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Deep Impact is a 1998 disaster film/science fiction film released by Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks Pictures. The film is directed by Mimi Leder. Its cast is headed by Elijah Wood, Téa Leoni, Morgan Freeman, Leelee Sobieski and Robert Duvall. The interrelated stories of the plot describe events which take place surrounding the discovery of the fictional "Comet Wolf-Beiderman," due to impact Earth, and its subsequent approach to our planet. Taglines "Heaven and Earth are about to collide." "Cities fall. Oceans rise. Hope survives."
Cast Plot summary Leo Beiderman (Wood) and Sarah Hotchner (Sobieski), two teenage astronomy club members, discover a new object amongst the stars. Leo takes a photo and mails it and the coordinates to astronomer Dr. Marcus Wolf (C.M. Smith). Wolf confirms the sighting at an observatory. He discovers that the comet will hit the Earth and attempts to alert his colleagues, but is unable to get through. He saves the data to a disk, but dies in a car crash on the way down from the observatory. One year later, Jenny Lerner (Leoni), a field reporter for MSNBC in Washington, DC, finds out about a government secret called "Ellie" that is connected to President Tom Beck (Freeman) and might have had something to do with the resignation of Secretary of the Treasury Alan Rittenhouse (James Cromwell). Initially suspecting the Treasury Secretary or even the President of having an affair with a woman named Ellie, she confronts President Beck. She learns that it is really "ELE", the acronym for an extinction-level event. Beck invites her to a press conference, where he announces the comet's existence. The object is seven miles wide, large enough to destroy civilization if it strikes the Earth. President Beck announces that NASA is going to send a crew of astronauts on the spaceship Messiah to the comet, now named "Wolf-Beiderman". Led by Captain Spurgeon Tanner (Duvall), their mission is to destroy it using nuclear weapons. Life changes drastically worldwide, and Leo Beiderman 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 (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, and pilot Oren Monash (Eldard) is blinded and severely burned. The nuclear explosion's shock wave damages the vessel, cutting off contact. But instead of being destroyed, the comet splits into two pieces, one six miles wide ("Wolf") and the other 1.5 miles wide ("Beiderman"). Messiahs 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 Messiahs failure, announces that special caves have been built in Missouri and other areas as a contingency. The government will conduct a lottery to randomly select 800,000 ordinary Americans to join 200,000 pre-selected scientists, teachers, artists, soldiers and officials. These people will be part of a worldwide effort to save humanity from extinction. Beck declares martial law and a freeze on prices 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. But when it comes time 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. He sees a motorbike chained to a workbench in the garage. He finds the key and takes the 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 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 estranged 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, "Beiderman" splashes down in the North Atlantic Ocean near Cape Hatteras, creating a tsunami over 400 meters tall that inundates the Atlantic coastline and reaches as far inland as the Ohio and Tennessee Valleys. Jenny, her father, and Sarah's parents all die, along with countless others. Coastal cities such as New York City, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. are destroyed. Leo and Sarah manage to climb high enough to survive. 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. Oren Monash is told that his wife, who was expecting their first child when he departed, has given birth to their son, whom she has named after Oren. She arrives just in time to say goodbye to him. 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 reconstruction of the U.S. Capitol building, to begin recovery and rebuilding efforts. Source material alterations Though producer Steven Spielberg optioned the Arthur C. Clarke novel The Hammer of God for film production, the film bears no resemblance to the novel, and Clarke was not given any credit on the film.* Whereas Deep Impact is depicted in a setting roughly contemporary to the release of the film, Clarke's The Hammer of God is set in the future. While the film deals with the pending impact of a comet on planet Earth, the novel is focused on the pending impact of an asteroid that is discovered by an astronomer on Mars. (* * *) Also, none of the individuals in the novel are present in the film. Competition A competing "space impact" film, Armageddon, was released about two months following Deep Impact. This followed suit with the "Volcano" theme of the previous year, when Dante's Peak and Volcano were released in close succession. Deep Impact's story is generally considered to be more serious than Armageddon, and has a stronger emphasis on the effect on society. Deep Impact was also lauded by astronomers as being scientifically relevant, unlike every other motion picture based on the asteroid-hits-earth scenario. Nevertheless, although both films were successful, Armageddon was more successful at the box office. Trivia See also | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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