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'''Deep Impact''' is a 1998 science fiction disaster film released by Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks Pictures. The film was directed by Mimi Leder, and stars Elijah Wood, Téa Leoni, Morgan Freeman, Leelee Sobieski, Vanessa Redgrave and Robert Duvall. The film describes the events which take place surrounding the discovery of the fictional "Comet Wolf-Biederman," due to collide with the Earth, and the attempt to destroy the comet before impact. It was released on May 8, 1998.
;Taglines

★ ''"Heaven and Earth are about to collide"''.

★ ''"Cities fall. Oceans rise. Hope survives"''.

Contents

Cast

Plot summary

Competition

Trivia

References

See also

External links

Cast

★ Robert Duvall as Captain Spurgeon "Fish" Tanner, USN

★ Téa Leoni as Jenny Lerner

★ Elijah Wood as Leo Biederman

★ Vanessa Redgrave as Robin Lerner

★ Maximilian Schell as Jason Lerner

★ Morgan Freeman as President Tom Beck

★ Leelee Sobieski as Sarah Hotchner

★ James Cromwell as Al Rittenhouse

★ Ron Eldard as Oren Monash

★ Jon Favreau as Dr. Gus Partenza

★ Mary McCormack as Andrea "Andy" Baker

★ Blair Underwood as Mark Simon

★ Richard Schiff as Don Biederman

★ Laura Innes as Beth Stanley

★ Kurtwood Smith as Otis Hefner

★ Dougray Scott as Eric Vennekor

★ Denise Crosby as Vicky Hotchner

★ Charles Martin Smith as Dr. Marcus Wolf

★ Rya Kihlstedt as Chloe Lerner

★ Aleksandr Baluyev as Colonel Mikhail Tulchinsky, VVS

Plot summary

As Leo Biederman (Wood) and Sarah Hotchner (Sobieski), two teenage astronomy club members, observe the stars, Leo discovers a new object. Leo takes a photo and mails it with the coordinates to astronomer Dr. Marcus Wolf (Charles Martin Smith). Wolf confirms the sighting at an observatory, and after discovering the comet will hit Earth he attempts to alert his colleagues, but is unable to get through. He saves the data to a disk, but dies in a car crash after leaving the observatory.
One year later, Jenny Lerner (Leoni), a field reporter for MSNBC in Washington, DC, is assigned a story regarding the resignation of Secretary of the Treasury Al Rittenhouse (James Cromwell). After Lerner interviews Rittenhouse's wife, who implicates her husband as having an affair with someone named Ellie, Lerner confronts Rittenhouse, who believes Lerner knows about the comet. As Lerner deduces she is on to something more, the FBI apprehends her to find out what she knows. In a meeting with President Tom Beck (Freeman), Lerner agrees not to report about "Ellie" for 48 hours, and over the next two days Lerner discovers that the government was hiding its knowledge about "E.L.E", an acronym for an extinction-level event. In exchange, President Beck gives Lerner the story of a lifetime by allowing her to ask the first questions at a White House news conference...
Beck announces the comet's existence and its track. The comet is seven miles wide, large enough to destroy civilization if it strikes Earth, and that NASA will send a crew of astronauts on the spaceship ''Messiah'' to the comet, now named "Wolf-Biederman". Led by Captain Spurgeon Tanner (Duvall), their mission is to destroy it using nuclear weapons.
In order to prevent opportunism in this crisis period, Beck freezes all wages and prices.
Life changes drastically worldwide, and Leo Biederman and Jenny Lerner both become celebrities, though Leo tries to live as normal a life as he can. He and Sarah fall in love. Jenny is swiftly promoted to an anchor for MSNBC, and is reunited with her estranged father (Maximilian Schell), though their relationship is still quite strained.
''Messiah'' is constructed in orbit. The crew use the Space Shuttle ''Atlantis'' to reach it. They travel to the comet and plant the bombs, but their medical officer, Dr. Gus Partenza (Favreau), is lost in an explosive outgassing as the sun "rises" on the comet, and pilot Oren Monash (Eldard) is blinded and severely burned after accidentally looking at the sun. The nuclear explosion's shock wave damages the vessel, cutting off contact with mission control back on Earth. The comet is not destroyed, however, instead splitting into two objects, one piece 10 kilometers wide ("Wolf")—the other 2.5 kilometers wide ("Biederman"). ''Messiah''’s remaining crew sets a course back to Earth, still carrying some unused bombs, in the hopes of making one last attempt to destroy one or both.
President Beck, acknowledging ''Messiah''’s failure, announces that special underground shelters have been built in Missouri and other areas around the world as a contingency. The government will conduct a lottery to randomly select 800,000 ordinary Americans to join 200,000 pre-selected scientists, engineers, teachers, artists, soldiers and officials. These people will be part of a worldwide effort to save mankind from extinction.
Beck declares martial law as the lottery's selectees are notified. Jenny and Leo are both among the pre-selected. Leo, being a minor, is permitted to bring his family. He also gets permission to marry Sarah, in order to save her and her family. When the day arrives to evacuate to the caves, the soldiers have no record of Sarah's family being allowed to accompany Leo and Sarah, prompting Sarah to remain behind as well.
Upon arriving at the caves, Leo leaves, determined to be with Sarah whether he lives or not. He makes his way to her home, but finds it empty. Taking Sarah's father's motorbike, he locates Sarah and her family gridlocked on a freeway. With her parents' blessing, he takes Sarah and her infant sister on the motorbike to high ground in the Appalachian Mountains.
Meanwhile, MSNBC is being evacuated by helicopter. Jenny gives her seat to co-worker and rival Beth Stanley (Innes) because she has a young daughter, and sends them off to the caves. She then goes to the coast to be with her father at his beach house. They have time to reconcile before they face their doom.

