platypus2

I recently re-watched Deep Impact, for the first time since its release. I remembered enjoying it the first time quite a lot and wanted to see how it held up after all those years. Verdict? I honestly can't imagine what I was thinking that first time and how I could ever call this film quality entertainment. Most likely my teenage brain stopped at "giant asteroid destroying Earth - sooooo cool!", because this film does not have much to offer beyond that.

With a global disaster movie you can go one of three basic ways. One, you can get serious and make it all about the big picture - realistic what-ifs, governments' reactions, impact on society, scientific background. Two, you can make it all about the characters - focus on a small group, real and interesting enough to make the audience genuinely care about them. Three, go for pure popcorn entertainment, with great production values and a huge spectacle that never takes itself too seriously. Combinations are possible too - my favorite example is World War Z (the book, not the film), which skillfully combines the first two approaches.

Deep Impact is a complete failure, no matter which template you compare it to.

The big picture part is unbelievably stupid, as if the writers had a single afternoon to come up with reasonably realistic ways this scenario might play out, and on top of that never bothered to talk to anyone who deals with actual real world disasters. The idea of everyone just going about their daily lives up to the last moment instead of putting a sizable portion of the nation's resources into preparing the majority of the population for the aftermath is too dumb for words. The idea of millions of people dying in the first impact because despite knowing months in advance about it, no one thought to evacuate the coast may be even worse.

The characters are equally awful. First of all, there are too many of them. There's only time for a brief introduction and as a result no one goes beyond a cardboard cutout with a couple of ham-handedly presented personality traits. The ones we're supposed to care about - Jenny and Leo with their families - are merely devices for generating artificial drama. Their idiotic actions are supposed to make the audience sympathize with them and feel their emotions. In my case they made me wish the tsunami would hurry up and wash them away already (with the sole exception of Jenny's mother, who I thought was rather interesting and well played).

Finally, Deep Impact is too cheap, too serious and too boring to be successful in the last category - pure, silly fun. The special effects are third rate, the humor non-existent and the plot slowly stumbles towards one of the least satisfying endings in the history of the disaster film genre. The climax should either tie up all the parts of the plot into a nice, satisfying package, or leave us wondering about what happens next - on the big, planetary scale, as well as with the characters we've come to care about. In Deep Impact the character are either killed by their unfathomable stupidity pretending to be deep sentiment and romantic natures, or they simply disappear, their future fate unknown and unimportant (though I imagine quite a lot of regrets in their future, concerning the needless deaths of their loved ones). The big picture is narrowed down to an optimistic speech and the image of reconstruction of a single part of a single country (which seems to stand for the entirety of human race in this case).

Ultimately the film that features one of the greatest natural disasters imaginable ends not with a bang, but with a disinterested whimper. Which could be considered quite an achievement, but not the kind I would give any stars for.

I've watched every episode of SG-1, every episode of SGA and thoroughly enjoyed most of it. Yes, it could sometimes be repetitive, cheesy or downright stupid, the special effects made me laugh from time to time, the "science" made no sense, aliens spoke English... But it WORKED. The main reason for me were the characters. They were interesting and likable (both in the regular sense of the word and in the love-to-hate way), there was chemistry between them, and the viewer really cared about what happened to them. Most of the time their actions made some sense and you could see them as people.

That's where SGU fails. The similarity to BSG, lack of humor, the claustrophobic feel of the one, confined setting, the sex that seems to be put into the show for the sole purpose of pointing out how grown up SGU is, compared to its predecessors - those are obvious problems as well, but I could live with that. I'm not so devoted to the previous shows that using the ideas they developed in something completely different offends me. What does offend me is a show where I wish something really awful would happen to the main characters, because they are so badly written.

I'm watching episode 6 (I actually stopped in the middle to write this comment, because I was so annoyed) and by now there isn't a single character I feel any kind of connection with. Those who were annoying from the start are rising to new heights of jerkiness. And the ones I was beginning to like act so inconsistently and unreasonably that I lost all sympathy for them. If it were based on their personalities, I'd have no problem with it, but it's not. It's sloppy writing, full of clichés, cheap tricks and "imaginative" twists and turns of the plot - I know it was supposed to make the characters more interesting and original. Instead they are just about as alive as your average brick and as consistent as a schizophrenic on crack.

Eli, who was rather charmingly goofy, lost and too smart for his own good, in this episode is a spoiled brat, whose solution to a problem is yelling "We're gonna die! We have to do something! Why aren't we doing something!" at people.

Scott has random sex with random girls and a back-story that makes me cringe.

Rush has mood swings that have nothing whatsoever to do with a quirky personality and all with bad writing. Too bad, he was the only one I had real hope for and Carlyle actually can act.

Young is a reasonable and strong leader one moment, only to slip into a clichéd "On your feet, soldier! We're gonna save them or die trying'!" American officer the next.

Telford thinks it's his duty as an officer to contradict Young's orders and undermine his authority every time he can, even if he has little to no information about what's going on on-board Destiny. If I were one of the soldiers under his command, the only think that would stop me from punching the little jerk in a face would be the fact that it's also Young's face...

The minor characters seem to think that People In Charge know everything and can actually fix all their problems without breaking a sweat, but won't, out of spite. So of course, the right course of action is yell at everyone, blame people for things they have no control over and demand to be taken home, right now. Or else. *sigh* And don't even get me started on Greer - he must be one more victim of the C-class writers, I shudder to think anyone might want to write him that way on purpose. The man is clearly psychotic, we have no idea why, and if he were on my side, I'd join the enemy just to avoid being in the same room with him, because he'd make my skin crawl and I'd be afraid he'd shoot me in the head just for fun.

All in all - I'm only sticking with SGU for now, because I'm eagerly awaiting the episode where some big, slimy monster gets on-board Destiny and starts picking off the crew, Nostromo-style. I'll make popcorn and cheer for it...