Post Impact (2004)
[+]
(Foreign Titles)
Nomination Year: 2013
SYNOPSIS: This movie was stupid but also kinda fun, reminiscent of Dark Descent. But not as good. Post Impact, while indeed containing a catastrophic impact event, would have probably been better named Oh Crap, the Last One Out of Berlin Forgot to Turn Off the Killer Satellite. Yes there was An! Event!, but it's really pretty much a backdrop excuse to make god-awful snowy CGI effects. Plague or nuclear holocaust would have worked just as well for how little we really got to see any Post Impact impact.
Big comet hits space junk (ow) and has its course altered to plop it down onto Northern Europe. OH NO! There might be hope though in an "alternate-energy satellite project" partially funded by the military. But how can a humanitarian satellite stop the comet? It's only supposed generate peaceful microwave rays in order to wean us off of fossil fuel. Buuuuut being a military funded project means that (surprise!) it also has a few defensive capabilities, which ... don't really help (although they do break up the comet into 4 or 5 large chunks ... which all hit northern Europe).
Three years later, Dean Cain gets to join an expedition to Berlin to figure out why the peaceful microwave beam satellite is shooting planes out of the sky. This wouldn't be such a problem, except the only people with the codes were supposed to have died in Berlin after the climate change made the region an icy wasteland. The current government, the New United Northern States (yes, N.U.N.S. You have a problem withthem it?), decides to put together a strike team to check things out before their capital is fried. The roster
includes: A badass ex-SAS chick, the daughter of the Killer Satellite's designer (who probably
should maybe sort of remember the satellite's command codes. Plus, she's hot), a lot of other
people who are going to get killed off, and Dean Cain with his dog. Dean wants to go back to find his wife and child whom he accidentally left when he got on the last transport out of Germany, and the rest of the group wants to stop the satellite from blowing up towns.
They putter through some terrible post-impact CGI effects to Berlin, while the plot twists a little to the left, then a little to the right, but does not stand up, sit down, or fight, fight, fight.
Finally, after a Terminator-esque struggle (they make their SAS chicks tough), the bad guy is deposed and the good guys "remember" the satellite's command codes. They reprogram the Killer Satellite to give off low-level happy microwaves and boil the cloud cover away, resetting the climate to something more hospitable. Oh, yes. They did.
And! Dean Cain's wife and kid had long since turned into familysicles so he's free to hang with the German scientist chick. The End!
All in all, this movie wasn't terrible. A few things bothered me, though. How come they don't realize the comet has hit some space junk and altered course until it's less than a day out? It's not like they looked up and "Hey! Comet!" -- they've been tracking it for some time. I would bet that if Halley's comet hit some space junk and had its trajectory changed we'd know about it way before it was burning up in the atmosphere. Also, it's -50 C out and nobody wears face protection. Google tells me that flesh freezes in about a minute at -44 degrees C, but whatever. We were also amused by the liquid-filled water cooler in the ice tunnel, which would have had to been filled with either clear antifreeze or (better yet) vodka to remain in such a state. We put our heads together and unanimously decided it was a five-gallon vodka dispenser, because how cool would that be? The FX are pretty bad but also kinda amusing, though we all lusted after the shower room in the N.U.N.S. barracks. It puts the Goth in Gothic and totally shames anything the Harry Potter movies have come up with. Plus, unnecessary sex scene. Win-Win!
Big comet hits space junk (ow) and has its course altered to plop it down onto Northern Europe. OH NO! There might be hope though in an "alternate-energy satellite project" partially funded by the military. But how can a humanitarian satellite stop the comet? It's only supposed generate peaceful microwave rays in order to wean us off of fossil fuel. Buuuuut being a military funded project means that (surprise!) it also has a few defensive capabilities, which ... don't really help (although they do break up the comet into 4 or 5 large chunks ... which all hit northern Europe).
Three years later, Dean Cain gets to join an expedition to Berlin to figure out why the peaceful microwave beam satellite is shooting planes out of the sky. This wouldn't be such a problem, except the only people with the codes were supposed to have died in Berlin after the climate change made the region an icy wasteland. The current government, the New United Northern States (yes, N.U.N.S. You have a problem with
They putter through some terrible post-impact CGI effects to Berlin, while the plot twists a little to the left, then a little to the right, but does not stand up, sit down, or fight, fight, fight.
Finally, after a Terminator-esque struggle (they make their SAS chicks tough), the bad guy is deposed and the good guys "remember" the satellite's command codes. They reprogram the Killer Satellite to give off low-level happy microwaves and boil the cloud cover away, resetting the climate to something more hospitable. Oh, yes. They did.
And! Dean Cain's wife and kid had long since turned into familysicles so he's free to hang with the German scientist chick. The End!
All in all, this movie wasn't terrible. A few things bothered me, though. How come they don't realize the comet has hit some space junk and altered course until it's less than a day out? It's not like they looked up and "Hey! Comet!" -- they've been tracking it for some time. I would bet that if Halley's comet hit some space junk and had its trajectory changed we'd know about it way before it was burning up in the atmosphere. Also, it's -50 C out and nobody wears face protection. Google tells me that flesh freezes in about a minute at -44 degrees C, but whatever. We were also amused by the liquid-filled water cooler in the ice tunnel, which would have had to been filled with either clear antifreeze or (better yet) vodka to remain in such a state. We put our heads together and unanimously decided it was a five-gallon vodka dispenser, because how cool would that be? The FX are pretty bad but also kinda amusing, though we all lusted after the shower room in the N.U.N.S. barracks. It puts the Goth in Gothic and totally shames anything the Harry Potter movies have come up with. Plus, unnecessary sex scene. Win-Win!
Jeannette Quirk