Meteor

Plot synopsis:
After the asteroid Orpheus is hit by a comet, a five-mile chunk of Orpheus is sent on a collision course towards Earth, which will cause an extinction-level event. While the United States government engages in political maneuvering, smaller asteroid fragments precede the main body, wreaking havoc on the planet. The United States has a secret orbiting nuclear missile platform satellite named Hercules, which was designed by Dr. Paul Bradley (Sean Connery). It was intended to defend Earth against a massive space rock, but instead was demoted to become an orbiting super weapon now aimed at Russia. However, its fourteen nuclear missiles are not enough to stop the meteor.
The United States discovers that the Soviet Union also has a weapons satellite. The President (Henry Fonda) goes on national television and reveals the existence of Hercules, explaining it was created to meet the threat that Orpheus represents. He also offers the Soviets a chance to save face by announcing they, too, had the same program and their own satellite weapon. Bradley requests a scientist named Dr. Alexei Dubov (Brian Keith) to help him plan a counter-effort against Orpheus.
Bradley and Harry Sherwood (Karl Malden) of NASA meet at the control center for Hercules, located beneath 195 Broadway in Lower Manhattan. Major General Adlon (Martin Landau) is the commander of the facility. Dubov and his interpreter Tatiana Donskaya (Natalie Wood), arrive and Bradley gets to work on breaking the ice between them. Since Dubov cannot admit the existence of the Soviet device, he agrees to Bradley's proposal that they work on the "theoretical" application of how a "theoretical" Soviet space platform's weapons would be coordinated with the American ones.
Meanwhile, more meteor fragments strike Earth and the Soviets finally admit that they are willing to join in the effort. It appears that the satellite has a lot in common with Hercules, with sixteen nuclear missiles to be used against a large space rock, but is now an orbiting super weapon aimed at the United States. The satellite is christened Peter the Great, and both satellites are turned towards the asteroid. Unfortunately, smaller fragments continue to strike the planet, causing great damage, including a deadly avalanche in the Swiss Alps and a tsunami which devastates Hong Kong. On Sunday morning, Peter the Great's missiles are launched first because of its relative position to the asteroid. Hercules's missiles are fired 40 minutes later.
Just after Hercules's missiles are launched, New York City is struck by a large fragment, destroying most of the city. Several workers inside the control center are killed when the facility is destroyed, and the survivors slowly work their way out of the control center by going through the New York subway system, which has become a trap due to water from the East River flooding the tunnels. Meanwhile, the two packs of missiles link up into three successively larger waves. The Hercules crew reaches a crowded subway station and waits while others try to dig out.
Eventually, the missiles reach the meteor. The first wave of missiles strikes the rock, causing a small explosion, the second wave follows with a larger blast, and the third wave creates an enormous explosion. When the dust clears, the asteroid appears obliterated. In New York City, the radios broadcast the good news: Orpheus is no longer a danger to Earth. Just then, the subway station occupants are rescued.
Later, at an airport, Dubov, Tatiana, Bradley and others exchange goodbyes before Dubov and Tatiana depart on a plane for the Soviet Union.

Tags: flashback

Review:
After a comet passing through the Asteroid Belt collides with a a city-sized chunk, releasing a five-mile large rock, and launching it towards Earth, he is drafted into leading the American team assigned to turn the platform around, and fire our missiles at the deadly visitor.Unfortunately, the combined nuclear capacity of the U.S. space arsenal isn't great enough to deflect it from it's path, so an uneasy alliance with the Russians, who ALSO have illegal strategic missiles in space, is achieved.
It then becomes a race against time, as pieces of the asteroid obliterate various parts of earth, to coordinate the two missile systems, and launch a strike at the huge rock.The cast is first-rate; Natalie Wood (in one of her final roles) plays a Russian scientist/interpreter, who is romantically drawn towards Connery; Brian Keith nearly steals the picture as the gregarious Russian team leader; Karl Malden is warm and winning as Connery's best friend, and NASA liason; Martin Landau does a campy bit as a paranoid military liason; and Henry Fonda, looking haggard, appears in a small role as the President.
Watch for Sybil Danning (before B-movie stardom), in a cameo, as a doomed Swiss skier!The FX range from excellent (some of the space scenes), to hokey (the tidal wave in Hong Kong); among the film's pluses is a stirring, beautiful (if at times, overpowering) score by Laurence Rosenthal ('Fantasy Island').Is 'Meteor' a classic?
He resents Russians Brian Keith and Natalie Wood in the war room and Landau overacts outrageously.A comet hurtling through the asteroid belt hit one of the big asteroids and sent one big chunk of rock and a whole bunch smaller ones as space calling cards speeding to Earth.
