Moon used to have 1/6 the mass of the Earth - no! It was (is) 1/81 of the Earth's mass, or 0.0123 -- they mixed this up with the gravity being 1/6 that of the Earth. So on the Moon you would weigh 1/6 of what you weigh here.

A piece of this degenerate matter would either go right through the Moon or the Earth or sink to the center of either body.

The meteor shower is shown to stream in parallel lines in space to the Earth. Usually the meteors would actually seem to originate from a point in space, the radiant. This is like driving through a snow storm. But, to be fair, if the meteors are really coming from a nearby area, they might follow the paths shown.

If the Moon was now twice the mass of the Earth then the Earth would be orbiting the Moon. There is a complex interaction of the Earth, Moon, and Sun and the spin axis, the length of the day, etc. will all be changing.

Then they are shocked to see there may be a collision. You either have a stable orbit, or get flung away, or you crash. That's life with gravity.

Another issue is the constant scenes of the Moon with a bunch of debris hovering around it - either the junk is orbiting or it will fall back down to the surface. The same side of the Moon may not keep facing the Earth - the impact might set it spinning, or the oval orbit could break up the 1:1 resonance with the Earth.

The scenes of things floating up are odd. The gravity of the Moon could balance the Earth's gravity if it had the new mass and was closer. But they attribute this to some electric - magnetic effect. I could not understand the explanation - yes, we are all made of the same stuff, but obviously not everything is affected much by magnets. A white dwarf can have extreme magnetic fields, but you probably would die if it could lift you. Your bodily functions and cell growth would be messed up. The heart beat would be messed up, too.

An original approach to the standard meteor-disaster movie.

[TheGodOfDeedsAndWhine · 6/10 · 21 April 2009]

Impact is the kind of sci-fi movie you get when you spend the budget on well known (TV) actors and story instead of dumping it all into CGI effects and explosions. The implementation of science from old 1950s movies and unintentionally goofy dialogue result in some laugh out loud moments, but most of the time it's not too distracting.

The main story is original, although quite far fetched at times. As the movie goes on, the situation goes from bad to worse to disastrous... then everything goes to hell. But in a good way.

Luckily Earth is saved thanks to the deployment of a massive amount of different European accents.

cute kids, cool grandpa, lousy science and writing.

[oldbob39 · 2/10 · 29 June 2009]

Hey, did anyone else notice that the patch on the general's sleeve was for the First Cavalry? What!?! Cavalry? Couldn't they at least have invented some bogus "Joint Astrospace Defence Command" patch?

I must admit, I didn't watch the movie intently: my wife was watching, and I would sit with her until the bogusness got too bad, then I'd go clean my closet or something. But I must also admit that I'm biased by my own history. I worked for NASA for 37 years, then taught high school for six, so the stunning level of bad science really grated on my sensibility. As someone noted, couldn't the writers have at least talked an amateur astronomer into critiquing the script. Maybe he could have explained the law of the conservation of momentum, and if the writers were quick studies, they might have progressed to complex topics like basic orbital mechanics.

There were redeeming features, of course. The little girl proved herself a fine young actress with her expressive face in that video conversation with her dad, and the grandpa was splendid, just as he was in "Babe". (I'd like to look for more of his movies to rent: I enjoy his work.) And, of course, all us old-timers know that all female space scientists are blonde, slender, very attractive, 30 to 35 years old, and possessed of big boobs. So they did get that part right.

Seriously, there should be no excuse for such bad science fiction on TV. Too much of the US population is nearly illiterate in science. And I am not talking about the kids in school now. This movie was shown in prime time, so was presumably intended for adult audiences. But this is the population who agree, in the majority, with the statement "early humans often had to defend their caves against marauding dinosaurs." And let's not forget there are politicians that claim to not believe the theory that is actually the fundamental guiding principle of contemporary biology. With a little more effort, some of the major flaws in the story could have been corrected and the audience might have gone away with a little better understanding of the underlying science. Yes, it's science FICTION, but fiction still needs internal self-consistency and a clear understanding of its own premises and their consequences. (Think "Jurassic Park" as a good example.)

