{"id":6970,"date":"2024-10-25T11:28:28","date_gmt":"2024-10-25T15:28:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=6970"},"modified":"2024-10-25T11:28:28","modified_gmt":"2024-10-25T15:28:28","slug":"meteor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/10\/25\/meteor\/","title":{"rendered":"Meteor"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Meteor<\/strong> (1979)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 American International\/Sci-Fi-Action-Drama\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 107 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG (language, violent images, scenes of destruction)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Ronald Neame\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Stanley Mann and Edmund H. North\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Laurence Rosenthal\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Paul Lohmann\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: October 19, 1979 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Sean Connery, Natalie Wood, Karl Malden, Brian Keith, Martin Landau, Trevor Howard, Richard Dysart, Joseph Campanella, Henry Fonda, Bo Brundin, Katherine De Hetre, James G. Richardson, Roger Robinson, Michael Zaslow, John McKinney, John Findlater, Paul Tulley, Allen Williams, Bibi Besch, Gregory Gay, Clyde Kusatsu, Sybil Danning.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $8.4M (US)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: *<\/p>\n

\u00a0How do you follow up an act like The Concorde… Airport \u201979? Obviously, you don\u2019t. That disaster-in-every-sense movie is so spectacularly inept; no mortal man could ever make anything like it, on purpose or not. However, there\u2019s no rule that says you can\u2019t at least try. The folks at American International sure did with Meteor<\/strong>, a slightly less incompetent disaster flick about a giant asteroid on a collision course with Earth after being knocked out of orbit by a comet. I\u2019d like to say that the news of impending disaster sends the world into a panic, but since most of the running time is spent inside an underground military facility, it\u2019s hard to say how the public is taking it. It\u2019s just one of many blunders made by director Ronald Neame who should know better seeing as how he previously directed The Poseidon Adventure, a classic of the catastrophe genre.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Neame starts things off with a brief lesson on comets and the Asteroid Belt courtesy of actor Peter Donat (couldn\u2019t get Carl Sagan?) via voiceover. He tells us about a large asteroid called Orpheus describing it as \u201c20 miles in diameter and undisturbed for countless generations…. UNTIL NOW.\u201d Ah, \u201cuntil now\u201d, a two-word phrase that carries with it anticipation of calamity and chaos. BTW, the calamity part isn\u2019t necessarily restricted to the events depicted in the movie.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The plot of Meteor<\/strong> isn\u2019t anything special. When it\u2019s learned that a huge chunk of Orpheus will hit Earth in less than a week, NASA calls in Dr. Paul Bradley (former 007 Connery) to help out. He isn\u2019t exactly happy to be there. He created Hercules, an orbiting satellite armed with nuclear missiles. It was intended to protect the planet from the likes of Orpheus until the military took charge of it and aimed the missiles at what was then the Soviet Union. He\u2019s never gotten over this betrayal, one for which he holds former colleague and friend Harry Sherwood (Malden, On the Waterfront) responsible.<\/p>\n

\u00a0ANYWAY, they need him to reprogram Hercules to fire its missiles at the meteor once it\u2019s in range. The problem is that it doesn\u2019t have enough firepower (only 14 missiles) to stop Orpheus. They\u2019re going to need the help of the Soviets who have their own secret satellite- aka Peter the Great- with 16 missiles. Soviet scientist Dr. Alexei Dubov (Keith, The Parent Trap) comes to the US to discuss the matter. It takes some doing, but they finally agree to work together to stop the meteor before it wipes out humanity.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Like all disaster movies, Meteor<\/strong> boasts an all-star cast of great actors looking to stay in the game. It includes Natalie Wood (West Side Story) as Russian interpreter Tatiana, Martin Landau (Ed Wood) as facility commander General Adlon, Trevor Howard (The Third Man) as British scientist Sir Michael, Richard Dysart (Pale Rider) as the Secretary of Defense, Joseph Campanella (Hangar 18) as General Easton and \u201cHenry Fonda as The President\u201d (another favorite disaster movie phrase).<\/p>\n

\u00a0Now for the pertinent info about the characters. Bradley and Tatiana fall for each other. Adlon, the film\u2019s villain figure, is vehemently opposed to sharing information with the Soviets. Early in the movie, three astronauts die when a chunk of Orpheus hits their craft. One of them was Easton\u2019s son. For him, it\u2019s personal. The facility is located beneath the subway system in Lower Manhattan. A piece of the big space rock hits New York taking out the World Trade Center- in the words of teenage Movie Guy 24\/7, that\u2019s pretty f***ed up- and trapping the principal characters underground. Yes, I think that should do it as far as plot is concerned.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The biggest mystery in Meteor<\/strong> is how it still manages to look cheap despite $16 million being spent on it. We\u2019re talking 1979 dollars which translates to roughly $57 million in 2020 dollars. With that much money available, the special effects should be awesome. Instead, they\u2019re awesomely bad. Outer space is clearly a backdrop. The meteor, obviously a large fake rock, seems to move in place rather than hurtle towards Earth. Then there are the disasters caused by fragments of the meteor landing in different parts of the world. We get an avalanche in the Swiss Alps, a tidal wave in Hong Kong and, of course, the Big Apple. Fake, fake, FAKE! Look at the New York sequences. Neame uses stock footage and miniatures to depict the collapse of Manhattan. For scenes inside the facility, he shakes the camera to simulate the effect of an earth-shaking event.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The acting is pretty much on par with other disaster movies. A lot of once-big stars try to out-embarrass each other with hammy performances and terrible dialogue. About the nicest thing I can say is that Wood and Keith\u2019s Russian accents aren\u2019t awful. Both actors speak the language fluently. When they\u2019re not talking, they\u2019re dodging falling plaster and flowing mud. That\u2019s really all there is to say on this subject.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The idiocy in Meteor<\/strong> is nearly as rampant as it is in Airport \u201979. The science is questionable at best and entirely wrong at worst. The makers did not do their homework. If they did, they\u2019d know a few facts about space that would have come in handy during production. Take the scene where the space probe is destroyed. The astronauts never would have seen it coming. They wouldn\u2019t have time to react. To be fair, not a lot of people would know this. Not everybody is a rocket scientist. I had to look it up myself. This is not the only thing Meteor<\/strong> gets wrong. I could name a few other things, but what\u2019s the point? I\u2019ll say this much, my sixth grade science teacher would slap a big fat F on the movie.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I do like the poster for Meteor<\/strong>. True to form, it has a line of boxes with the actors\u2019 faces in them. It also has \u201cHenry Fonda as The President\u201d on it. It\u2019s the little things in life that make me smile. And it\u2019s bad movies like Meteor<\/strong> that keep me laughing. I\u2019ll give it this much, it\u2019s more entertaining than Armageddon which cost almost ten times as much to make and is only a tenth as fun as the older movie. Take that, Michael Bay!\"\"<\/p>\n

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Meteor (1979)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 American International\/Sci-Fi-Action-Drama\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 107 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG (language, violent images, scenes of destruction)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Ronald Neame\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Stanley Mann and Edmund H. North\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Laurence Rosenthal\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Paul Lohmann\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: October 19, 1979 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Sean Connery, Natalie Wood, Karl Malden, Brian Keith, Martin Landau, Trevor Howard, Richard Dysart, Joseph Campanella, Henry […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7256,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6970","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-action-adventure","category-guilty-pleasures"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Meteor-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6970","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6970"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6970\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7258,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6970\/revisions\/7258"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}