Earthstorm (2006)

Simply A Masterpiece

Best movie ever!

Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

Here in Kuwait we take what we can get in English, especially if you don't know Arabic. This clodhopper came on one of the local movie channels and since the other choices this evening were even worse, I gave it a try.I have rarely seen a more incompetent, badly written piece of shlock. This one takes the cake. Obviously the budget was low and what there was was spent on the sole "name" star - Stephen Baldwin, as could be plainly seen from the ridiculous sets used for ground control as well as the shuttle interior, which looked like it had been recycled in slightly updated form from one of those wonderful 1950s "C" movies.The plot was just horrible, with so many ridiculous blunders and plot "twists" that the end product was ridiculously sophomoric. At one point I wondered aloud if this had been a high school drama class script, it got that bad.As the "goofs" section points out, throughout the movie when the shuttle is flying around the moon and in the chasm, you can hear jet engine sounds which I found not comical but just sad. The actors themselves toss out their lines so totally unconvincingly and devoid of any emotional range that I think some of the lesser-known ones like Amy Price-Francis and Dirk Benedict were just phoning in their performance to get their (probably minuscule) paycheck.Don't waste your time on this piece of dreck. If I were Stephen Baldwin, I'd been trying to get this one expunged from my filmography, it's that bad...The sad thing about "Earthstorm" is that it shows to what pathetic depths the once-proud SciFi Channel has sunk. What happened there? There is still a huge market for science fiction, but NBC Universal apparently chooses to disregard those of us who like this genre and instead fill their broadcast schedule with clunkers like this as well as "pro wrestling," which is definitely fiction, just not "science fiction."

As usual, I have the TV on to Telefutura 'cause I'm waiting for "NCIS" on CBS & I'm playing the Wii. I coulda just said this is another run-of-the-mill TV-movie about some killer space turd heading to Earth set to kill millions. Governments & top management have their fears but use their authority to slow down progress to stop the menacing meteors. But some renegade blue-collar worker who's grieving over someone steps in & defies the naysayers into leading the mission to stop the deadly asteroids & save the world in a visually epic fashion. Hero gets the girl (& maybe a medal). The end. Such a film would've made me rate it 2 stars. But that was b4 I began asking questions as I watched the crucial part of "Earthstorm." "Why the hell is the space shuttle launching on a rainy day?" "Why the hell is Stephen Baldwin standing on his own 2 feet in the shuttle in outer space?" "Why the hell is the space shuttle moving like the Millennium Falcon?" You might assume that the writers were high upon writing this, but I think they might've been sober but w/ just a deadline in their rectums. "C'mon, damn you! You got till 3 o'clock!" "Umm, the space shuttle uses a magnetic bomb to fill in the lunar chasm?" "Hmmm. Good enough." I actually was making some tasteless riffs while watching this shuttle scene like, "Well, if Perseus didn't end up like the Challenger maybe it'll suffer Colombia's fate." (one spoiler: The Perseus' return to Earth was so successful that it needed not be shown in the film. How convenient!) Damn, now I got a deadline up my keister so I better state my major points. Yes, the characters appeared to be typical of such disaster films that it deprived "Earthstorm" of chemistry. In fact I watched the film so casually that when the hero kissed the redhead in the end I didn't know (nor care) that there was a spark between the two & joked, "I thought they were brother & sister!" or "I thought one of 'em was gay!" I might understand why space shuttle Perseus got souped up as in reality, many of the space shuttle missions had been mundane, such as visits to the International Space Station & just doing research on astronomy or astrophysics & using shuttle-loads of math. Stephen Baldwin now has another movie alongside "The Flintstones" to be ashamed of. All the while brother Alec is hotter than ever as he wins Emmys, opens his liberal pie-hole, & does Capital One ads. & at least Adam did a film w/ Cindy Crawford despite the negative notoriety for "Fair Game." That reminds me. Considering how atrocious "Earthstorm" was, I only wish this attracted enough votes to vie for the IMDb Bottom 100 but it's only a TV movie & the list is full of films from MST3K (it's cool; I'm a MSTie fan), Paris Hilton movies, & Razzie winners & nominees. To summarize, if possible, rent or download "Earthstorm" but make it a social event, invite friends, & riff your butts off like Joel, Mike, Crow, & Tom Servo used to over the flaws of "Earthstorm," especially on the TOTALLY AWESOME scene where, like, the space shuttle, like, flies through the asteroid field & stuff & like, takes off at Warp Speed? Like, completely epic!!! Incidentally I tweeted to Rifftrax, something done by 3 guys from MST3K, if they'd view "Earthstorm" & riff it; I hope they respond although I think many fans make suggestions to riff many movies. Oh yeah. It's not NASA (who musta LOL'ed upon being asked for permission for using their name) but ASI...I think. It coulda been SNASA for all I care (as in something used in Barney's mating calls on "How I Met Your Mother.") "Earthstorm" sucks! I'm done.

PLOT: A gigantic impact into the moon sprinkles lunar debris meteorite-fireballs on Earth (But we'd expected a plethora), and leaves a rift to the lunar core (But we'd expect lunar gravity to close that). USA Space Agency personnel with inter-academia problems determine that the "Halo Effect" will result in an even larger calamity on Earth. They call upon a demolitions expert to close the rift, Send a Space Shuttle up with nuclear-drive (But we'd expect more propellant mass), Weave through the lunar-debris-freeway (But we'd expect smaller rocks were unavoidable), and drop a magneto bomb into the rift to suck the ring back down, (But we'd expect the debris already on the way to Earth would continue-on).CHARACTER: A nice touch showing the disparity of theories among Agency personnel that resolves to showing they're all scientists at heart.SFX: Very Good. Not many to show.KEY POINTS: HALO EFFECT:1. N.A. A psychological/psychosomatic plural effect wherein problems experienced by one entity effect similar problems in other entities.2. An orbiting ring mass around a moon exerts lift-gravitation pulling surface debris up from the moon; but only to a maximum total amount.This (#2) may have been the intended, and shown -lifting rocks and the Shuttle,- but it was only referenced, not adequately explained; and it would not have caused any further secondary problem to Earth (cf a sub-moon orbiting the moon would continually fling out debris).Ray.

First of all, it needed a new title. Not Earthstorm but maybe Goodbye Moon! Because that's exactly what this movie was like. Very not rushed. I mean if the moon was breaking apart irl and we'd found out about it, I think we would have been a little more alarmed than the characters in this film. Baldwin just acted like he got out of bed and well went to the moon! It's very slow moving though the CGI is impressive for a TV flick.I don't understand why all the actors treated the situation like it was some feathers that floated out from space. oooo it destroyed Mexico City....let's stare at each other and slowly walk to our computers....ooooo there's a huge one heading straight for us; lets just take out our calculators and slowly figure things out. There was no sense of urgency like nobody cared that this huge thing could come crashing down and destroying us like the dinosaurs! Just very slow and unbelievable....everything was taken down to such low levels that one can fall asleep watching this. Furthermore, the actors themselves didn't really make the characters their own. Just seemed like a bunch of ppl talking to each other like you'd see on a train or something. Dirk's character Victor who was the movie villain was well....not very villain like....just came of as a huge whining ass kisser. Plus supposedly Baldwin's character and the lead lady ended up together somehow in the end but during the movie there was not even a hint of an attraction. So having that happen out of the blue seemed just too forced and improper. Should have had something lead into it instead of just throw it on us like something to end the movie with.A total bore....ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