Hollywood disaster films were made before and after 1970s, but the genre is usually associated with that particular decade, when combination of special effects, intense action and star-studded casts almost guaranteed box-office success. Decline of the genre occurred when this formula lost its effectiveness and, by chance, this decline coincided with the end of the decade. One of the clearest examples of such decline can be found in Meteor, 1979 science fiction film directed by Ronald Neame.
The calamity threatening the protagonists in this film tops everything seen before. A comet travelling through Solar system has struck an asteroid smashing it into million pieces, the largest one being five miles wide and on collision course to Earth, bound to end civilisation or humanity on impact. Nominal protagonist, played by Sean Connery, is Dr. Paul Bradley, former NASA scientist who has designed Hercules, orbital nuclear weapons platform with the purpose of prevent this from happening. He has resigned NASA, disgusted with the way Hercules was commandeered by US military into secret First Strike asset against Soviet Union. Now he is called by government to help redirect the missiles against the asteroid, but it turns out that destructive power of those missiles isn’t enough. Thankfully, Soviets have their own orbital weapons platform and their missiles combined with American ones might just do the job. Soviet scientist Dr. Dubov (played by Brian Keith) and his translator Tatiana Donska (played by Natalie Wood) arrive into secret underground base in New York to help Bradley and his colleagues. In the meantime, pieces of asteroid begins to hit Earth, causing avalanche in Switzerland and tsunami that wrecks Hong Kong, while the even larger piece threatens to hit New York.
Directed by Ronald Neame, British film maker known for 1972 The Poseidon Adventure, undisputed classic of disaster film genre, Meteor can’t escape comparisons with 1998 Armageddon, the film that used the same premise with much more success. This film, unlike Michael Bay’s messy combination of cheap melodrama and cheap comedy, plays it straight and the script, unlike Michael Bay’s ode to American chauvinism, shows the importance of international cooperation and that even Cold War adversaries must overcome their differences for the sake of humanity. This is, however, the only advantage Meteor has over Armageddon. In everything else it represents dismal failure. The script is filled with one-dimensional characters, including paranoid US general going mad over having to allow evil Communists into his base, played hysterically by Martin Landau. The plot generally leaves overqualified charismatic actors nothing to do but talk nonsense and stare at screens. Hardly anything happens in the film and when it finally does the film, which had higher budget than Star Wars, it becomes obvious that almost nothing went into special effects which, consequently, look pathetically unconvincing even for late 1970s standards. One such example is destruction of New York, presented through more than obvious stock footage of buildings going through controlled demolition. Meteor, unsurprisingly, fared very badly both at the box-office and at the critics. Nowadays it can be recommended only to those viewers curious enough to see how could a disaster film can end as a disaster itself.
RATING: 2/10 (-)
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Movie URL: https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/40160-meteor Critic: A