Some of us have worked hard to educate this country in science, and seeing this movie is so discouraging, as if taunting us by saying we are never going to win.

Good concept

[spgdppr · 7/10 · 18 June 2023]

The concept was not unique, but the details leading to the 3 hour crisis was very original. The CGI was pretty good, up until the final few minutes. I liked most of the characters. And I cried a river during the last 25-30 minutes. And watching this with commercial interruptions was a nightmare. Other than that...a nice idea. Nevertheless, the story could have been compressed into something a LOT shorter then over 3 hours. There was too much time spent on relationships between the main scientist (looking like she was going to a formal event all during the movie;), and the scientist who was a widowed father; too much time spent between the widowed father and his children; too too much time spent either the European scientist and his fiancée; etc. And James Cromwell was wasted except for a few emotional minutes. So if you cut down these interactions, up the CGI quality for the last 20 minutes...you have a masterpiece.

Brown Dwarf - Ha Ha

[andymcguckin · 2/10 · 4 July 2009]

This film from the point of view of family relationships is quite good, but it completely fails once it enters the realm of science, and is not even good 'Science Fiction.'

The fragment that hits the moon is reputed to be from a brown dwarf, brown dwarfs are astrophysical objects that are intermediate entities between planets and stars. Stars like the sun are not immensely dense, in fact the density of our sun is comparable to that of water and 'brown dwarfs' are of the order of .1 of a solar mass so the film as usual for Hollywood and TV is based on a failed premise. I think they meant to use a fragment of a 'Neutron Star,' as this would have fit with the effects described and even the goofs section is inaccurate about the suggested effects of an impact with the moon of a brown dwarf fragment. The author probably read about brown dwarfs being the size of Jupiter with a mass of between 20-50 times that of Jupiter and assumed that they were superdense objects. Brown dwarfs are failed stars/suns and if they were broken up they would diminish due to molecular reactions because gravity would no longer keep the fragments together and they would most probably combine with other molecules and elements to form conglomerate meteor/asteroids that would not be very dense at all. It is because they do not have sufficient mass to become stars that they become brown dwarfs in the first place. There are times when I wish that Hollywood or the TV commissioning editors would at least check that the science is at least plausible before allowing projects to go forward.

I know that science has been dumbed down, but this is going too far! So although this films scores on how relationships cope with extraordinary situations, it fails as a premise in my opinion and anyone with a better than high school education will realise that, but in the US and in the UK most people don't have a clue about science, and neither do film makers apparently.

Andy

Impact: A Meteoric Premise Hindered by Earthbound Flaws

[douglas-99101 · 6/10 · 11 September 2023]

"Impact" is a mini-series that presents a compelling premise but falls short in execution, earning it a 6 out of 10 rating. The show explores the aftermath of a catastrophic meteor impact on Earth, focusing on the struggles of survivors.

One of the series' strengths is its concept. The idea of a global disaster caused by a meteor strike is inherently intriguing, and the initial episodes effectively build tension and suspense as the impending catastrophe looms. The visual effects used to depict the meteor impact are also commendable, creating a sense of realism that adds to the show's intensity.

However, where "Impact" falters is in its character development and pacing. Many of the characters lack depth and come across as one-dimensional, making it difficult to fully invest in their fates. The ensemble cast does their best with the material, but the writing often lets them down. Additionally, the series struggles to maintain a consistent pace, with some episodes feeling rushed while others drag on, causing the narrative to lose momentum.

Furthermore, "Impact" suffers from predictability. The plot often follows familiar disaster movie tropes, making it easy to anticipate certain plot twists and character arcs. This lack of originality can be frustrating for viewers seeking a more innovative storyline.

Despite these shortcomings, "Impact" does manage to deliver some thrilling and emotionally charged moments. The survival scenarios and moral dilemmas faced by the characters can be engaging, providing occasional glimpses of the show's potential.

