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Alright first off: this is not a great film, it is not even a particularly good film, but I have seen many that were much worse. I am curious as to who the director was who ducked out on this one and turned it over to Alan Smithee (for those not in the know: Alan Smithee is a name that the DGA assigns to films who's directors do not want to admit a connection to for some reason, artistic of otherwise.)

Some of the performances were a little flat, although Jack Palance was as eccentrically off beat as usual. That alone always gives any film a one point boost. Peter Boyle was just as underplayed a villain as usual, not getting his hands dirty. But there was a lot of real tension in the film. In anyone was over the top it was Dorian Harewood, and I suspect that was because of bad direction. I suspect with a better director, budget and script this could have been a much better film. I still enjoyed it though. Just one of my little quirks I guess.

Ignore all the badly-written reviews on here trying to claim that this film has redeeming qualities (other than the nicely-made models - I discovered it after watching Sense of Scale). It doesn't. It's an absolute mess. I love bad sci-fi, but this is just dull, uninteresting and unintelligible rubbish.

Disowned by Richard C. Sarafian, this disaster stunk up Japanese theaters before coming to the States and going immediately to video, where it was not seen again until the Turner networks needed something other than infomercials to fill their 3am-6am time slots and found this tape at the bottom of their bin. The Smithee name is supposed to be used when the studio hacks the movie so badly that the director no longer wants his name attached to it. But I'm afraid that Sarafian can not blame the studio entirely on this one. The actors, mostly recent graduates of "Overacting 101", deliver one cornball line after another. The plot is convoluted. The special effects are unimpressive. The parts that aren't laughable are just plain boring. The script or the book must have been good - why else would Palance, Matheson, Boyle, or Heston agree to appear in this dud? But something went horribly wrong from the page to the screen. Summary: Avoid. Not even bad enough to be so-bad-it's-good.

What was Charlton Heston thinking when he signed up for this disaster?? Alright, I'll be fair. I rented Solar Crisis (translation: wasted a buck) with an open mind. It had an interesting plot, so it seemed, and some famous guys. So there must be something there. Man oh man was I wrong. I realized that with the opening scene in which cheap subtitles scrolled across the screen, describing the Impeding Doom of Earth. To make matters worse, a voice-over further insulted my intelligence by reading the words too. Gee, since I was dumb enough to rent the film, they must figure I can't read either. Then came the real blow: The weak, weak acting (usually showcased by laughably over-dramatic monologues) coupled with the bland, bland writing, strewn together with the lousy, lousy soundtrack make for one nose-wrinkling mess. Dr. Haas was especially bad, as was the ship's commander whose name escapes me. We are treated to such memorable lines as: "Our only security blanket out there is ourselves" and the immortal "I'm the only one who can ever free you!" Please. Free me, for the love of God.

When I had first heard of "Solar Crisis" then got a load of the cast, I wondered why I had never heard of a movie with such a big cast before. Then I saw it.

Now I know.

For a movie that encompasses outer space, the sun, vast deserts and sprawling metropolises, this is an awfully cramped and claustrophobic feature; it feels like everyone is hunkered close together so the camera won't have to pull too far back.

And the effects, while good, are pretty underwhelming; we're talking about the imminent destruction of the planet Earth if a team of scientists and soldiers cannot deflect a deadly solar flare. But other than shouting, sweating and a red glow about everything, there's no real feel of emergency.

Don't get me started about the cast. What Heston, Palance, Matheson, Boyle, et al are doing in this movie without even bothering to act with any feel for the material is anyone's guess. Makes you wonder who else's condos aren't paid for in Hollywood....

And as far as the end goes.... Well, let's just say it's tense and intriguing but it's too little too late in an effort like this. If it had kept up that kind of pace all through the film, maybe I would have heard of "Solar Crisis" sooner.

Two stars. Mostly for lost opportunities and bad career moves.

I wonder how Alan Smithee keeps his job doing junk like this?

I've seen similar movies executed much better. Sunshine comes to mind. This had alot of stellar actors but they didn't have much to work with and the concept was bad. The side effects were pretty bad as well being the fact that Star Wars was made in 1977 with excellent side effects. This had very cheesy side effects. You could definitely tell that it was low budget. Unfortunately becuz the cast had alot of potential. Check out the movie Sunshine better concept, better side effects and an excellent cast as well. For another type doomsday movie Deep Impact & Armageddon. Those had a great cast with a good concept and great side effects. It really helps when you have a big budget.

