To appreciate the Asylumverse's production variants of Armageddon and Deep Impact, as well as the sci-fi disaster junk sciences shucked via the major studio frames of Moonfall and Geostorm (and the better-inciteful Greenland): one must have a past appreciation of American International's and Crown International's budget-constrained sci-fi films of the 1950s and 1960s, films themselves rife with ludicrous-to-outlandish, ridiculous scientific inconsistencies and inaccuracies (my youthful favorites of 1959's Angry Red Planet, 1965's Space Probe Taurus, 1968's Mission Mars comes to mind, and that's appreciated).
Now, you may ask: Do we really need fresh, present-day retro-homages to those films? Are these Asylum space disasters "bad" (read: look cheap) on purpose or do these films ironically suffer the same budgetary constraints of AIP and CIP films?
Doesn't matter. I'm burnt out on those old films I've watched more times than any human should. I need something new to watch.
Yes, the Asylum's CGI'd falling-rock resume has recaptured the snowy days of my UHF-TV youth, courtesy of the studio's prolific go-to screenwriter, Joe Roche. He and his writing partner, Lauren Pritchard, also gave us Collision Earth (2020) and Moon Crash (2022); on his own, Roche wrote Meteor Moon (2020). While Collision Earth served as his debut, in three short years, he's written eleven-and-counting, fun films for the studio (nope, Roche didn't write that other Eric Roberts-starring falling-rock epic, Asteroid-a-Geddon: that's Asylum's other, adept-at-the-Canon Reds-and-Final Draft sci-fi action purveyor, Geoff Meed).
After watching Roche's debut, the Eric Roberts-fronted Collision Earth, and his quickly-produced follow-up, Meteor Moon (starring Dominque Swain), I was immediately hooked on his tech-crazy scripting; Roche does his research, and the physics, while improbable, sounds accurate: he sells the galactic dues ex-machinas with confidence.
Meanwhile, on the thespian front: Well, it's always hit-and-miss with the cardboard-to-hysterical emoting, as some do it better than others, but everyone does their best selling Roche's tech-jargon (and Pritchard's comedic one-liners and inter-personal drama sidebars). Remembering Roche's crazed, tech-exposition can't be easy, so kudos ye thespians. Everyone has extensive resumes, so they're doing something right in front of the cameras.
So, at the risk of plot-spoiling (as if you haven't already figured it out): In an undisclosed future, another falling rock hurls towards Earth -- and that tax-payer funded warning system failed again. So, instead of a usual phalanx of missiles (from some secret weapon platform; see AIP's Meteor from 1979 starring Sean Connery), the Earth's nations watched Godzilla movies one to many times and developed a Japanese monster-moviesque "laser cannon" network -- that rise from ground silos (a convincing CGI dupe that trumps the Pacific Rim in-camera toys from the disaster '70s).
Oops.
Another tax-payer funded boondoggle: that pesky rock is pure iron and the laser cannons can't split-divert the rock.
Yep.
It's time to fire-up that Deep Impact-styled space shuttle (complete with in-cabin gravity and a cockpit that looks like a Ed Woodian update from Plan Nine from Outer Space) manned by a coed, rag-tag volunteer crew to install a rocket-on-the-rock to alter its trajectory. Along the way, as one of the crew attempts a repair-in-space to save the mission: she's cooked-to-a-crisp on the ship's hull (actually a pretty decent CGI-effect that Alfonso Brescia wished was able to pull off amid his five, late 70s-to-early-80s Star Wars knock offs -- that he ripped from 2001: A Space Odyssey).
Amid all the "What are we gonna do nows!" we have -- in the Eric Roberts name-on-the-box role -- the always welcomed-familiar Patrick Labyorteaux (from today's NCIS and yesterday's Little House on the Prairie). Sure, he's adorned in a not-accurate General's uniform (they never are in these consultant-lacking films), but he's convincing as a guff General. Having Patrick, here, supporting the cause helps the watch, but I wished he was here, more, in the spaceship as the Bruce Willis-Armageddon hero.
In the director's chair is the more-than-qualified Noah Luke: a long-time actor and cinematographer who also gave us the production-similar (and production-ambitious) Attack on Titan (2022; with Eric Roberts, natch) and the aforementioned Moon Crash. He knows how to pull it together on a tight budget and even tighter schedule.
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