Contrary to popular belief, not only is the Earth not the only planet in the universe, it’s not even the only planetary body in our solar system. With a wide range of other targets, it was only a matter of time before the bad movie factories mass produced an impact movie or two where Earth isn’t directly in the line of fire. Let’s lift the lid on a couple of these and peek into the Pandora’s box of awful inside.
1) Earthstorm. In the first 3 minutes of this one we get: an asteroid that audibly sizzles in space before hitting the Moon, the obligatory shot of people looking through small telescopes in a brightly lit field (Seriously, does the SyFy Channel have a warehouse full of cheap Meades?), and an interview with a beautiful, misunderstood astrophysicist. Then six minutes in, an unspeakable horror is released upon the Earth. Stephen Baldwin. Wait, didn’t he die? Meanwhile, debris is raining down on Earth and the impact has knocked the Moon out of its orbit. One scientist says to another: “You were right about the ecliptic plane” in explaining this change in the orbit. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you, dear readers, that the ecliptic plane is the plane passing through the Sun’s projected path across the sky. The Moon’s orbit is inclined to the ecliptic. If the two were the same, we’d get eclipses twice every single month, when the Moon is full and new.
The NASA equivalent in the film sends a Lunar satellite to investigate. It flies through a Star Wars-esque debris field. We’ll save a discussion of that for the Star Wars post so just make note of it for now. Clearly the B-list actors in this thing fly as well as Tie Fighter pilots though, so the probe hits an asteroid and explodes. Sweet Creeping Jeepers! What kind of fuel was on board that satellite? Most satellites (at least as close to the Sun as the Earth/Moon) use solar panels, which generally don’t explode violently.
So far, the science isn’t too bad as far as these things go, until we learn that the impact has fractured the Moon, which will break up if we can’t stabilize it. Seriously. We have to stop the Moon from splitting in half. I cannot wait to see how nukes are gonna help here. (Aside: Good news, nerds! This movie has Starbuck in it! Bad news. It’s not that one.) And now for some lines of actual dialog: Stephen Baldwin: “I’m just a demolitions expert on Earth. I don’t know anything about the Moon.” Scientist: “Nobody knows more about how things collapse in on themselves than you.” Seriously, they just said that! And not in an ironic commentary on his career kind of way. Not structural engineers, not geologists, not planetary formation theorists, not anybody anywhere else in the world knows more about how to solve this problem than a dude who was imploding a building 20 minutes ago.
Rather than risk falling into a running commentary on this film, let’s get right to the point. If the Moon has an iron core, the scientists tell us, it can’t gravitationally heal itself so we have to fix it (and yes, the answer involves nukes). If the Moon doesn’t have an iron core, than it will miraculously heal itself. Fortunately, the composition of the Moon’s core is not a contentious issue in real life. It has an iron core, though not a particularly large one. The density and structure of the Moon are known very well. There have been several NASA probes that have studied this in detail. So the truth is revealed, they launch the Shuttle in a hurricane, the Shuttle can reach the Moon now, and everyone says “nukular”. Also they don’t even bother with weightlessness. An astronaut just unbuckles his seatbelt, stands up, and walks to the cargo bay. It turns out the Moon is more metallic than anticipated so they can’t nuke it. Instead, in a scene ripping off paying homage to Apollo 13, they have to turn the nukes into a giant magnet that will pull the Moon back together. I… can’t… even…
2. Quantum Apocalypse. A comet spontaneously changes course and smashes into Mars. What could have caused this sudden shift in its orbit? Some sort of gravitational source that isn’t persistent. Call in the theoretical physicists! Look, I’m not going to sugar-coat this. The hero of this film is an autistic supergenius and the physicists are hipster jerks. While fairly lo-cal in the science department, this movie is almost unwatchably bad. The “telescope in a brightly lit field” scene in this movie just cuts any pretense of accuracy and is shot during the day and directly under a bunch of trees. Not day-for-night like they used to do in the olden days. Actual take-the-kids-off-to-school daytime. The anomaly turns out to be a “gravitational vacuum”, like a black hole but directional. Because, you know, science. Also it reaches perihelion when it’s closest to Earth. Turns out the gravitational vacuum is dark matter. Made up of quarks. And the only way to stop it is to create a dark matter cluster so that the gravitational attraction of the two will cancel each other out. It’s like the screenwriters read a Popular Science article once in the ’90s and are just regurgitating words dredged up from their memories. Of course we can’t make dark matter so… I know you saw it coming… nuke it! They need a “…thermo-nukular weapon. One that’s reliant on fusion. Not fission.” Like every nuclear weapon ever. That’s a relief. Nuking it works, reverses time, and the whole thing never happened. If only I could use a thermo-nukular fusion (not fission) weapon on my brain now.