Disowned by Richard C. Sarafian, this disaster stunk up Japanese theaters before coming to the States and going immediately to video, where it was not seen again until the Turner networks needed something other than infomercials to fill their 3am-6am time slots and found this tape at the bottom of their bin. The Smithee name is supposed to be used when the studio hacks the movie so badly that the director no longer wants his name attached to it. But I'm afraid that Sarafian can not blame the studio entirely on this one. The actors, mostly recent graduates of "Overacting 101", deliver one cornball line after another. The plot is convoluted. The special effects are unimpressive. The parts that aren't laughable are just plain boring. The script or the book must have been good - why else would Palance, Matheson, Boyle, or Heston agree to appear in this dud? But something went horribly wrong from the page to the screen. Summary: Avoid. Not even bad enough to be so-bad-it's-good.
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culwin27 December 2002
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Alright first off: this is not a great film, it is not even a particularly good film, but I have seen many that were much worse. I am curious as to who the director was who ducked out on this one and turned it over to Alan Smithee (for those not in the know: Alan Smithee is a name that the DGA assigns to films who's directors do not want to admit a connection to for some reason, artistic of otherwise.)
Some of the performances were a little flat, although Jack Palance was as eccentrically off beat as usual. That alone always gives any film a one point boost. Peter Boyle was just as underplayed a villain as usual, not getting his hands dirty. But there was a lot of real tension in the film. In anyone was over the top it was Dorian Harewood, and I suspect that was because of bad direction. I suspect with a better director, budget and script this could have been a much better film. I still enjoyed it though. Just one of my little quirks I guess. -
MaxRennUK9 October 2020Ignore all the badly-written reviews on here trying to claim that this film has redeeming qualities (other than the nicely-made models - I discovered it after watching Sense of Scale). It doesn't. It's an absolute mess. I love bad sci-fi, but this is just dull, uninteresting and unintelligible rubbish.
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Altaira21 July 1999What was Charlton Heston thinking when he signed up for this disaster?? Alright, I'll be fair. I rented Solar Crisis (translation: wasted a buck) with an open mind. It had an interesting plot, so it seemed, and some famous guys. So there must be something there. Man oh man was I wrong. I realized that with the opening scene in which cheap subtitles scrolled across the screen, describing the Impeding Doom of Earth. To make matters worse, a voice-over further insulted my intelligence by reading the words too. Gee, since I was dumb enough to rent the film, they must figure I can't read either. Then came the real blow: The weak, weak acting (usually showcased by laughably over-dramatic monologues) coupled with the bland, bland writing, strewn together with the lousy, lousy soundtrack make for one nose-wrinkling mess. Dr. Haas was especially bad, as was the ship's commander whose name escapes me. We are treated to such memorable lines as: "Our only security blanket out there is ourselves" and the immortal "I'm the only one who can ever free you!" Please. Free me, for the love of God.
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Oh the hilarity! Oh the joy! Another film that is so bad it's good! Or, so I thought. In actual fact, this one misses the "so bad its good" phase and goes, sadly, straight to the "could have been so bad its good, but they screwed it up and made it plain bad".
For a start its way too long. Cut half an hour and it might have been more endurable. Then put in such ludicrous plots as "the man who is sabotaging the mission to save the Earth, because he has all the food stockpiled and he'll be rich if the mission fails!". Duh!. Or the "talking bomb" plot device last seen in Dark Star. Guess what....just like in Dark Star, the bomb has a malfunction.....hmmmm. Add in a dash of "we can't act our way out of a kindergarten play" and you have Solar Crisis in a nutshell.
Light relief is to be had in the form of Jack Palance (or Jack Pants, as we called him in this flick), whose sole purpose in the film is to drive a kid around the desert and telephone the kid's dad to come pick him up....eventually. Between driving and phoning, Jack dispenses pointless drivel and leers and cackles a lot, but contributes little to the story, such as it is. In short, he's the best bit of the movie.
My award for "The Most Ironic Line Delivered Straight-Faced" goes to Charlton Heston, who, when meeting his eldest son for the first time in ages, comments that his son looks a little "out of shape" whilst he himself is standing there with his gut bulging over his waistband and in dire need of a Captain Kirk Corset.
Also amusing is the bad guy's top henchman, who has a bright white hairstyle that kept making me think of Andy Warhol, for some reason.