In conclusion, "Impact" is a mini-series with a captivating premise that doesn't fully realize its potential. While it offers some exciting moments and impressive visuals, it struggles with character development, pacing, and originality. A 6 out of 10 rating reflects a show that falls short of being truly impactful but still manages to provide some entertainment value for fans of disaster-themed dramas.

Dreadful. Truly dreadful.

[Peet42 · 1/10 · 24 January 2010]

This was billed as "Science fiction", but frankly it's just "Fantasy". There isn't the slightest attempt to involve any actual science - the scriptwriter just keeps saying outlandish things and the actors struggle to make it seem like they believe this is how the world works.

In the minute or two before the beginning titles, for example, we are told that "the biggest meteor shower for (X) years" is about to happen. We cut between crowds of people gathered in fields all round the world, every one with a telescope on a tripod, peering into a dark sky.

1) Meteor showers happen as the Earth passes through a particle cloud; they're only seen on the leading side of the planet, not the whole planet simultaneously.

2) Astronomers only gather in that way to view localised phenomena such as total solar eclipses, not wide-ranging phenomena such as meteor showers.

3) You don't use a telescope to look at a meteor shower. Ever.

4) With all these astronomers around, didn't anyone notice it was a bit odd that it was dark *all the way round the world at the same time*...? I would have thought the sudden and complete disappearance of the Sun would have provoked more comment than a meteor shower would.

And all this was before the titles.

Other things, like the fact there was a rock on the Moon that was one and a half times the mass of the Earth, yet the Moon only changed its orbit slightly (when, in reality, at that point the Earth would have, at best, been in orbit around the Moon...) were glossed over.

Or how they managed to fit five people, a huge "scanner", a 2-man rocket sled and a missile launch platform into the nosecone of a rocket that can usually only hold three people maximum, and they still had room to get in and out of their space suits? Oh, and the missile had huge stabilising fins and could manoeuvre in huge, graceful curves - in a vacuum. And despite being only about twice the size of an astronaut it had enough power to split the moon in two. Oh, and somehow it mysteriously dissipated the rock with 1.5 Earth masses, without any of it falling to Earth.

I've seen a few reviews saying the actors were "good". Well, they were "good" *for soap opera*, which is what the script degenerated to fairly quickly.

It was *almost* as bad as the movie "The Core". Almost.

Aw come on, it's just a fun & entertaining movie with a unique twist

[tlmedia · 8/10 · 6 September 2009]

Let's face it folks this is a low budget made for TV flick. I'm looking for entertainment and the premise of the moon hitting the earth is a spell-binding one.

It's also Sci-Fi so it's fine to stretch the facts. I'm a professional writer and will admit I'm a bit surprised there wasn't more research on the "real physics." A few hours with a Cal-Tech Professor would have cleared that up, especially regarding Kepler's Law and the difference between magnetism & gravity. But really who cares! If you want to know astrophysics, take a course at your local community college!

Anyway the movie is well paced and edited. Every scene advances the story line nicely. I didn't have time to pick apart details. CGI can be weak, but it gets the story told. Can you say the words, "LOW BUDGET." Despite "Impact's" fours hours the film never lost my attention. That's my definition of a "good, OK, film." I include the "sleepy factor" in rating pictures and I was wide awake for all 240 minutes.

Remember the Walt Disney quote, "The Plausible Impossible?" Sure fits here.

I enjoyed it...

[mark-us_teixeira · 7/10 · 2 August 2009]

Impact is a great entertainment and a clever show with a cool premise - the moon hitting the planet like someone here said. And its much more than that, we have meteorites, a brown dwarf, mysterious anomalies on earth, lots of theoretical and practical discussion about gravity and electromagnetism...etc

For the people who are questioning the science in this show here we go:

1-In our reality there are a lot of theories... lots of them can not be proved (in practice)... the movie just explores that (its sci-fi..lol)

2-(CONTAINS SPOILER) Bigger mass means the Gravity force will be larger, so more attraction between two objects... that is why in this series, the moon become closer to the Earth... the immense mass from the brown dwarf (in that particular dwarf, or part of one, the mass is two times bigger than the earth) that collided to the moon allowed that situation...

