Impact
by Mike Rohl
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DVD details
Actor: Benjamin Sadler, David James Elliott, Florentine Lahme, James Cromwell, Natasha HenstridgeDirector: Mike Rohl
Brand: HENSTRIDGE,NATASHA
DVD: Region Code 99
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Subtitled); English (Original Language)
Format: AC-3, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: Anamorphic Widescreen, 1.77:1
Running Time: 180 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2009-09-01
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
DVD Reviews of Impact
DVD Review: Bad Plot, Worse Science
Summary: 1 Stars
Although I wanted to keep an open mind, I write this with a bias against made-for-primetime miniseries based on disaster scenarios. First of all, the plots often have too many protagonists with cookie cutter personalities. The TV producers usually focus attention on a love story, a parent trying to rescue his or her offspring, some kids who have to watch a grandparent die, and of course, the U.S. President is the one person people turn to for morale. They also feature one or more good-looking scientists with no personal lives whose only motivation is altruism for the human race. Impact is all this, and worse. The sole antagonist, other than the rogue Moon, is a paranoid gas station manager who insists on protecting his own property in a world that is destined to end in 37 days - and withholding Aspirin from an old person dying of a heart attack.
Where is the religious community in all this? Where is the theological wrestling that would naturally occur in a deeply religious country like the United States of America? Where are the highway robbers, the criminal element that usually appears during any major humanitarian crisis? In a real end of the world crisis there would be total anarchy. No one would be falling in love or changing their religious beliefs. Thirty-seven days is hardly enough for the average person to reflect on the death of a loved one.
Not only that, but the average TV producer's understanding of physics is deplorable. The writers of "Impact" do no better than the people who served us "Armageddon" or "Asteroid". I count all the following mistakes:
1. The object that strikes the Moon, given its appearance and description as a "dead star" would properly be referred to as a black dwarf. But there are no black dwarves in the Universe. Why? Stars are big and hot, and they take a long time to cool even after they run out of fuel.
2. White dwarves emit enough radiation to have destroyed all life on earth long before the Moon got struck. They are also about the size of Earth.
3. Ignoring that fact, an object massive enough to have twice the gravity of the Earth impacting the Moon at normal collision speed for objects falling toward the Sun at 1 AU would not crack the Moon upon impact. It would have cracked the Moon before impact due to tidal forces. Then the Moon would have been pulverized, and the white dwarf would have continued on its original trajectory.
4. Ignoring that fact, the object would not settle into Earth orbit. If the Earth and the white dwarf became gravitationally locked the Earth would orbit it, not the other way around.
5. Ignoring that fact, the collision trajectory would not be a perfect spiral.
6. Ignoring that fact, all of the nuclear weapons in the world would not move the Moon a millimeter away from Earth. The military has scientists. They know this. Also, the Partial Test Ban Treaty prohibits the use of nuclear weapons in space.
7. Ignoring that fact, the "gravitational anomalies" caused by the white dwarf would not affect certain objects and not others. If it was close enough to lift people off the surface of the Earth, it is likely the surface of the Earth would be lifted with them. In other words, the Earth itself would have been pulled apart by tidal forces.
8. Ignoring that fact, no rocket exists that can launch humans and scientific equipment from Earth and land on a body with twice the Earth's gravity.
9. Ignoring that fact, there is no such thing as a mass driver.
10. Ignoring that fact, a mass driver would not propel the white dwarf into space. It would simply propel itself toward the white dwarf. The Moon's crust is not sturdy enough to withstand the forces required to support an object when that object is causing a body with twice the Earth's gravity to accelerate in its direction.
11. Ignoring that, the energy required to mass drive the white dwarf out into space at a velocity high enough to gravitationally separate it from the Earth-Moon system would vaporize the mass driver within a microsecond of it being turned on.
All of this suggests that the directors funneled money into the special effects team and away from their scientific advisers. Even more likely, they failed to hire such a team, because they knew that the realistic disaster scenarios had already been taken up. So they basically shrank the asteroid from Armageddon, gave it a hundred times the mass, threw it at the Moon and spat on Sir Issac Newton's grave. They then added a storyline that any half-brained soap opera producer would have rejected and called it a miniseries.
A better plot would have involved a small select group of individuals leaving the Earth to live on a space station orbiting the Sun or another star. Explore their thoughts on leaving their home planet, their thoughts about humanity after earth, and leave it at that. At least the ending would be unpredictable.
In conclusion, the dumbing down of the US American populace, like, continues.
Description of Impact
Genre: Action/Adventure
Rating: UN
Release Date: 1-SEP-2009
Media Type: DVD
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