Apart from these hilarities, there's little to recommend this movie. The ending is a sequence copied from (but mercifully shorter than) the end sequence from 2001.
Tips for enjoying this movie more, if you are foolish enough to watch it, like I did:
1. Any time the bomb speaks, imagine it's called Tarquin (Trust me, it works!)
2. Whenever Chuck Heston is on screen and about to speak, pre-empt him by reciting a line from Planet of the Apes such as "Get your filthy paws off me!" or similar.
3. Whenever the female lead is looking stressed (this is most of the time) keep hoping against hope that she's having an aneurism and will die soon.
4. During the interminable "the ship's broke again" scenes, keep hoping the tech/engineer guys will spout a Scotty-ism like "You cannae change the laws of physics!" or some such crap.
Other than that, do what it takes to get you through this one. I dozed off half way through and woke to realise I hadn't missed anything, nor had the plot (laughable though it is) advanced any. So don't worry about tuning out for a few, you won't miss anything. -
Mister-612 September 1999When I had first heard of "Solar Crisis" then got a load of the cast, I wondered why I had never heard of a movie with such a big cast before. Then I saw it.
Now I know.
For a movie that encompasses outer space, the sun, vast deserts and sprawling metropolises, this is an awfully cramped and claustrophobic feature; it feels like everyone is hunkered close together so the camera won't have to pull too far back.
And the effects, while good, are pretty underwhelming; we're talking about the imminent destruction of the planet Earth if a team of scientists and soldiers cannot deflect a deadly solar flare. But other than shouting, sweating and a red glow about everything, there's no real feel of emergency.
Don't get me started about the cast. What Heston, Palance, Matheson, Boyle, et al are doing in this movie without even bothering to act with any feel for the material is anyone's guess. Makes you wonder who else's condos aren't paid for in Hollywood....
And as far as the end goes.... Well, let's just say it's tense and intriguing but it's too little too late in an effort like this. If it had kept up that kind of pace all through the film, maybe I would have heard of "Solar Crisis" sooner.
Two stars. Mostly for lost opportunities and bad career moves.
I wonder how Alan Smithee keeps his job doing junk like this? -
It was one of those late night "It's there" I saw it things. Sometimes they are great. This one was awful, but it really shouldn't have been.
The movie had a really good cast. How can you fail when you have Charlsten Heston and Jack Pallance? We're talking Oscar winner turf here. It had good special effects. It even had some really good tits! And I mean nicely shown, full breast with full nipple and at one point even some beaver. But it didn't compensate for the one missing ingredient - a story! The plot was ludicrous. I don't mean the "solar crisis" sun exploding stuff, but that was bad enough. It was the rest of the stuff - the oh so stupid and totally predictable evil corporation stuff. Man that just STANK! No amount of good acting or cool space ships or fight scenes could get around that one.
I have seen the same cast members be incredibly good. I have seen wonderful science fiction movies that had miniscule casts and budgets. All the difference is in the writing. -
I saw this movie a long time ago... luckily it was for free. I have to be one of the maybe twenty people who saw this movie in the theater. I don't remember a whole bunch of it, but I do remember I was incredibly bored, the plot made no sense and when I came out of the theater the only thing I could say was at least now I know what the worst movie I ever saw was. I just was incredibly bothered by one thing: if they can make the temperature as they approach the sun low enough for humans to survive, why can't they turn it down to a comfortable temperature instead of being all hot and sweaty? How stupid do they think we are?
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BandSAboutMovies13 May 2021How did Solar Crisis - which cost $50 million dollars - disappear from the cultural zeitgeist?
This was not a small movie. While credited to Alan Smithee, the director is truly Richard C. Sarafian, who made Vanishing Point and Lolly-Madonna XXX. The cast includes Tim Matheson, Peter Boyle, Jack Palance, Michael Berryman, Paul Williams - as a talking bomb! - and Charleton Heston. It had a crew that included Russell Carpenter, the cinematographer of Titanic, and Syd Mead (Blade Runner) as production designer.
Hell, one of the investors was Nippon Steel, announced that they would be opening a theme park of the movie.
Thirty years later, no one remembers this movie.