3-The awesome Electromagnetic power level (also derived from the impact between the moon and the dwarf) explains the electrical problems and why people or objects started to "fly"!! in the series they said the energy levels are so big, that not only metal objects flout but also humans and animals... since we have the same electromagnetic energy, people also start to levitate.... the authors are not confused about this two forces (gravity and electromagnetic energy)...lol... you guys think they do not ask the opinions to real astrophysicists or Astronomers, like someone here said, they not??? common... the basic stuff is correct... yes we can doubt some things like some effects produced by this new situation or for example the equipment they used to fight the threat...it probably do not exist, but who knows??.. there are so many secrets in the government!! (END SPOILER)

I mean, here we have a good science fiction movie with a good script where we can actually learn about something and think about others subjects, interesting characters, reasonable acting, decent special effects (for a TV show), lots of mystery and speculation about what the hell is happening ... is really in that way or not??... its a situation that never happened.. and it can be possible or not??... that is the magic about science fiction.. what if?!!!!

I know there are better sci-fi shows, but this is a disaster flick, and everything that it is needed to be discussed in this mini-series is referred, along with the emotional response to the situations... this is not a philosophical debate about existence or a movie about the secrets of the universe... what do you haters want?? Common... give it more respect..

For the ones who really enjoy this type of entertainment, go ahead and watch it... 7 stars

A masterpiece of crap

[myjerkygameaddy · 1/10 · 19 April 2009]

REALLY BIG SPOILER WARNING!

First off, I didn't think much of "Armageddon" in the first place. At best, it was a 5/10 star movie if only because of the CG effects (of it's day) This show gets 1 star because:

A: Duh... It's a two bit knockoff

It rips off the entire premise of Armageddon. Planet killing space object, planetary disasters, nuclear weapons, last ditch expedition, heroic sacrifice...blah blah blah. It's basically cut and pasted from the original script.

B: Super sized storyline clichés...

Hmmm...OK. So, the guy from JAG is a recently widowed astronomer with two oh so adorable kids. And, the chick from Species is a single, frumped up but still strikingly attractive astronomer whom the JAG guy went to school with... I wonder what's going to happen with these two? (yawn)

And, let's not forget the obsessive, slightly creepy yet brilliant scientist guy who finds out that his neglected wife is (gasp) pregnant! Oh no! I hope that he doesn't die, later! And, who can forget the tried and true "let's launch a nuclear arsenal at the problem" approach. Because, this has always worked so well in previous movies.

C: The obligatory presidential address.

Yeah...sure...unite the world in the face of the impending doom...we are one people...love thy neighbour...blah blah blah. I'm so sure that the entire world wouldn't already be too busy running amok in a violent, drug fueled, sexually ambiguous frenzy to notice.

D: Science? What's that?

Don't even get me started about the scientific fallacies in this movie. I would have thought that the writers would have at least done a wikipedia search before filling a script with such nonsense.

Conclusion:

I wouldn't feel bad about downloading this movie on a P2P/bit torrent network. It's already pirated and repackaged. Who cares?

Disturbingly stupid plot seeks to destroy Earth

[wapsvandelft · 1/10 · 16 April 2010]

My wife and I watched this to its end. We did so in the misplaced hope that it would get better and that surely it could not sink further.

The acting is adequate.

The casting is adequate.

The photograpy, similarly, is adequate.

But oh my. In a 'coffee-spurting-out-of-my-nose' manner, the plot is simply ludicrous and the errors were legion. Let's make a small list.

a) Sextillion. I've never heard anyone use this word. If they mean 10 to the 21st power, why not say it? c) They had the concept of an orbit utterly wrong. Orbits aren't 'stable'; they're closed or they are not. If they're closed, they're an ellipse of some sort.

d) The orbit must have the central body at its focus - not at its geometric centre.

e) The term 'axis peak' is never used by anyone. Except in this movie. It doesn't mean anything. If you mean apogee, why not say it? Ap-oh-gee. It's not hard, really.

