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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, some 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 heading 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 are going to 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 all. 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 shuts up about what's really happening and does
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 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.