The story could be some of the reason. Steve Kelso (Matheson) - the son of Admiral "Skeet" Kelso (Heston) and father of Mike (Corin Nemec) - plans on dropping a sentient bomb named Freddy - yes, just like Dark Star - with the voice of Paul Williams onto the sun to stop a solar flare and inspire Danny Boyle.
At the same time, Arnold Teague (Boyle) believes that there's money to be made and tries to stop the mission. There's also Mike trying to get to his dad, helped byJack Palance, who as always makes the absolute most out of a role.
The filmmakers went so far as to hire scientist Richard J. Terrile - a Voyager scientist who discovered several moons of Saturn, Uranus and Neptune - served as a technical advisor for the film. When he tried to tell them that sending a spaceship into the sun just wasn't scientific, he was told to try to figure ot how to make it plausible.
I have no idea how anyone thought that an American film version of Takeshi Kawata's novel Crisis: Year 2050 was going to make money off a budget that big, but blockbusters are a weird business. When the film didn't do well in Japan, the producers reshot scenes for America and Sarafian took his name off the movie. Additional scenes were directed by Arthur Marks, who also was behind Bonnie's Kids, Detroit 9000, Linda Lovelace for President and J. D.'s Revenge.
There's also a scene where Charlton Heston shouts at Tim Matheson, "Hold it, dammit! You tell me you love me before you leave this room!" That makes up for this multi-million dollar bomb looking no better than a direct-to-video release and lodges this magnificent failure directly into my head and heart. -
SmgBag113 December 2006This movie is self-contradicting. It takes an absurd plot and tries to pass it off as good science fiction. Yet not all parts of the film were so totally "out there" as to make it unwatchable as a whole. A great chase scene in the desert is an example of this. Add to this an element of sabotage, and the film is saved from itself.
The year is 2050, and the sun is threatening a "megalo flare" that will destroy the earth if it reaches us. Now, flares happen all the time on the sun. You only have to look at close-up photos of the sun to know this. Most last several hours and shoot 100,000 miles off the solar surface in an arc that's really quite impressive to see. But a flare that shoots out and spans the 93 million miles between Earth and sun? Not only that, but to find the earth in its orbit around the sun and strike right there? That's a little too convenient, at least for the plot's sake. Let's face it. If there were no emergency, there'd be no need for the mission to avert it.
The plot to save Earth is to send a talking anti-matter bomb into the sun and make the flare point somewhere else. And here's where the plot thickens, so to speak. Forget for a moment that it's over a million degrees in the corona, the part of the sun you can see in a total eclipse. It's going to get hot as you approach the sun. Yet the mission proceeds as if they have some super cooling process that will save them. And don't get me started on the bomb itself. Anti-matter is unstable by nature. So you're going to put enough of it to theoretically disrupt the sun's energy flow, all the while knowing that the sun itself is enough vaporize anything solid that approaches it? That's a suicide mission in itself.
As if all this weren't enough, now you have a saboteur on board that threatens the mission at various stages. A corporation on Earth doesn't believe the flare will happen, and is buying up resources while cheap and the scare lasts. So you have that element of competition. Will the mission succeed or won't it? Will the Helios (the vessel) escape the sun's gravitational pull and be able to return home?
Solar Crisis is fun to watch, if you can get past the absurdity. Just don't take it seriously, or you'll get burned. -
mike_walsh27 April 2012The year is 1990.
Take a bit of every science fiction movie you can find, put it in a blender, add a mix of clichés and season with a dash of ham acting. Cook for 112 minutes and enjoy.
The plot makes no sense and it doesn't matter - whoever did the script work was about 12 years old. He or she was still one up on the the science adviser, who must have been about 10. Not particularly smart 10 year old either.
Made me giggle. A lot.
It's not art and it won't expand your mind or horizons but if retro schlock amuses you it is hilarious. -
buttyfrench6 October 2008Given the global warming crisis, we should look to great films like this to point humanity's way into the future. Well made and perfectly cast, this movie captures the spirit of man vs. nature. O.J. Simpson best said it in "Capricorn One" as he dies in the desert, "...I'm hot and thirsty..". Well, that's the feeling one gets as "Solar Crisis" provokes the doom of a sun gone mad. A real treasure! I would watch this and Al Gore's documentary as a double feature to best understand what man now faces. The other film that comes to mind is "The Reincarnation of Peter Proud". In 1975, I once saw Richard Harris on an airplane.