The special effects run the gamut from awful (as in the superimposed shots of the meteor) to phony (the obvious models of the defense system) to hilarious (all of the tacky effects from the smaller crashes including an avalanche, a tidal wave and a firestorm) to jaw-dropping (as the cast is covered in brown slime while trying to escape a muddy river which is closing in on the command center!)  Pointless characters are introduced just before death in an effort to make the drama more meaningful.
Aside from some deadly dull shots of the meteor and the missles, the film can be enjoyed today as a campfest with a star cast, some amusingly bad dialogue and a buffet of smilingly shoddy disaster effects..
It is a big budget disaster about a disaster and much about its construction is highly flawed, and yes the acting is mostly weak, and yes the effects are often obvious, and yes that was stock footage, but, BUT, this movie does deliver in one vital department: it blows sh*t up!I'm sure by now most people are familiar with this as a folly for Sean Connery, and Henry Fonda, and the rest of the all star cast.
Another interesting prophetic note: the first thing destroyed in the USA in this film is the world trade center.And if you still think this is the worst disaster movie ever, go and watch "Beyond The Posiedon Adventure" or "Raise The Titanic".
Sean Connery heads an all-star cast trying to prevent the meteor with "hidden" space weapons owned by the Americans and the Russians.
All of this more gripping material is well acted and well directed, with a more epic scope than we might expect and relatively admirable special effects for the era.Most interesting, watching Meteor at this point in time, are the countless cultural oddities we get from context.
Meteor (1979) 2 of 5 Dir: Ronald Neame Stars: Sean Connery, Natalie Wood, Karl MaldenConnery built a armed orbiting platform to protect the earth from s celestial attack.
Together with the Russians will we be able to stop it?'Meteor' is a fun movie with an all-star cast but the special effects are for the most part just plain bad.
The cast includes Sean Connery, Natalie Wood, Brian Keith, Karl Malden, Martin Landau, Trevor Howard and Henry Fonda.
Like many of its predecessors, "METEOR" was another run-of-the-mill 70's 'disaster' flick which tried to cash in on the dying genre with the rather tired scenario of the threat of a meteorite hurtling towards Earth with no one other than a handful of American and Russian scientists there to try and stop it.Sean Connery and Karl Malden play the American NASA scientists assigned to team up with Russian counter-parts, Brian Keith and Natalie Wood to try and figure out how to prevent the meteor from colliding with Earth.
But to pour vitriolic scorn on it like many other IMDb and Amazon reviewers have is going a touch too far, for one thing it's overlooking the fact that the film does have good points and is not short on bright moments.Bsically a meteor the size of Brazil (for example) is heading towards Earth and one can safely assume it's a global killer that will be the dawn of a new ice age.
Enter the Russians, who of course have their own nuclear weapon in space (bless them) that really wasn't put up there to avert any threat from those pesky Yanks, can the might of the East & West unite and save the world?The effects look dated and weak but it's still a hell of a lot of fun watching a 1979 disaster film try so hard to entertain us.
Sean Connery (saying one of the best lines ever written), Karl Malden, Natalie Wood, Martin Landau, Henry Fonda (all too small a role tho), Richard Dysart and Trevor Howard, not bad really.
You can tell what sort of movie this is by the way the music changes depending on whether we're looking at the (extremely phallic) American or Russian missiles; whether we're watching them changing aim, whether we're watching them launch, whether we're watching them run out of fuel, whether we're watching them approaching the asteroid or strike it in a cataclysmic 'strobe' effect or whether we're just watching them gleam in space.
Good grief this is bad....Standard Cold War paranoia (Martin Landau suitable wasted here in a 'if I have to talk to the Russians then its not worth saving the planet kind of role) mixes with LOUSY special effects even for 1979.Throw in some ropey acting, an impressive all star cast that would rather be somewhere else but needed the cash to pay off an urgent gas bill or something and some truly dreadful set design and you have the final nail in the coffin of the 1970's disaster movie genre.The avalanche was poorly done, too much stock footage was used and the New York collision sequence was unfortunate, particularly with the meteorite fragment going right through the upper part of the World Trade Centre (and its subsequent collapse in flames) being an uncomfortable parallel of tragic future events - this was shown on the BBC two days after the second anniversary of that tragedy by the way....If they had refined the script and maybe sorted out some better money on the special effects then this could have been good, as it stands however it makes the woeful but similar Deep Impact of some twenty years later look like Shakespeare.....
With talented actors like Sean Connery, Natalie Wood, Martin Landau this should have been good...ALAS!.