f) If the gravitic anomalies affect larger objects but not smaller ones, why do the oceans and the atmosphere not fly up into the sky? We see a laden container ship floating out of the sea, why isn't the sea also sucked upward? Why isn't the air rushing past in an inverted tornado? g) Nobody has manipulated gravity through electromagnetic means - the 'hero' with a straight face says that he built a machine to levitate objects in this manner. Why was he not laughed at? h) The magic device that saves the day is designed to magnetize the Moon's core and repel the hypermass causing all the woe. Take two small magnets, hold them such that they have the same poles facing each other, and let them go. One magnet will spin violently and slam into the other. It will not be ejected into the Sun.

i) The energy needed to flip this gazillion tonne mass out of the Moon has to come from somewhere.

j) I've lost the will to type.

The director should hang his head in shame. This was a very bad mini-series. I laughed at all the wrong places, I actually *wanted* the Moon to grind into the Earth so as to show the characters what utter bullshit their magical plans were.

If they had tried to repel the moon with magic it would have been more coherent.

My disbelief is easily suspended. But it has to be coherent and make sense within itself. This failed and as a result I couldn't care about the characters as they were spouting nonsense with straight faces.

Exciting, not great, not likely scientifically accurate, but who cares?

[vchimpanzee · 30 June 2009]

The movie begins with a beautiful shot of a large gibbous moon. I didn't see it the way it should have been seen. To truly appreciate this moon, I think you need one of those TVs that men just have to have for The Super Bowl.

Then there is a shot of the Earth from space. Also very nice.

Alex Kittner, a university astronomy professor and former NASA employee, is watching the greatest meteor shower in many years with his two children Jake and Sadie. With a telescope, of course. Alex and the family are among many throughout the world excited about this major event.

Dr. Maddie Rhodes works for an observatory in New Mexico along with Jered. She seems intelligent, but her main qualification, at least for this movie, is that she's gorgeous.

A very large meteor shows up, one that has been hidden by the other meteors. When it hits the moon, there is a major explosion. Later it is learned that was not a meteor: it was quite literally a shooting star twice as large as the asteroid that supposedly killed the dinosaurs.

Debris from the moon heads toward Earth and creates chaos. Then weird things start happening on Earth. Tides behave strangely and randomly, causing flooding. Newer cars have trouble starting. Power lines act up. TV, radio and cell phone reception goes haywire.

And it gets worse. The moon ends up 30,000 kilometers closer to Earth at its nearest point, and it is getting significantly larger in the sky.

Maddie and Alex are asked what is going on. Apparently Maddie is someone very important, because the President of the United States asks for her opinion.

Roland is sent to investigate one of the meteorites. As he explains, there is a very important distinction. A meteor hunter investigates meteors in space. Roland investigates only those that have hit Earth. And this is no meteor. The damage it did could only have happened if something much larger struck the Earth. Right? This one, though, is magnetized and very heavy.

Roland concludes this is a piece of a brown dwarf--a former star so heavy that the moon, with the star inside it, now has twice the mass of Earth. Its orbit is very erratic and these weird events are going to keep happening as the moon approaches Earth each time.

Maddie, Roland and Alex are part of a group of scientists called together to figure out what to do. This is difficult for Alex: he and the kids are still trying to get over the death of his wife, and his curmudgeonly, agoraphobic father-in-law who lives with them will have to take care of the kids. Roland his his own problem: his girlfriend Martina is pregnant, and he has to leave her behind in Europe. For some reason, most of the bizarre events are happening in Europe.

Maddie's ex is a journalist. He knows the whole story is not being told, and he knows he has the inside track. Or thinks he does. Maddie knows better than to give him what he wants.

The chaos on Earth keeps getting worse. But the most distressing news is yet to come: the scientists figure out that the moon's orbit will continue to put it closer and closer to Earth until ...

The Earth has only 39 days left. What to do? What to do?