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noize2319 February 2003With the earlier comments from other critics summing up many of my feelings about this movie, I will make this short.
This is not a great movie, but it was a lot of fun to watch.
It has all the tell tale signs of an epic sci-fi tale that was trimmed down way too far (like Dune or The Black Hole). Great acting edited down to shreds, plot lines that go nowhere (but feel like they should), and great special effects to fill in the blanks.
I havent seen the original release yet, but will search for it just to see an alternate cut, as it seems the original intent was to make a masterfull sci-fi thriller, but the US release falls a bit short of this ideal.
I have seen it twice now, and for all it's misgivings, it makes for some good popcorn time. -
bkoganbing31 October 2007One of the requirements of science fiction, at least before it starts to become satire, is that it be somewhat plausible. I would think that an anti-matter bomb would do considerably more damage than for what it was intended. But I'll leave that to the physicists who might have seen Solar Crisis.
It is a crisis the earth is facing because solar flares are getting totally out of hand. They're getting close to Earth, so much so that it's become unseasonably hot, as if the entire Earth were Death Valley. The answer is an anti-matter bomb which a space ship will have to take to the sun and explode it there. That will divert the flares off in say the direction of say Mercury providing it's not in direct alignment with the Earth.
Who to deliver it, but captain Tim Matheson and his crew. That is if he can keep his mind on the business at hand and not on runaway son, Corin Nemec. Taking care of the personal side of the family problems is admiral Charlton Heston, Matheson's father, and Nemec's grandfather.
There's a villain here too, Peter Boyle who is the CEO of a multi-national corporation which in this crisis is trying to control the world's food supply for the survivors. The idea he might not survive doesn't enter into his thinking. He's doing his best to sabotage Matheson's mission.
Solar Crisis seems like a bad mix of 2001, A Space Odyssey and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. Boyle seems to be taking his cue from Gene Hackman as Lex Luthor in Superman, apparently he's the only one in the cast who realizes he's in a turkey and overacts accordingly.
The rest of the cast are stalwart, true blue and dull. Except possibly desert rat Jack Palance who finds Nemec and cares for him.
The key here is that the film was directed by that noted Hollywood purveyor of flop films, Allen Smithee. The film gets as much as four stars for the cast involved and it was out in time for a Thanksgiving carving. -
Cr0we24 October 2018The arcs you see coming out from the sun's "surface" are not solar flares. They are called prominences. Prominences may last a day... or a month. A solar flares can extend far into space, and solar storms, a flare combined with a coronal mass ejection can be very dangerous.
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thehl3 February 1999Yet another movie with an interesting premise and some wondrous special effects falling right into the trash can.
Boring direction and performances (with the exception of the lovely Annabel Schofield who is much cuter as a brunette and probably deserves better material, and the ever earnest Charlton Heston) earn the rating of a real stinker.
It's amazing to watch Heston perform up to his usual par and display how really bad this movie is. He even plays in a sub-plot that kept me interested just to see how it tied back into the main line of the movie. The way they ended up resolving it was that they didn't. It simply falls off the end.
Really. Don't waste your time on this one. -
smatysia1 September 2001I had high hopes for this film, since it has Charlton Heston and Jack Palance. But those hopes came crashing to earth in the first 20 minutes or so. Palance was ridiculous. Not even Heston's acting or Annabel Schofield's beauty (or brief nude scenes) could save this film. Some of the space effects were quite good, but others were cheesy. The plot was ludicrous. Even sci-fi fans should skip this one. Grade F
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This su*k! Why do they have to make movies that they must know su*k from the beginning? I mean, look at Alien from 1977. If the movie you´r about to make is not better than anything made billions of years before, why make it? I had problems with the plot and who the main character was. That's not good either.
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Vomitron_G2 December 2006Well, yes, SOLAR CRISIS (an ambitious Japanese/American co-production) just might have so many flaws you could pave a road from here to Tokyo with. But it still isn't the exceptionally bad movie that many say it is. However, I'll immediately add that this movie is only worth seeing if you're a real sci-fi buff, because general movie-lovers, in search for a decent plot and well-written dialogues (two name only 2 things) will be thoroughly annoyed by SOLAR CRISIS.