It was one of those late night "It's there" I saw it things. Sometimes they are great. This one was awful, but it really shouldn't have been.

The movie had a really good cast. How can you fail when you have Charlsten Heston and Jack Pallance? We're talking Oscar winner turf here. It had good special effects. It even had some really good tits! And I mean nicely shown, full breast with full nipple and at one point even some beaver. But it didn't compensate for the one missing ingredient - a story! The plot was ludicrous. I don't mean the "solar crisis" sun exploding stuff, but that was bad enough. It was the rest of the stuff - the oh so stupid and totally predictable evil corporation stuff. Man that just STANK! No amount of good acting or cool space ships or fight scenes could get around that one.

I have seen the same cast members be incredibly good. I have seen wonderful science fiction movies that had miniscule casts and budgets. All the difference is in the writing.

This movie is self-contradicting. It takes an absurd plot and tries to pass it off as good science fiction. Yet not all parts of the film were so totally "out there" as to make it unwatchable as a whole. A great chase scene in the desert is an example of this. Add to this an element of sabotage, and the film is saved from itself.

The year is 2050, and the sun is threatening a "megalo flare" that will destroy the earth if it reaches us. Now, flares happen all the time on the sun. You only have to look at close-up photos of the sun to know this. Most last several hours and shoot 100,000 miles off the solar surface in an arc that's really quite impressive to see. But a flare that shoots out and spans the 93 million miles between Earth and sun? Not only that, but to find the earth in its orbit around the sun and strike right there? That's a little too convenient, at least for the plot's sake. Let's face it. If there were no emergency, there'd be no need for the mission to avert it.

The plot to save Earth is to send a talking anti-matter bomb into the sun and make the flare point somewhere else. And here's where the plot thickens, so to speak. Forget for a moment that it's over a million degrees in the corona, the part of the sun you can see in a total eclipse. It's going to get hot as you approach the sun. Yet the mission proceeds as if they have some super cooling process that will save them. And don't get me started on the bomb itself. Anti-matter is unstable by nature. So you're going to put enough of it to theoretically disrupt the sun's energy flow, all the while knowing that the sun itself is enough vaporize anything solid that approaches it? That's a suicide mission in itself.

As if all this weren't enough, now you have a saboteur on board that threatens the mission at various stages. A corporation on Earth doesn't believe the flare will happen, and is buying up resources while cheap and the scare lasts. So you have that element of competition. Will the mission succeed or won't it? Will the Helios (the vessel) escape the sun's gravitational pull and be able to return home?

Solar Crisis is fun to watch, if you can get past the absurdity. Just don't take it seriously, or you'll get burned.

I saw this movie a long time ago... luckily it was for free. I have to be one of the maybe twenty people who saw this movie in the theater. I don't remember a whole bunch of it, but I do remember I was incredibly bored, the plot made no sense and when I came out of the theater the only thing I could say was at least now I know what the worst movie I ever saw was. I just was incredibly bothered by one thing: if they can make the temperature as they approach the sun low enough for humans to survive, why can't they turn it down to a comfortable temperature instead of being all hot and sweaty? How stupid do they think we are?

The fact that this Sci-Fi movie deals with an intangible , The Sun, is enough to fully applaud this movie for its mission & plot. In addition, often Sci-Fi future movies fails to support any notion that futuristic space crews will be representative of many nations not simply the USA (aka the First spaceship on Venus). Plus, Seeing veteran Western actors Chuck Heston and Jack Palace, was great and disproves such notion that actors should make films within 'popularity genre', in fact, this may be been Mr. Heston's 5th or 6th Sci-Fi film, "we mortals are not worthy for such an honor". Heck, even legends Kirk Douglas and 007 Mr. Connery have done several Sci-Fi's films, as well. However, the contemporary cast of Tim matheson, Schofield, and Haywood did an excellent job notwithstanding. I say, rent the movie.

The year is 1990.

Take a bit of every science fiction movie you can find, put it in a blender, add a mix of clichés and season with a dash of ham acting. Cook for 112 minutes and enjoy.

The plot makes no sense and it doesn't matter - whoever did the script work was about 12 years old. He or she was still one up on the the science adviser, who must have been about 10. Not particularly smart 10 year old either.

Made me giggle. A lot.

It's not art and it won't expand your mind or horizons but if retro schlock amuses you it is hilarious.

