Solar Attack (2006)

Fresh and Exciting

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Solar Strike aka Solar Attack is a Disaster movie which was made straight for TV, if I am not mistaken. And you immediately can tell that the budget was not all too big to make this film. This clearly reveals when it comes to visuals and dialogues, which can be very cheesy at times. I liked Mark Dacascos in this role though and even if the film is pretty much generic, it was not as bad as some other ratings imply. If you don't take things too serious you might even enjoy this one. Bill Lake in his role as the Russian captain was even fun to watch. Louis Gossett Jr. (some of you might remember him in his role as Jerry from the gorgeous Enemy Mine) as the president of the United States? Well, in movies everything is possible. You might forget this movie soon after you have seen it, but that doesn't mean it is painful to watch or something. If you just want to kill some time by watching a disaster movie, there are way better ones. But also way worse ones.

I'm actually bumping up my vote from a 3 to a 4 because I want to watch again so I can catalog all the bad science in this movie.I didn't come in from the beginning, but apparently the world of Solar Attack doesn't have a national space agency or a military that has dozens of satellites in orbit capable of monitoring Earth's atmosphere, so a concerned billionaire launches his own manned orbital vehicle to fulfill this mission, at a cost of $98 million.So while his astronaut guy is up there, a huge CME of a size and mass never before seen comes in and destroys his spacecraft without warning, even though some scientists were aware that the CME was coming. Apparently in this world they have no means of warning people to stay out of space when huge fireballs from the Sun are about to hit Earth.Oh, and for some reason this massive interplanetary fireball which appears to explode over an area the size of China remains unseen by the rest of the world, so only the poor dead astronaut knows what happened to his ship.This may be because in this world, the ozone layer acts as a shield against these CMEs, so they never affect the the surface of the Earth, they only rain fire and destruction on above the ozone layer.Now these CMEs keep heading toward the Earth, and one of them is headed straight for THE Russian military satellite. Yes, they only have one, and it's stationary somewhere in space! For those who don't know, Russia and the US have satellites up there by the hundreds. Most of them orbit the Earth every 90 to 120 minutes, but there are some that orbit in 24 hours. But there are a LOT of them in that 24 hour orbit, so if one satellite up there gets hit, a LOT of them will get hit.Phew! And that's just from watching for for about 30 minutes! And I still haven't mentioned the ridiculous idea that methane has increased to 3% of the atmosphere and can be ignited by CMEs.

I guess this is totally enjoyable entertainment if you are uneducated and uninformed. Comments by other viewers are shocking "A good theory??? "The sun catches fire???" My god I hope that is not the level of intelligence being produced by todays education system. This movie is the biggest load of BS I have ever had the misfortune to witness on a TV screen. The kind of screenplay I would expect from an 11 year old and if it was an 11 year old writing the screenplay I would understand and say; 'Not bad kid. Keep on trying.' If it wasn't for the cheap production and obvious low budget I would say that this movie reeks of global elitist scare mongering for their global warming campaign to have even more taxes implemented on an already overtaxed population. But surely they could afford a much higher budget and overall better actors (With the exception of Lou Gosset Jr and a few others - indeed the fact that they can keep a straight and serious demeanor through out the film shows that those few actors really are outstanding in their craft) but I suspect this film is aimed to appeal to the truly stupid people. The types who get robbed by Nigerians offering them millions for the low registration fee of $300 and their bank account details..... I would recommend film students (screen writers, directors & actors) watch this film as an example of what they should aspire not to create regardless of how much money they are paid. I was going to rate this film a 2 but I opted for a 1 because a 2 would really be stretching the bounds of truth, reality and justice (just like this film does from start to finish).

Although I had to suspend disbelief a lot in this, it was worth it because the underlying story has heart and excitement. The production values are low and the scientific merit is questionable at best; but the screenplay is impressively ambitious in scope. And although the budget was extremely limited, some of submarine, fighter plane, and nuclear CGI effects came off quite well.This definitely kept me entertained and I think it's quite underrated. Fans of sci-fi disaster films like Armageddon will enjoy this if they can see past the extreme lack of polish, into the endearing earnestness and ambition that lies beneath.