Now, the basic premise is actually very promising: In the year 2050, a predicted giant solar flare threatens to incinerate the earth. In order to prevent this from happening, a crew of scientists are on an outer space mission to launch a bomb into the sun. Its explosion should prevent the flare from harming the earth. Other then this interesting story, the movie has two other things going for it: A noticeable cast and rather excellent special effects, especially the outer space sequences, displaying various space-crafts. Some of the set-designs were also decent (including a neat-looking robo-truck).
But that's about it. For one thing, the movie's pace is way too slow. You might lose interest along the way, resulting in boredom kicking in. There's also quite a bit of plot-stupidity to be spotted. For example: The main villain Arnold Teague (a filthy rich corporate executive played by Peter Boyle) has taken it upon himself to sabotage the rescue mission (I'm not even going into the fact as to how he tries to achieve this). Whether he believes the disaster will happen or not even is irrelevant at this point. The point is: Why the hell would anybody want to sabotage the only mission that could save the planet earth and all mankind from total extinction. That simply defies all logic (or maybe I missed something in this movie, I really don't know). Then, another annoying aspect is that the ending of the movie feels like it was rushed big-time. The whole movie builds up to the sequence where the bomb (navigated by a soon to be sacrificed crew-member) is send off into the sun. Instead of giving us an exciting scene and showing the effects the explosion might have, we just get some nifty colorization effects, and then the movie ends with a final shot of the scientists returning to earth in their spacecraft. You just can't have a whole movie slowly building up towards the final pay-off, and then deliver an anti-climax that's over in less than 5 minutes. The same goes with the elimination of the villain. This also happens in the last 10 minutes of the movie, and we get absolutely no exciting showdown or interesting twist or anything for that matter. We don't even see him die. Apparently he was on board of an aircraft that some military folks blow out of the sky.
As for the acting in the movie: Though the cast was great, not all of the performances were. Charlton Heston's acting-style seemed to have passed its expiry-date. And on top of that, he's got the most of all those really redundant emotional scenes. The film-makers really should have focused on bringing a bit more action, tension and thrills in this movie, instead of spicing it with all this sentimental stuff. On the other hand: Jack Palance really seemed to have fun in playing Travis, though his character really in no way served the general plot. It was fun seeing him and he's good as always, but why his character was written into the screenplay is beyond me. I've always found Tim Matheson a bit too stiff as an actor, but he was decent in his roll as Steve Kelso, the mission's commander. Some fellow commentator mentioned that Haas-character was really bad. Of course he was bad; he was portrayed be Paul Koslo and the man simply has not what it takes to be a good actor. A noticeable cameo was given to Michael"The Hills Have Eyes"Berryman. So, you see, the complete cast does manage to entertain.
Now all the afore-mentioned flaws should probably provide enough reasons to flunk this movie. But I can't. Maybe because of 2 reasons: For one thing, I really liked the underlying theme/idea this movie had that in the wake of a world-threatening disaster, worldwide nations would put aside their differences & conflicts to unite in an effort to save the wold. Another reason is we will probably never again (with all that colorful CGI going on in sci-fi movies nowadays) see such nice and convincing miniature space-vessels (that type of white ones we got familiar with through the early STAR WARS movies and 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY) in sci-fi movies. Is that a lame excuse to not flunk this movie? I think not and it's just not that bad like some people claim it is. -
From Earth to the Sun, the world's most heat resistant material....On and on, the questions can be endless. I don't know what these three writers, one who wrote the novel, two who scripted the screenplay based on that novel, I just don't know what they did the research works, referred to how many books to enable them co-scripted this sci fi movie. I don't care how many heavy weight actors they signed up to play those roles in this movie, I just want to give you some ideas how stupid and ridiculous this novel and the screenplay were. It's as stupid and ridiculous as the Chinese movie, "The Wondering Earth (2019)" . The only sci fi movie that we might not want to criticize so harshily is "Sunshine (2007)", but still, it's a very stupid and ridiculous movie about earthlings to deal with the Sun.