Also it's good to see Wood in her third to last theatrical film (she looks stunning I might add) and Keith fakes a Russian accent convincingly.This was a big budget movie for AIP.
This movie just doesn't seem to realize this and lets all of the typical '70's genre moments feature in this movie.Like basically every '70's disaster movie, the movie features an all star cast, with in this case actors such as Sean Connery Karl Malden, Natalie Wood, Martin Landau, Trevor Howard and Henry Fonda involved.
Yes I know it's an 1979 movie but surely better things as featured in this movie were possible, when you look at for instance at movies such as "Star Wars", "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" and "2001: A Space Odyssey", which all got made prior to this movie.The fact that this movie is done in such an horrible way makes the movie seem the more painfully ridicules and laughable actually.Strangely enough the movie doesn't focus much on any personal drama, something that normally was featured very prominently in '70's disaster flicks.
No, I mean the special effects are bad for then.The special effects just don't measure up to movies like Star Wars (the space scenes) or other disaster movies of the time.
Okay, since this movie was from American International, I didn't expect to see any of the actors-mostly big name stars-take any of the story seriously but they all seemed to believe in what they were saying and doing so as a result, I was enthralled by the performances of Sean Connery, Natalie Wood (loved that she used her native Russian language), Brian Keith (hearing him speak Russian was a hoot), Karl Malden, Martin Landau (convincing doing an about-turn after acting insolent previously), Henry Fonda, Richard Dysart (almost unrecognizable in this pre-"L.A. Law" role of the president's secretary), and Clyde Kusatsu (loved this particular character actor since his appearance on "All in the Family" when he remarried the Bunkers and Stivics).
As it approaches, meteorite fragments from the collision reach the earth before the big rock does, and they precipitate several smaller disasters while the scientists race to destroy the `planet killer.'Meteor has an above-average cast for a movie of this type.
And the special effects in space are so incredibly bad that the poor depiction of the NYC meteor strike actually looks good in comparison.This is an even greater shame because the final live sequence, involving a collapsing underground bunker, is fairly well done and possibly even Earthquake quality.
Most of the cast, which includes big stars like Sean Connery, Henry Fonda, Karl Malden, and Natalie Wood, only marginally embarrass themselves.
I love those 70 disaster movies they're campy,clichéd with hammy acting and great entertainment on a rainy day and there were some really good ones like the Poseidon adventure ,Airport and the towering inferno so when I finally got around to meteor I was looking forward too it but something bothered me about this film the entire footage of the meteor hitting a ski resort was taken from another disaster movie released a year before called avalanche!
One such major asteroid is 2004MN4, only discovered in 2004 and named Apophis, which could possibly strike the Earth in 2036 with devastating consequences because it is about 330 metres across and, depending on whether a strike was oceanic (73% chance) or terrestrial, destruction would either be by an enormous global tsunami or a "nuclear winter" following impact.Given the fact that we already know about Apophis (and other asteroids) humanity has plenty of time to prepare something like what was used (although that wasn't the plan) in the movie.Natalie Wood was given a great opportunity to demonstrate her native language as the interpreter to a Russian scientist played by Brian Kieth who collaborates with his American counterpart played by Sean Connery with Karl Malden and Martin Landau putting in professional performances in spite of a fairly "ordinary" script along with cameos by Henry Fonda as the American president and Trevor Howard as the British space boffin.If you're not very conversant with basic space exploration and won't notice all the errors, I guess this might be mildly enjoyable but don't expect much!.
Others can ignore the minor irritants and focus on the Oscar-nominated sound, and the stellar cast.How can a movie not be worth the time with Sean Connery (The Untouchables), Natalie Wood (Splendor in the Grass, Love With a proper Stranger, Rebel Without a Cause), Karl Malden (A Streetcar Named Desire, On the Waterfront), Brian Keith ("Family Affair"), Martin Landau (Ed Wood, Crimes & Misdemeanors, Tucker, the Man and His Dream), Trevor Howard (Sons and Lovers), Richard Dysart ("L.A. Law"), Henry Fonda (On Golden Pond, The Grapes of Wrath, 12 Angry Men), and Joseph Campanella ("Days of Our Lives", "Mannix").That's 4 Oscars, 9 more Oscar nominations, an Emmy, and 7 more Emmy nominations.
Not even in the likes of Karl Malden, Sean Connery, Natalie Wood, nor Henry Fonda could save this movie.
When joined with other great actors like Natalie Wood, Karl Malden, Brian Keith, Martin Landau,Trevor Howard as Sir Michael Hughes and Henry Fonda as The President, then the believability of the movie is a certainty.
