As a movie made for TV, Meltdown isn't a complete dismal failure, but even with the minimal budget, barely any actors with ability and a ridiculous premise I still expected it to at least make some kind of sense.
Annoyingly this starts out OK; a large asteroid is hurtling towards earth and an agency has set up an orbiting 10 megaton warhead as a countermeasure for just this type of thing. One of the operators notices an anomaly and wants to abort but he's told to proceed as normal. The warhead is fired, hits its target but fails to destroy the object. Instead it breaks into 3 large pieces. The largest piece, which we're advised is the size of Iceland, is set to collide with earth.
Instead of creating the extinction level event that's expected, the piece hits earth's atmosphere and bounces off, however the impact has managed to jolt the earth out of orbit, (yes you read that right), and it's predicted that over the coming week the temperatures will increase to around 150 degrees Fahrenheit or 65 degrees Celsius.
As the earth starts to fry in the sudden global heatwave, fires break out in various parts of the world, water is in short supply, widespread lootings are afoot and police detective, Casper Van Dien, along with his family, set off for the airport in the hope of reaching the Arctic. The rest of the movie is a random mix of events that plague their attempts to get any respite from the soaring temperatures.
Needless to say, they never make it to a plane and therefore, never get to the Arctic, but for some reason, certain doom is avoided by way of magnetic pull from planetary alignment, or some such rubbish, the earth manages to sort itself out, rain cools everything down, I puke, the end.
To say that this movie doesn't make sense and falls completely off the rails is a vast understatement. Despite the highly questionable and implausible science, the actions of all concerned just don't make any logical sense. One of the characters, who happens to be the technician who was against firing the nuke in the first place is carrying a portable temperature reader and even though it's readings are increasing and around 140 degrees, everyone is still wearing jackets or long sleeves, no one is wearing a hat, only one person passes out even though none of them have had the water necessary to continue and none of them appear to be sweating all that much. It's hot enough to cause cars to overheat and spontaneously combust but not hot enough for anyone to roll up their sleeves or discard their jackets apparently.
Forest fires make sense, looting and rioting and killing for water also makes sense, but at 60 degrees Celsius there's going to be very little running or fighting going on as it'd be virtually impossible to breathe adequately by this time for that type of action, clothing would be at a minimum and the group would've died from heatstroke or organ failure 5-10 degrees earlier from being out in the open. There'd be widespread flooding from icemelt, all permafrost would be in thaw and with no water pressure left to fight fires, that would make ground temperature even hotter.
All of that however is moot, seeing as any object large enough to knock earth from orbit would also destroy the earth on impact, but if that happened we wouldn't have a bad movie to laugh at. Budget constraints shouldn't be an excuse to forgo the simple research that would at least make movies like this more enjoyable and slightly more logical in its progression even if the chain of events that caused it are impossible. This'll be OK for a late night movie on TV, but it isn't worth going out of your way for.
Annoyingly this starts out OK; a large asteroid is hurtling towards earth and an agency has set up an orbiting 10 megaton warhead as a countermeasure for just this type of thing. One of the operators notices an anomaly and wants to abort but he's told to proceed as normal. The warhead is fired, hits its target but fails to destroy the object. Instead it breaks into 3 large pieces. The largest piece, which we're advised is the size of Iceland, is set to collide with earth.
Instead of creating the extinction level event that's expected, the piece hits earth's atmosphere and bounces off, however the impact has managed to jolt the earth out of orbit, (yes you read that right), and it's predicted that over the coming week the temperatures will increase to around 150 degrees Fahrenheit or 65 degrees Celsius.
As the earth starts to fry in the sudden global heatwave, fires break out in various parts of the world, water is in short supply, widespread lootings are afoot and police detective, Casper Van Dien, along with his family, set off for the airport in the hope of reaching the Arctic. The rest of the movie is a random mix of events that plague their attempts to get any respite from the soaring temperatures.
Needless to say, they never make it to a plane and therefore, never get to the Arctic, but for some reason, certain doom is avoided by way of magnetic pull from planetary alignment, or some such rubbish, the earth manages to sort itself out, rain cools everything down, I puke, the end.
To say that this movie doesn't make sense and falls completely off the rails is a vast understatement. Despite the highly questionable and implausible science, the actions of all concerned just don't make any logical sense. One of the characters, who happens to be the technician who was against firing the nuke in the first place is carrying a portable temperature reader and even though it's readings are increasing and around 140 degrees, everyone is still wearing jackets or long sleeves, no one is wearing a hat, only one person passes out even though none of them have had the water necessary to continue and none of them appear to be sweating all that much. It's hot enough to cause cars to overheat and spontaneously combust but not hot enough for anyone to roll up their sleeves or discard their jackets apparently.
Forest fires make sense, looting and rioting and killing for water also makes sense, but at 60 degrees Celsius there's going to be very little running or fighting going on as it'd be virtually impossible to breathe adequately by this time for that type of action, clothing would be at a minimum and the group would've died from heatstroke or organ failure 5-10 degrees earlier from being out in the open. There'd be widespread flooding from icemelt, all permafrost would be in thaw and with no water pressure left to fight fires, that would make ground temperature even hotter.
All of that however is moot, seeing as any object large enough to knock earth from orbit would also destroy the earth on impact, but if that happened we wouldn't have a bad movie to laugh at. Budget constraints shouldn't be an excuse to forgo the simple research that would at least make movies like this more enjoyable and slightly more logical in its progression even if the chain of events that caused it are impossible. This'll be OK for a late night movie on TV, but it isn't worth going out of your way for.