This 1990 movie was about the Sun Flare threatening the Earth, and how the people on Earth tried to travel to the Sun, throwing an atomic bomb into the Sun Flare to blow and dissipate the Flare. Well, just because of this movie's ridiculous premises, I couldn't resist the urge to search the web and got the following facts to show how ridiculous and impossible this mission could be even off the surface of the Earth, except "Star Trek" fantasy might have a remote feasibility to try. Well, let's see:
The distance between the Earth and the sun is 92.956 million miles. From Earth to Moon Distance 238,900 miles. Current Distance from Earth to Sun is 0.000015558 light years. How long is a light year in Earth years? For most space objects, we use light-years to describe their distance. A light-year is the distance light travels in one Earth year. One light-year is about 6 trillion miles (9 trillion km). That is a 6 with 12 zeros behind it!
It takes about 3 days for a spacecraft to reach the Moon. During that time a spacecraft travels at least 240,000 miles (386,400 kilometers) which is the distance between Earth and the Moon. The specific distance depends on the specific path chosen.
How long did it take to get to the moon in 1969? It took Apollo 11, that's the spaceship that carried Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin to the moon in 1969, 4 days 6 hours and 45 minutes to get to the moon. They took off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 1:32 pm on 7/16/1969, and the lunar module landed on the moon at 8:17 pm on 7/20/1969. (I herewith reserve my doubt of their Moon Landing claim)
The minimum distance from the Earth to Mars is about 33.9 million miles (54.6 million kilometers). However, that doesn't happen very often. The total journey time from Earth to Mars takes between 150-300 days depending on the speed of the launch, the alignment of Earth and Mars, and the length of the journey the spacecraft takes to reach its target.
The temperature at the surface of the Sun is about 10,000 Fahrenheit (5,600 Celsius). The temperature rises from the surface of the Sun inward towards the very hot center of the Sun where it reaches about 27,000,000 Fahrenheit (15,000,000 Celsius).
What is a flare on the sun? Sometimes a sudden, rapid, and intense variation in brightness is seen on the Sun. That is a solar flare. A solar flare occurs when magnetic energy that has built up in the solar atmosphere is suddenly released. On the Sun's surface are huge magnetic loops called prominences. Inside a flare, the temperature typically reaches 10 or 20 million degrees Kelvin, and can be as high as 100 million degrees Kelvin.
New record set for world's most heat resistant material. Researchers have discovered that tantalum carbide and hafnium carbide materials can withstand scorching temperatures of nearly 4000 degrees Celsius.
Based upon all of the above-mentioned, even they made a spaceship that could resist the heat of the Sun; even the space travel would slow down those astronauts' aging process, but you think a small atomic bomb with several mega ton explosion power could dismantle or dissipate a Sun Flare that might thousand bigger than the Earth, albeit the incredible sizes of the Sun and Earth: The Sun is 864,400 miles (1,391,000 kilometers) across. This is about 109 times the diameter of Earth. The Sun weighs about 333,000 times as much as Earth. It is so large that about 1,300,000 planet Earths can fit inside of it. If we put the Earth in front of the Sun, the Earth is just a tiny dot. The spaceship from the Earth would be just a micro dust, even the atomic bomb could be activated in time before melting, the explosion to the Sun would just like nothing happens, even less meaningless than a mosquito bite.
So folks, please don't waste your time to become as stupid as the movie itself. Watch "Star Trek" series, or "Star War" franchise. But most important advice from me is to avoid "The Wondering Earth", because I just couldn't believe the Chinese writer and the Chinese movie maker could be so stupid and shallow in basic science. -
GregP8917 November 2007The fact that this Sci-Fi movie deals with an intangible , The Sun, is enough to fully applaud this movie for its mission & plot. In addition, often Sci-Fi future movies fails to support any notion that futuristic space crews will be representative of many nations not simply the USA (aka the First spaceship on Venus). Plus, Seeing veteran Western actors Chuck Heston and Jack Palace, was great and disproves such notion that actors should make films within 'popularity genre', in fact, this may be been Mr. Heston's 5th or 6th Sci-Fi film, "we mortals are not worthy for such an honor". Heck, even legends Kirk Douglas and 007 Mr. Connery have done several Sci-Fi's films, as well. However, the contemporary cast of Tim matheson, Schofield, and Haywood did an excellent job notwithstanding. I say, rent the movie.