Never mind whether this was a quality production. For the most part, this was nothing special from that standpoint. What matters is this: late in that first half I kept looking at my watch. Not because I couldn't wait for it to be over, but because I didn't want it to be over. I didn't want to wait two days to see more. And it wasn't two days. It was a week! I didn't enjoy the second half quite as much at first. All the excitement seemed to have levelled off during the first minutes. The focus was more on the characters who were connected to those who were saving the world, but not part of the effort.

Then the excitement level increased again. Toward the end, this movie will keep you on the edge of your seat. The special effects for the most part were not that impressive, but they saved the visual effects budget for the amazing climactic scenes. Once again, I would say the final solution must be seen like one would watch The Super Bowl.

I don't imagine most science teachers will be happy with this movie. They might laugh, but not with good reason. I don't know enough about science to say, but while the knowledgeable parties seemed to know what they were talking about and managed to make it sound quite real, not all of it seemed logical.

A major omission: some of the characters needed extensive training for what had to be done. We didn't get to see that? We didn't get to laugh at it? Oh, I guess it all happened miraculously in Offscreenville. There were some true miracles in this movie.

I guess the acting was good enough. James Cromwell, as the bitter grandfather, probably did the best job. Others had their moments.

But one of the most important things about the movie was the way the world came together. Remember New York City on 9-11? It shouldn't, but I guess it takes a real disaster to bring people together. That was another miracle.

If you want to watch a TV movie about a disaster, you could do worse.

Armageddon with a Deep Twist

[elliott78212 · 6/10 · 4 September 2011]

Its a cocktail of movies what if you mixed Armageddon, Deep Impact and split the moon the result would be this fun day of destruction mini series...heck I even bought the DVD. I enjoyed this very much its not your run of the mill disaster flick nope its not that at all so many cliché's mixed in and some turned on their heads. Natasha Henstridge is beautiful and just talented enough to pull this off mix in David James Elliott and James Cromwell as a grieving grandpa and you have a movie with family values, including a few tear jerking moments. The VFX are good enough for a TV Movie even if the plot leaves you in suspended belief but hey thats what these movies are about What If? I enjoyed it more than Category 7 a must of disaster film fans.

Biggest disaster the Science?

[mica404 · 3/10 · 26 January 2013]

To begin with, some positives: the cast did pretty well with what they were given, most of the subplots were interesting and resolved pretty well, and unlike a lot of similar movies, the emotional layers were played realistically.

So this is not irredeemable, but as with all science fiction, it lives or dies on the science.

There are three ways it can work: 1). I don't care if a movie goes for fantasy science, as long as it is upfront about it and tries to be consistent, or 2). even bad science where the science is fudged for the sake of the story, IF the story is a fun ride. Obviously 3). Good science throughout is best, but how many movies manage that?

This piece tries for option 3, with detailed scientific explanations everywhere, but almost every use of science is wrong. As other reviews show, some people can look past that. Personally the rest of the movie is not good enough to cut them that much slack and in any event I just found the constant stream of errors grate more and more as the film went on. It was almost as is the writers thought that they could just say anything and no-one would notice.

I really don't want to pick the details apart, but one example to highlight my irritation.

The basic premise is that a small piece of highly dense material hits the moon and wackiness ensues. Firstly they call it Brown Dwarf Star material, which is not super dense. The description isn't of that material, but instead of dead cold star material - a black dwarf. That is fine, except that astrophysicists don't think it actually exists yet. Instead of Black Dwarfs there are White Dwarfs, which would be OK for the plot, except you can easily see them. They might have meant Neutron Star material, except that would have been way heavier that they wanted (mass of Sun not Earth) which would wreck the rest of the plot.

Secondly, whichever option they actually meant, something that dense, that fast hitting the moon is likely to shatter it and keep on going. Funnier would be that if the fragment hit the moon and stuck as in the film its momentum (remembering that the fragment was 6-10 times heavier than the moon) would knock the moon completely out of orbit.

Lastly, the object has to be a fragment of White Dwarf/Neutron Star/whatever as a whole one is way too big for the plot to work. The only problem with that is how on earth you break a piece off of one of the densest objects in the universe.