Ultimately, after a last-ditch effort to use all of Earth's missile-borne nuclear weapons to destroy the comets fails, "Biederman" splashes down in the North Atlantic Ocean near Virginia Beach and Cape Hatteras, creating a megatsunami several thousand feet high. Jenny, her father and Sarah's parents all die, along with others who did not evacuate in time. Coastal cities such as Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, Virginia Beach, Norfolk, Virginia, Charleston, South Carolina, Savannah, Georgia, and Washington, D.C. are destroyed, as well as Atlanta and Florida (as seen from the ''Messiah'' spacecraft). Leo, Sarah, Sarah's brother, and many others manage to climb high enough to survive. Later in the movie, we learn that the wave also hit Europe and Africa.
The crew members of ''Messiah'' inform NASA of their decision to try to blow up the remaining, larger fragment by flying into a fissure that has formed in the comet and exploding the remaining bombs. They will all die whatever the result, but have enough time to say goodbye to their families. ''Messiah'' succeeds in breaking up "Wolf" into small enough pieces that they burn up entering Earth's atmosphere, saving humanity. Afterwards, President Beck gives an inspirational speech, in front of the reconstructed U.S. Capitol building, to begin recovery and rebuilding efforts.

Competition

A competing "space impact" film, ''Armageddon'', was released about two months following ''Deep Impact''. ''Deep Impact's'' story is distinctly more serious than the comic-book style ''Armageddon'', and has a stronger emphasis on the effect on society. ''Deep Impact'' was also lauded by astronomers as being scientifically relevant, unlike other motion pictures based on the asteroid-hits-earth scenario. Both films were hits, though ''Armageddon'' did better at the box office.

Trivia

★ Inspired by the film When Worlds Collide. ^[1]

★ An actual giant object from space did once strike the general area of the Eastern Seaboard where "Biederman" impacted in the film. Hitting the Norfolk, Virginia vicinity about 35 million years ago, it created the huge, now-buried Chesapeake Bay impact crater.

★ The film portrays the wave that struck New York City crashing over and around the towers of the World Trade Center, which were the only buildings barely above water at the end of the sequence, surviving the wave. After the events of the September 11 terrorist attacks, some television broadcasts of the film were edited to remove the buildings.

★ At the beginning of the movie when Dr. Wolf is using his computer the screen reads ''May 10, 1998''.

★ Early in the movie, Dr. Wolf (Charles Martin Smith) is shown working at the "Adrian Peak Observatory in Arizona." The scene was actually filmed in the dome of the 100 inch Hooker telescope at Mt. Wilson Observatory, north of Los Angeles.

★ This film discussed preparations for surviving a massive comet strike upon the Earth, and mineshafts are drafted into service for this reason, in an echo of the survival plan in ''. Additionally, a lottery system is proposed for selection of candidates for survival, much like that proposed by Dr. Strangelove himself.

★ In the Director's Commentary and Special Features, the director and computer animators admitted to putting "one hell of a mean-looking face" on the comet, as a bit of an in-joke.

★ On the list from which Dr. Wolf takes the name of Leo Biederman his name is spelled "Beiderman," and Dr. Wolf writes it the same way when he labels the disk with the comet's data. In the credits, the name is spelled Biederman.

★ A spoof was done on ''Chappelle's Show'' on what would really happen when President Beck (Freeman) tells the public that the earth will be hit.

★ This was the first film made by DreamWorks that was co-produced with another major studio.

★ Michael Bay, the director of the competing Armageddon, was invited and did attend the movie premiere.^[2]

★ To achieve the speed necessary to reach the comet in time, the new spaceship has special booster engines from Russia, dubbed Orion and described as being designed to propel weapons of mass destruction. Project Orion is a real-life theoretical high-speed spacecraft engine, where the idea is to generate thrust through nuclear explosions that push against a drive plate.

★ A line was edited in the President's press conference scene. President Beck stated ''Life will go on, we will prevail.'' Originally, President Beck said ''Life will go on, we will prevail. This is not armageddon.'' When the producers realized that the movie was going to be in competition with ''Armageddon'' they cut that part of the line. A simillar line is spoken in Jurassic Park as mathematician Dr. Ian Malcom states "Life finds a way."

References

1. http://www.time.com/time/community/transcripts/chattr031998.html
2. [Michael Bay in commentary track #1 of the Criterion edition of Armageddon]

See also

★ Extinction level event (ELE)

★ Asteroid deflection strategies

★ Deep Impact (space mission)

External links

★

★ Movie stills