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SnoopyStyle28 May 2016For over 1000 days, the sun has caused devastation on earth. Scientists forecast a massive solar flare coming to destroy the world. A spaceship is launched to deliver an anti-matter bomb to deflect the flare. CEO Teague (Peter Boyle) leads a corporate conspiracy to sabotage the mission so that he could buy up the world's resources in the world-wide panic. Steve Kelso (Tim Matheson) leads the space crew while crew-mate Alex Noffe (Annabel Schofield) has been brainwashed. Steve's father Admiral Skeet Kelso (Charlton Heston) brings down the conspiracy while searching for grandson Mike.
The stuff on the spaceship is almost watchable. The special effects have the budget. The set design is poor. The acting is fair with Matheson and Dorian Harewood. Annabel Schofield does her model-acting with unnecessary nudity. Maybe it is necessary because there is nothing else in this movie. Everything happening on the ground is bad. The story is stupid. The designs are stupid. The ground story is full-on bad sci-fi B-movie. -
XweAponX20 December 2013I was attracted to this movie for a number of things. First, it LOOKS GREAT. Second, Ol' Moses Himself (Charlton Heston) was in it, and third, the female lead, "Alex" (Annabel Schofield) is SO damned beautiful, or was at least in this film.
When the film begins, a number of things are taken for granted: The SUN is about to shoot off a 6th-Extinction type Solar Flare, A Mission is in effect to try to fix it, and and there are Corporate Republican-Types who, just like today, insist that nothing is happening at all with the environment.
Scientists all around the world had agreed that The End was Near, except for the one scientist hired by the Corporation "IXL" to "disprove" the 6th-Extinction "theory". The Problem is, it is not a theory, it's a fact, even IXL's own scientist changes his mind, and tells the Owner of IXL "Teague" (Peter Boyle) that he has to in fact agree that this thing is happening, and the current space mission to drop a talking antimatter BOMB (played by Paul Williams as "Freddy" - Shades of Dark Star?) - is actually necessary. But as the world is falling apart economically and socially, Teague has bought up - All the food, all the electronics, and anything that would become of value once the "crisis" is over, be does not believe that the end of the crisis would also mean the end of the world.
The next thing we see is IXL's hapless doctor dropped off in the "desert" - apparently the whole Midwest has changed into a new Sahara, and he is rescued by Michael Berryman of "The Hills have Eyes". Supplies are driven automatically in Robot "Trucks" owned by IXL, nobody really goes anywhere or does anything.
Meanwhile, Space Flight Command is a 3-Generational thing. Admiral "Skeet" Kelso (Heston) is the father of Captain Steve Kelso (Tim Matheson), who is in command of the spaceship "Helios" and the mission to bomb the sun. Steve's son is "Mike" ("Corky" Nemec from one season plus one episode of Stargate SG-1) and he has escaped from Military Academy because he is not sure if he believes the world is going to end.
So Mike is pursued by both Skeet and Teague, Teague wants to subvert the kid - If he CAN be subverted. But more than that Teague wants to know if his late doctor had told Mike about the impending plan to sabotage the mission.
But early on, it is shows that IXL has indeed infiltrated the mission has put in place a way to bring it down, we are not sure how.
This film has "Enhanced People" kind of like Replicants in Blade Runner - Alex is one, and Teague has his own Blonde Haired Nazi Killing Machine.
Alex is one of only two people who can fly the Bomb Carrying Pod into the Sun, and it is a one way trip.
When Mike escapes into the Desert, he is helped by a crazy guy named "Travis" played by Jack Palance, he keeps him safe from Teague and they both meet the Surviving Doctor in a water-serving Bar, when he is brought in by Berryman. But there is a nosy Waitress, who rifles through the doctor's pockets to steal his phone, and calls Teague on it to see if there is a reward or something, Teague's Nazi shows up and kills the Doctor.
Mike escapes in a desert-modded Jaguar, which is not fast enough to escape Teague's Hovercraft, which looks a bit like the flying Hunter- Killers from Terminator. But when Teague cannot make Mike side with him, he sends laughing boy to kill him. So it is back to the original plan - Use the SPY on "Helios", where crew-members are being killed in "accidents"- And each time, we see Alex grieving.
We understand when we see scenes of Teague's NaziBoy "Programming" Alex - She's the one who was doing it and didn't know. But what Teague never considered was that she had real feelings for the people who were being killed, and this revelation breaks Teague's hold on her.