It feels nit-picky to go through things like this, but the same is true of every part of the plot that is science-Dependant. By the time the tanker started floating, while the water nearby was unaffected, and non-metallic objects were flying around, while cars were not, I was not sure whether I should laugh or cry.

Actually not that bad...

[paul_haakonsen · 6/10 · 26 November 2023]

I had never actually heard about this 2009 mini-series before now in 2023, as I happened to stumble upon it by random chance. And seeing it was a natural disaster-themed mini-series, of course I opted to watch it.

Sure, I wasn't harboring any expectations to this mini-series, as such mini-series tend to be rather questionable affairs. But I still opted to give "Impact" the benefit of the doubt.

The storyline in "Impact" was actually enjoyable. Sure, one can certainly say that it was straightforward, and somewhat generic for a natural disaster-themed mini-series. But it turned out to be entertaining. And yeah, it was predictable, so very, very predictable.

I was surprised to see the cast ensemble in the mini-series, with the likes of David James Elliott, Natasha Henstridge, James Cromwell and Steven Culp. The acting performances in "Impact" were good, and that definitely helped to add to the overall impression of the mini-series.

Visually then "Impact" was adequate enough. Some of the CGI effects were fair and passed as being watchable and believable, whereas other CGI effects were shoddy, questionable and looked like something from an early 2000s computer game.

"Impact" is entertaining if you enjoy movies and mini-series about natural disasters. However, keep in mind that the storyline is somewhat generic, and rather predictable. But it definitely is worth sitting down to watch and spend 3 hours and 7 minutes on. However, it is not something that can sustain more than a single viewing.

My rating of "Impact" lands on a six out of ten stars.

Simply incredible

[capncrusty · 1/10 · 30 June 2009]

It's as if the writers got together over Domino's pizza, cheap beer and bad weed and said: "Let's take every disaster-movie cliché, one-dimensional character-stereotype and hoary, time-worn situation fiction has ever come up with, lump them in together with crappy special effects, laughable "science" and all the inane pop-psyche observations about the 'human condition' we can think of, then pitch it to the network execs. It's bound to be a hit!" And they were right; the front-office guys bought it (NOTE: I'm assuming that at least one of the aforementioned scribblers was related to one of the execs). And we who watched it lost. This is one of the worst pieces of garbage I have ever seen. Absolutely nothing innovative or original. Absolutely. Nothing. Nada. Zip. Negatron. I think the fact that "Impact" even got past CBS's front door suggests that indeed Hollywood is nearly as dead as GM. If you value your artistic soul, do NOT watch this thing.

Not as inaccurate as some reviewers would make you believe

[dougnoneyobusiness · 7/10 · 2 September 2009]

After reading some other spoilers here, I was skeptical and I caught a couple of blown lines, like at the end when Alex tells Sergei, "We're not leaving anyone behind..." that was the greatest line screwup of the whole film since the mission commander just took an accelerated gravity fall over a cliff never to be seen again so sorry Alex, but yes you are leaving someone behind...nice marine line though...Semper Fi!!! Hoo-Ah!

Still the screen writer said in the extras, he actually went to some actual astro-physicists to check the plausibility.

Now here we have all these great scientific minds in reviewing her and I ask, have you ever fired a high powered rifle into the sand on a beach or your back yard or through an oak tree or an handgun unto a clay block to examine expansion damage?

Same principle as your brown matter and the only brown matter any of you pseudo-scientists have come in close contact with in this life is while wiping your butt each daily dump.

I can assure you, that a lead or a depleted uranium round will in fact stop at some point in the sand and not blow a hole to the earth's core, so take that smart guys!

It's called suspension of disbelief and the term was coined a couple, few hundred years back and still hold true for movie enjoyment.

And since we're all just having fun, Did you notice the rack on Natasha Henstridge. My god is she fine. I would have googled some bikini pictures of her a long time ago had I noticed that rocking body, but I don't watch television regularly...just movies and this isn't so bad and is actually kind of fun in spots.

To all the "experts" here, you can tell us all how dense brown matter actually is after you wash it off your hands next time okay? A lot of space science is speculative and it changes constantly unlike some other areas of science. Theories come and go on a daily basis.

