A star-studded cast, featuring Natalie Wood, Henry Fonda, and Martin Landau, do what they can to keep things interesting but the script offers little help.
When a previously undiscovered comet strikes an asteroid, it puts the giant rock on a collision course with Earth. Humanity has less than a week to devise a plan to stop the asteroid, named “Orpheus,” from making a deep impact on our planet. Otherwise, it may be Armageddon for the human race.
Meteor, the last of the big 1970s disaster films, casts Sean Connery as Paul Bradley. Bradley was head of a NASA project called “Hercules,” an orbiting, missile-carrying platform meant to defend Earth from this exact scenario. The military, however, commandeered the project and turned the missiles to face Russia instead of towards space. Angered by this, Bradley left NASA to race sailboats.
Harry Sherwood (Karl Malden) lures Bradley back to NASA to convince the military to turn their missiles back toward space. The only problem is that the Hercules project was never revealed to the public or Russia. In the Soviet Union, Dr. Dubov (Brian Keith) is Bradley’s Russian counterpart. He designed a similar platform for the U.S.S.R. called “Peter the Great.” Neither of these weapons has enough firepower to stop Orpheus on their own. Somehow, the United States and Russian governments must get over their Cold War paranoia and work together. Hercules’ and Peter the Great’s missiles are the Earth’s only hope.
On paper, Meteor sounds fairly interesting. Unfortunately, the actual movie is talky and dull. Most of the “action” takes place in a subterranean control room. The characters meander around computer screens counting down until the missiles can be fired at the big, menacing rock. To break up the monotony, “splinters” from the meteor strike different areas of the world. For a few minutes at a time, we’re treated to destruction and chaos in Hong Kong, Siberia, or the Alps. Then, it’s right back to the yapping and standing around.
A star-studded cast, featuring Natalie Wood, Henry Fonda, and Martin Landau, do what they can to keep things interesting but the script offers little help. Brian Keith, surprisingly, is the one who brings some much needed — but too infrequent — humor to the film. Everybody else is dead serious, which would be fine if the special effects were convincing. All too often, though, the meteor looks like a sponge on a rotisserie and the rockets meant to save Earth look like toys. Clearly, the budget was spent roping in the cast.
Meteor‘s scenario was recycled for 1998’s dueling deadly meteor movies, Deep Impact and Armageddon. Neither of those films were stellar but both are much better than this one.
2.0 out of 5.0 stars
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