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Deep Impact (1998)
Rate:
6
Viewed:
5/24
5/24:
Deep Impact is a thought-provoking disaster film.
Given the ambitious theme, the offered solutions are too simplistic. The way the U.S. President handled the situation is
among the worst of all time. The first moment he mentions the grave danger facing the world, the United States as a
legitimate country vanishes just like that. As a result, there will be anarchy and looting.
At the time the movie was made, there were about 280 million people living in the U.S. Let's say it employed, give or take,
one million military service members. They still won't be able to withstand 200+ million anarchists. Sure, a million or so
will be shot dead during the initial wave, but eventually, it becomes overwhelming by sheer force of numbers.
So, they take over the country, and what's next? That's the true problem. It'll be pretty much free-for-all, Forget food,
water, toilet stuff, and whatever else. They're gone. Going outside will be tricky as there's the risk of being shot for fun.
People going for the highest elevation possible whether it's the Rocky Mountains (I suppose that's the most ideal place) or
the Appalachian Mountains (second best choice), it'll be quite dangerous and also at a premium cost as the spots will be
heavily guarded all over.
Probably for months before the comet ever comes, food and water will have run out en masse, and everybody will be hungry
and thirsty. That becomes a new problem. Forget buying anything with dollar bills; they'll have no value anymore. Gold is
the new standard. And that's it. Everybody is going to have to wait it out and hope for the best. Oh, yeah...it'll be a
good idea to keep scuba diving gear handy along with the dry suits if they ever manage to live that long.
Or we can backtrack and try a better idea: the U.S. President can shut up about what's really happening and do things much
quietly by selecting people via lottery and escorting them secretly to an undisclosed location which can be done for a long
while. When people on the outside finally figure out the big picture by looking at the sky, that's when chaos begins, but
it'll be too late for them. Therefore, they'll have to fend for themselves by doing whatever they can do. Yeah, the
situation sucks, but the United States has always been a selfish, reactive country.
By the way, the White House knew what's going on in outer space ahead of time by a year, so why didn't it, even with the
help of other countries, start building plenty of space rockets in record time and then launch ten to twenty of them with
nuclear warheads? They'll have a bunch to work with to keep blowing the comet into pieces as much as possible.
Given what I've seen out of the film, I'm not happy with the presented stories. The characters are all good-looking white
people with no issues. What about the others who are black, Latino, Asian, fat, disabled, homeless, in prison or hospital,
and so on? There's zero attention paid to them. Oh, I get it...they aren't important like how it happened in
When Worlds Collide.
Back to the lottery, I refuse to believe it'll be simple. This is what will happen: rich people and celebrities are going
to be selected. The more money they have, the better their chances are. It will include their trophy wives, relatives, and
anybody else with connections. The whiter and better-looking they are, the easier it is to get in that stupid cave somewhere
in Missouri.
Oh, all right...we can forget everything I've said and take the easy way out by having the comet hit Earth, killing
virtually everybody. All left at the end will be a dead silence among the audience, leaving them with the following single
thought: "Oh, well...that's life." By the way, I want to mention one thing that I've found absolutely useful which should
be implemented in movies that deal with a complicated subject matter, especially in war, and it's when the anchor reporter
(Téa Leoni) explained in layman's terms of what the astronauts were doing up there in outer space.
All in all, Deep Impact invites too many questions, and almost all are impossible to answer until the event
actually happens.