Let's not pretend they are carved in stone.

Very possibly one of the worst science-fiction movies ever made this century.

[vfrickey · 1/10 · 20 November 2010]

I mean that, too. Part of the dumbing-down of the civilized world (not just America) is that something that used to be taught in high school, the Law of Universal Gravitation, is blithely tossed out the window in this Leaden Turkey of a movie. Things happen which anyone with a pencil and paper and knowledge of equation F=G(M(1)xM(2))/r squared at his disposal could show would never happen in a few minutes of paperwork. It's not even calculus - just simple algebra. Isaac Newton was able to figure it out in the seventeenth century.

There is absolutely no excuse for this film. It is an amalgam of willful, sorry ignorance of scientific facts wrapped up in a glittering cinema production. The writers of this script should hang their heads in shame, for they have demonstrated a great deal of highly-counterintuitive idiocy in their screenplay.

There are American films I am proud are shown overseas. This one makes me want to hang my head in shame at the thought that the screenwriters' VERY sketchy grasp of science is being shown outside the country, helping to give our people a mostly undeserved reputation for crass stupidity.

If I could burn every reel, tape and DVD of a movie, it would be this one.

Ignore the critics.

[lowellriggsiam · 8/10 · 27 June 2009]

I am not one much to write a review about anything, but certainly feel the need to defend this. Almost everyone that has been trashing it say they are going to continue to watch it to the end. Why would they do this? Because it's not all that bad. Yes the movie is low budget, yes the movie is imperfect, but the movie works none the less. This series, presents in a simplistic manner, a completely plausible, yet illogical story, but that is the point. The characters developed nicely, the story was compelling, and the writing was acceptable. Watch this movie without cynicism and take in it's entertainment value and it is certain to captivate your attention.

Bad science, sure, but still

[mcoelenfun · 6/10 · 14 June 2010]

OK so there are some problems with this movie I'll give you that but still I want to focus on the positives. I give it a 6 out of 10 for those.

1 The acting is okay. For those who don't agree: We had a politician here who made a campaign film, now that was bad acting! 2 It's internationally oriented. For once it is not just the United States who is affected and who magically saves the world. Actually the Europeans and Russians play their part.

3 Even if it is just for a brief moment the Germans and French talked German and French. For the rest of the movie regional accents are heard. Not the whole world speaks American English.

4 It was enjoyable to watch if you don't focus to much on the negatives.

The trouble I had with it are the following: 1 It's scientific basis is as good as a 1950's movie there are a lot of things that don't add up. It's fine for a movie back then but now moviegoers know more and are therefor more demanding on this point. They should have taken a little more care in getting the basics right, even if the higher science doesn't add up.

2 that the US would decide on this without consulting it's international partners (I believe that China, Russia, the EU and others would want a say in that and all hell would break loose if they didn't get a say) this would be the spoilerisch bit, even if I believe anyone would see this coming. 3 that the US president would be stupid enough to prefer the option of the army over the option presented by a large international team of scientists (who are in consensus for once). Especially when the option by the military is considered as counterproductive for years by scientists and administrators for years.

Cool! The Moon Blew Up!

[rockbroker · 2/10 · 28 June 2009]

Wow! I don't know why, but it does somehow comfort me to know that the major TV networks can still crank out mind numbingly stupid and horrible TV movies. But just like eating TV dinners, watching TV movies hold a perverse charm for me. This one was as stupid as they come. And that treacly - sweet piano music that welled up behind every emotion laden scene ("I'll never leave you kids without saying goodbye"; "your mother and I will always be looking out for you" - Oh my god grandpa, don't die!; "I'm pregnant").

One note of interest: the main character is Alex Kittner. Obviously an homage to one of the greatest disaster/suspense flicks ever - Jaws. Alex Kittner is the boy who is eaten at the beach, the one whose mother slaps Chief Brody in the face for keeping the beaches open. Thank god Alex was resurrected to save the Earth from a killer great white...moon!!!