Deep Impact (film)

Deep Impact is a 1998 disaster film/science fiction film released by Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks Pictures. The film is directed by Mimi Leder. Its cast is headed by Elijah Wood, Téa Leoni, Morgan Freeman, Leelee Sobieski and Robert Duvall. The interrelated stories of the plot describe events which take place surrounding the discovery of the fictional "Comet Wolf-Biederman," due to impact Earth, and its subsequent approach to our planet.

Plot summary

Leo Biederman and Sarah Hotchner, two teenage astronomy club members, discover a new object amongst the stars at night. Little do they know that it is a comet on a direct collision course for Earth. Leo takes a photo and mails it and the co-ordinates to astronomer Dr. Marcus Wolf. Wolf uses the co-ordinates to find the object from his observatory. He discovers its deadly trajectory, and attempts to contact his colleagues, but is unable to. He saves the data to a disk, labelling it with his and Leo's surnames, but dies in a car crash on the way from the observatory to alert his colleagues.

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A few months later, Jenny Lerner, a field reporter for MSNBC in Washington, DC, finds out about a government secret called "Ellie" that is connected to President Tom Beck. Initially deducing it as an affair, when she asks him about it, she finds out it is really "ELE", code for extinction-level event. President Beck invites her to a press conference, where he announces the comet's existence. The comet, seven miles wide, is large enough to wipe out civilization if it hits the Earth. President Beck announces that NASA is going to send a crew of astronauts on the spaceship Messiah to the comet, now named "Wolf-Biederman" after Dr. Wolf and Leo. Led by Captain Spurgeon Tanner, the mission of Messiah is to destroy the comet before it gets too close to Earth, using an arsenal of atomic bombs.

Related Topics:
MSNBC - Washington, DC - Extinction-level event - Atomic bomb

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Life changes drastically worldwide, and Leo Biederman and Jenny Lerner separately become celebrities. Leo tries to live as normal a life as he can considering what is going on, and love blossoms between him and Sarah. Jenny swiftly rises to become an anchor for MSNBC, and is also reunited with her estranged father, though their relationship is still very strained.

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Messiah is constructed in orbit and the crew use the Space Shuttle Atlantis to reach it. Messiah makes it to the comet and plants the bombs, but Dr. Gus Partenza is lost, and Oren Monash is blinded and severly burned. The nuclear explosion's shock wave damages the vessel, cutting off contact. The explosions, instead of destroying the comet, split it into two pieces (the larger six-mile-wide fragment, "Wolf", and the smaller 1.5-mile-wide fragment, "Biederman"). Messiah's remaining crew sets a course back to Earth, still carrying some bombs, hoping to make it back in time for one more try.

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President Beck, acknowledging Messiah's failure, announces that special caves had been built as a contingency, and the government will conduct a lottery-of-fate to randomly select 800,000 ordinary American citizens to go along with 200,000 pre-selected scientists, specialists, soldiers and other officials. These 1,000,000 people will be part of a worldwide effort to save the population from extinction when the comets hit Earth.

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Life as we know it ends as the lottery's selectees are notified. Jenny and Leo are both among the pre-selected. Leo, being a minor, is permitted to bring his family. He also gets permission to marry Sarah, in order to save her and her family, who were not selected in the lottery. But when it comes time to evacuate to the caves, the soldiers conducting the evacuation have no record of Sarah's family being allowed to accompany Leo and Sarah, prompting Sarah to remain behind.

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Upon arriving at the caves that will serve as shelter for the 1,000,000 people, Leo decides he can't enter the shelter without Sarah and her family and he leaves, determined to be with Sarah, whether he lives or not. He makes his way to Sarah's home and finds it empty, except for a motorbike that is chained to a workbench in the garage. He finds the key and leaves on the motorbike. He finds Sarah's family on a gridlocked freeway and takes Sarah and her infant sister on the motorbike, escaping into the Appalachian Mountains.

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Meanwhile, MSNBC is being evacuated by helicopter. Jenny had been selected in the lottery and is to be taken to the caves, but she abandons her seat on the helicopter and gives it to Beth Stanley, a co-worker who has a young daughter, and sends them off to the caves. She then goes to the coast to be with her father at his beach house. There they finally find an understanding, even as they find their fate.

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Ultimately, after a last-ditch effort to use all of Earth's missile-borne nuclear weapons to destroy the comets fails, "Biederman" impacts in the North Atlantic Ocean, sending out a megatsunami over 400 meters tall that floods out the global Atlantic coastlines. Jenny and her father, and Sarah's parents, all die, along with countless more. Leo and Sarah manage to get high enough in the mountains to avoid the wave, along with thousands of others.

Related Topics:
North Atlantic Ocean - Megatsunami

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Messiah arrives ahead of "Wolf", and informs NASA of its decision to engage in a suicide mission to try and destroy the remaining fragment. They arrive with time to spare to say goodbye to their families. Oren Monash is told that his wife, who was expecting their first child when he departed, had given birth to their son and she has she named him after Oren. Messiah then dives into a fissure on the surface of the comet and detonates the remaining atomic bombs on-board, vaporizing "Wolf" over North America, preventing a predicted land impact somewhere in Canada and saving humanity. The movie ends with President Beck giving an inspirational speech in front of the construction site of the new Capitol building to kick off recovery efforts.

Related Topics:
North America - Canada

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A competing "space impact" film, Armageddon, was released at approximately the same time as Deep Impact. Deep Impact is generally considered to be more realistic than Armageddon, and had a stronger emphasis on the effect on society. Nevertheless, Armageddon was a bigger hit, though Deep Impact was also a commercial success.

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