Shallow Thoughts on DEEP IMPACT (1998)
So, quick setup: Until tonight, I had never seen DEEP IMPACT (1998), but I had seen ARMAGEDDON (also from 1998). The similarities between the two films are numerous and quite obvious; both plots center around an asteroid potentially hitting Earth and avoiding the ensuing disaster, and both movies feature an intense bald man tasked with saving humanity as its main character. I generally like movies about EXTINCTION LEVEL EVENTS. They are stupid and hyperbolic and fun and can be a good way to spend 90 to 120 minutes. Everyone in the movie is so serious (I mean, yeah) but everything else is so silly and that dichotomy is just wonderful to me.
So, I like disaster movies, but I’d never seen DEEP IMPACT until tonight. It was leaving an asteroid-sized hole in my movie-watching career. So I decided enough was enough, and tonight I ate an edible and watched DEEP IMPACT. What follows are some truly dumb thoughts about the movie.
It’s Frodo!
Seeing the President walk suddenly and unexpectedly into a kitchen would be MAD cool and I would also be very confused. He just walked in with like, two bodyguards! Can presidents set up clandestine meetings in kitchens with reporters without anyone finding out about them? Presidents can’t do that anymore. Morgan Freeman should play the president in every disaster movie. I would feel very safe in his presence.
Really funny to me that this whole beginning with Jenny the reporter is set up on the premise of a miscommunication about her thinking the president is worried about a cheating scandal in his administration but the president is actually worried about a massive asteroid coming to destroy them all. It’s also depressing, though, because even though this movie came out in 1998 I feel like this plot point is a prescient metaphor for the world we live in now, a world where we’re freaking out about Elon Musk’s Twitter meltdown or whoever Pete Davidson is having sex with rather than the horrifying fact that the earth’s temperature and ocean levels are constantly rising and Miami is not going to exist in another quarter century.
GREAT cast. Is young Jon Favreau hot?
I would like to be one of the guys sitting at the computer bay in the NASA War Room, usually at the elbow of the head honcho (who is always standing up with a headset on, looking at the giant screens with their brow furrowed) click-clacking and beep-beeping away, saying “yes sir” or “pulling up the scans now, ma’am” or “awaiting confirmation, sir.” That seems like a pretty good gig, because first of all, I’d be on land, in a nice, air-conditioned room, presumably with some coffee, which is decidedly not a cramped ship hurtling through space and is in fact much nicer, and I’d only have a couple of things to say, but they would be dramatic things that I’d say with gravitas like, Sir, we have a successful landing.
OH, shit, Favreau just got blasted into space by one of the exploding surface geysers. Has to be the worst way to die. HAS to be. Name a worse thing. You can’t. Poor guy.
Frodo is definitely getting laid at the end of this movie.
OK, Morgan Freeman is being almost TOO presidential here. He’s way too calm! He needs to freak out a little more!
A million people in a giant network of caves? How long does that take to build? It seems like Morgan Freeman’s administration has been working round the clock on this for YEARS, and it also seems like everyone in the country is finding out about this last minute. This seems like a general failure of organizing. How did no one know about this?
Lottery system to live in the caves. Ouch. Feels like the odds are still better than winning the Phish lottery. But today’s Phish lottery. Not in 1998. Tickets were eighteen bucks then. Did you know that?
Listen, I apologize for what I said above. A person should have the right to read some dumb thoughts about a stupid asteroid movie without having to unwittingly come across any words about the band Phish. I apologize and that won’t happen again.
The evacuation to the caves is scheduled for August 12. This movie came out in 1998. 8/12/98. Vernon Downs. #phish
Everyone is giving up pretty quickly it seems?
Frodo with the rings… Oh no.
Wait they’re actually getting married? What a wild plot point to invoke here. There was no need for this.
Loved this scene between Duvall and the blind astronaut with the reading of Moby Dick. That’s cool.
Oh, I see why they did that whole marriage scene now. So that she can join his family in the caves. Woof. Should’ve seen it coming. I still don’t think there was any need for it. But at least I get it now. Narrative arcs and all that. She’s going to get rescued later.
Oh, so they’re LITERALLY calling the refuge place The Ark and bringing two of each animal into the cave. President Morgan Freeman was not kidding around when he said to think of the cave as “our own Noah’s Ark.” Is that how it works, the one male and one female thing? What if one of the flamingos gets sick and dies before it can reproduce? Then no more flamingos, just like that? That would be a huge bummer. What if someone just like, wrings its neck?
Jenny’s dad is such a creep. What a weird fucking accent.
OK so I know I said earlier that the whole reason Frodo and Sarah got married was so that she could then get left behind and he would have reason to go rescue her, but there is absolutely NO way that Frodo’s parents just let him roll out that easily from the gates of the cave. Not a chance. They just hugged him and he left! Literally any other parent on earth would drag that scrawny little hobbit in there by his neck. They just (ostensibly) said goodbye FOREVER? No chance. They just let it happen so easily. “I have to be with Sarah!” he said. He’s like fifteen years old! I know he married her, but Jesus. Also, wasn’t he in Richmond before? And now he’s in Missouri? Did the bus just drive all the way from Richmond to Missouri? How is he supposed to get back to her? I’m very confused about this whole part. He looks cool in his backwards hat though.
They’re drawing STICKS for the helicopter? Tough break.
Okay, what an absolute hero move by Frodo here. I now see why they’ve been setting this up. What a legendary play. Zig zagging through traffic on the way to rescue his tenth-grade wife.
See, Sarah’s parents are the total opposite of Frodo’s parents. They know how to handle this. Her parents are way, way better parents than Frodo’s parents. They did the absolute right thing in strapping her to that motorcycle and letting her escape with Frodo. They didn’t even say hi to him. Like this was so obvious. And then they stood holding each other lovingly and died. A masterclass in parenting.
Hey, that looks like Maine!
Still think Jenny’s dad was a weirdo, even though they’re having this nice moment now. I thought Jenny would certainly survive. She seemed to be the main character of this movie.
WE HAVE IMPACT! DEEP IMPACT!
These are some deep goodbyes between the astronauts and the families in the NASA War Room. I wonder what I’d say if given twenty seconds to say goodbye to my loved ones over a TV screen. I think I’d probably just slobber and cry and say I love you.