The wonderfully dated special effects (no CGI, great!) steal this film and it is fun seeing Karl Malden do two disaster movies in one year (he was also in Beyond The Poseidon Advenure in 1979).In a nutshell: Meteor is okay..
One causes a massive avalanche that buries a ski resort; another creates a 100 foot-high tsunami that wipes out Hong Kong; and a third, much larger piece nails New York City, creating a horrific situation in which Connery, Malden, Keith, and Keith's assistant (Wood) must crawl out of their underground tomb, through a muddy subway tunnel, and hope that their nuclear gambit succeeds.Released in late 1979 at the very tail end of the disaster film craze, METEOR did only moderately well at the box office, and, unsurprisingly, was almost universally panned by the critics.
Furthermore, given its having been made under the auspices of the low-budget American International Pictures company, it clearly relies just a bit too much on the use of stock footage (specifically from previous films like AVALANCHE and TIDAL WAVE) instead of new special effects (in this respect, DEEP IMPACT is clearly the superior "space rock" movie).
As a result, though it is a forgotten relic from a less-than-sophisticated era in science fiction and special effects, METEOR, under the professional direction of Neame (who helmed THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE for "disaster master" Irwin Allen in 1972), is nevertheless and entertaining, if somewhat dreadful look at what could possibly happen to Earth if a wayward interstellar body, be it a meteor or a comet, ever got past our protective atmosphere.
There are attempts made to use an outer space array of nuclear missiles, but that won't work alone, so they team up with the Russian missiles(they have an identical program) but when that doesn't work sufficiently, they all prepare themselves for the oncoming disaster...One of the last disaster films in the cycle is pretty poor, though the good cast(including Natalie Wood, Brian Keith, and Martin Landau) do what they can, the script is clichéd and absurd; the result is good for some campy laughs, but that's all..
Sean Connery, Karl Malden, and Henry Fonda are all great as always, Martin Landau can be seen getting out of his TV rut, and Brian Keith doesn't look like he's missing Mr. French at all (though he could use a Russian language coach).
For a '70s movie about a huge meteor headed towards Earth, this could have been a lot worse.True, "Meteor" has more cheese than Wisconsin, as well as such stalwarts as Connery (rug and all), Wood, Keith, Landau and Malden and even Fonda in a smaller part than he had in "Tentacles" as the President of the good old US of A.
There are some weaknesses in Meteor, some of them outright silly, but effective acting by a cast of heavyweight actors up to par, and some excellent visuals, make for a pretty good ride.On the surface, it looks like a precursor to Armageddon, but it's much better.
With a cast including Henry Fonda, Sean Connery, Karl Malden, Natalie Wood, Brian Keith, Martin Landau, and others, there's more star power here than the '34 Yankees roster.
Meteor (1979) ** 1/2 (out of 4) Sean Connery, Natalie Wood, Karl Malden, Brian Keith, Henry Fonda, Martin Landau and Trevor Howard are just a few of the famous faces who grace us with their presence in this later day disaster film.
Sean Connery is the lead and the supporting cast includes a particularly bad Natalie Wood as a Russian interpreter, Brian Keith as a Russian needing her services, Karl Malden, Martin Landau, and Henry Fonda (proving again his chronic need to appear in all the really BAD disaster movies of the 70s...ROLLERCOASTER, CITY ON FIRE, TENTACLES).
When stars need a paycheck, they make a sci-fi film, nothing could be more true than "Meteor." A 5 mile meteor is headed toward Earth at 35,000 miles per hour, and if they don't shoot it down with "Hercules", then bad things will happen, like a sequel???Anyway, Scientist Paul Bradley(Sean Connery) must save the day, although, I thought that his solution to go across the street to the local bar was an excellent start, and finish, It really should have ended there, but it didn't.
When the previously mentioned disaster movies could count on physical elements as air, water or fire at hand to create destruction on a dosage, there had been "Meteor" in a hard-to-crack nut shell by cross-cutting into the distance of outer space in order to create a non-existing suspense for this particular picture.A picture totally relying on the native giving charms of its cast, Sean Connery kept his head high as the character of Dr. Paul Bradley in collaboration with stand-clear professionalism of actor Karl Malden in the role of Harry Sherwood, hiring the best of their fields to solve the problem of an approaching asteroid on collision course with earth.
The acting from all involved including Sean Connery (getting shaken but not stirred), Natalie Wood, Henry Fonda and Karl Malden is OK but nothing special and almost tongue in check which is probably the best way to take this film.Before the daddy rock takes aim, we get baby ones coming along for the ride causing snow storms, avalanches, tidal waves and the destruction of New York City, perhaps a few more would of helped things move along quicker.The ending is quite predictable but then we couldn't have the rock destroying us all could we?