I have never seen Annabel Schofield in any other film or TV show since, but she was absolutely perfect in this.
This whole movie seems to be some kind of Japanese production based on what must have been a popular Japanese Book, which may partially explain the film's dismal ratings. This was never really released in a Theatre in the US. Apparently, the Director "Alan Smithee" is a Alias used when a Director does not want to be associated with a film, the first one to use that name was Don Siegel. Used in this case by "Vanishing Point" director Richard C. Sarafian.
Actually, I enjoyed this when I first started seeing this on places like HBO late at night, then the Sci Fi Channel, this was one of their most often run Moovies. I can enjoy the WORK that was done to make some of the shots look good, and they do at that. I don't know what the beef was between Sarafian and the Film Company, but had the director been given more control, this could have been as profitable as Total Rekall and Starship Troopers.
The scenes of Spaceflight are amazingly good for Non CGI, the models are very 2001-ish, and there is some lost tongue-in-cheek humor, especially from Peter Boyle (Who was "Clyde Buckman" in "The X-Files"). -
A joint-venture Japanese American Sci-Fi based on Takeshi Kawata's novel Crisis: Year 2050 adapted to big screen, the Earth in 2050 is globalized world controlled by mega company IXL, the scientist predicts a great solar flare that will vaporized the Earth's atmosphere, then the Earth Station through Adm. Skeet Kelso (Charlton Heston) and his second-in-command son Steve Kelso (Tim Matheson) settle a bold plan to send a Shuttle Helios toward to the sun with an antimatter bomb and dropping it by a pod into the sun, however IXL's CEO Arnold Teague (Peter Boyle) disagrees of such diagnoses by IXL's Scientist Hass (Paulo Koslo) and provides a sabotage on Helios mission thru a test-tube woman called Alex (Annabel Schofield).
Then the Helios mission becomes a chaos in so many damages all facilities, the Helios's crew spending their precious tight time trying fix the sabotage instead focusing their efforts in got reach on the sun aiming for accomplish the hard assignment, meantime on Earth many weird occurrences take places, as the Adm. Skeet's grandson Pilot Mick Kelso (Corin Corky Nemec) crashes at desert area, stay adrift and finding a shelter at small cabin with crazy Travis (Jack Palance) warned by earth crew Adm. Skeet landing on earth to track down the whereabouts for his beloved grandson, the old Admiral finding himself in a quandary in those inhospitable environment where several gangs live, whenever he goes his grandson wasn't there anymore.
This chaotic story is saved by the breathtaking visual on special effects, also as usually fine models and props created by Japanese high patten, a superb casting weren't enough good to overcame a glitched storyline as Tim Matheson, Dorian Harewood, Paul Carr, Brenda Bakke and so for, this shameless mix copy of Mad Max-Dune-Black Hole alike, overall a fine entertainment, hope it should be release on DVD someday to enter in my Sci-Fi collection.
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First watch: 2023 / How many: 1 / Source: Youtube / Rating: 6. -
The year is 2050 and a mega solar flare is going to incinerate the human race . Try and think of Danny Boyle's SUNSHINE with heat replacing cold and you've got the idea . Actually if you've got any idea about anything please don't watch SOLAR CRISIS because you'll find it incredibly dumb . So dumb you'll feel yourself discrimanated against by film studios who seem to employ screenwriters dumber than yourself . Take this sample of dialogue:
" If the flare strikes this means the Earth's surface will be magma like . Ninty per cent deaths "
Hmmm so if the Earth's surface becomes as hot as magma that means 90% will die ? I'm thinking if even if the temperature is considerably less than to turn the Earth's surface to magma this would cause 100% of human fatalities ? You see how dumb this all is . At least SUNSHINE employed Prof Brian Cox as scientific adviser where as if the producers here employed the school dunce we'd still see a film with more scientific credibility than this finished product. And don't get me started on a five tonne anti-matter bomb
SOLAR CRISIS might have a relatively big name cast but don't be fooled because Heston and Palance are merely employed to make the audience believe they're going to be watching an intense character driven big budget movie . Perhaps the biggest disappointment is the way the story plays out . We never get to see this world of the future and the locations back home on planet Earth are confined the foyer of a hotel and a desert which is devoid of humanity . Maybe it's a magma desert ?