Well, Solar Crisis really isn't all that bad. It has the look and feel of an "A" movie that didn't quite make it. It's also a little too long for what it has to offer. Ninety minutes as opposed to one hundred fifteen minutes would have given it more movement, and impact. Yet whenever we get the opportunity to see Charlton Heston, Jack Palance, and Peter Boyle in the same film, there is going to be some fun. I like the premise of the film, and much of its execution. Though it never comes together in a compelling package, it is definitely a film that a Sci Fi fan should see at least once. I think the climax is moving, and very well done.

There is a healthy dose of Japanese mindset behind the scenes, that seems to create some differences of perception of what works in science fiction. The Japanese have an intriguing cultural perception of reality, and I love many of their films. But that sagacity does not seem to extend fully into "space" films. I don't think they have never quite exceeded their heritage of gimmicky, "comic book" science fiction movies.

Solar Crisis has excellent actors, sustained suspense,lots of drama, and reasonable action. But it tries to be too much, too broad, and just never quite reaches its goal.

One of the requirements of science fiction, at least before it starts to become satire, is that it be somewhat plausible. I would think that an anti-matter bomb would do considerably more damage than for what it was intended. But I'll leave that to the physicists who might have seen Solar Crisis.

It is a crisis the earth is facing because solar flares are getting totally out of hand. They're getting close to Earth, so much so that it's become unseasonably hot, as if the entire Earth were Death Valley. The answer is an anti-matter bomb which a space ship will have to take to the sun and explode it there. That will divert the flares off in say the direction of say Mercury providing it's not in direct alignment with the Earth.

Who to deliver it, but captain Tim Matheson and his crew. That is if he can keep his mind on the business at hand and not on runaway son, Corin Nemec. Taking care of the personal side of the family problems is admiral Charlton Heston, Matheson's father, and Nemec's grandfather.

There's a villain here too, Peter Boyle who is the CEO of a multi-national corporation which in this crisis is trying to control the world's food supply for the survivors. The idea he might not survive doesn't enter into his thinking. He's doing his best to sabotage Matheson's mission.

Solar Crisis seems like a bad mix of 2001, A Space Odyssey and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. Boyle seems to be taking his cue from Gene Hackman as Lex Luthor in Superman, apparently he's the only one in the cast who realizes he's in a turkey and overacts accordingly.

The rest of the cast are stalwart, true blue and dull. Except possibly desert rat Jack Palance who finds Nemec and cares for him.

The key here is that the film was directed by that noted Hollywood purveyor of flop films, Allen Smithee. The film gets as much as four stars for the cast involved and it was out in time for a Thanksgiving carving.

Yet another movie with an interesting premise and some wondrous special effects falling right into the trash can.

Boring direction and performances (with the exception of the lovely Annabel Schofield who is much cuter as a brunette and probably deserves better material, and the ever earnest Charlton Heston) earn the rating of a real stinker.

It's amazing to watch Heston perform up to his usual par and display how really bad this movie is. He even plays in a sub-plot that kept me interested just to see how it tied back into the main line of the movie. The way they ended up resolving it was that they didn't. It simply falls off the end.

Really. Don't waste your time on this one.

I had high hopes for this film, since it has Charlton Heston and Jack Palance. But those hopes came crashing to earth in the first 20 minutes or so. Palance was ridiculous. Not even Heston's acting or Annabel Schofield's beauty (or brief nude scenes) could save this film. Some of the space effects were quite good, but others were cheesy. The plot was ludicrous. Even sci-fi fans should skip this one. Grade F

From Earth to the Sun, the world's most heat resistant material....On and on, the questions can be endless. I don't know what these three writers, one who wrote the novel, two who scripted the screenplay based on that novel, I just don't know what they did the research works, referred to how many books to enable them co-scripted this sci fi movie. I don't care how many heavy weight actors they signed up to play those roles in this movie, I just want to give you some ideas how stupid and ridiculous this novel and the screenplay were. It's as stupid and ridiculous as the Chinese movie, "The Wondering Earth (2019)" . The only sci fi movie that we might not want to criticize so harshily is "Sunshine (2007)", but still, it's a very stupid and ridiculous movie about earthlings to deal with the Sun.

This 1990 movie was about the Sun Flare threatening the Earth, and how the people on Earth tried to travel to the Sun, throwing an atomic bomb into the Sun Flare to blow and dissipate the Flare. Well, just because of this movie's ridiculous premises, I couldn't resist the urge to search the web and got the following facts to show how ridiculous and impossible this mission could be even off the surface of the Earth, except "Star Trek" fantasy might have a remote feasibility to try. Well, let's see:

The distance between the Earth and the sun is 92.956 million miles. From Earth to Moon Distance 238,900 miles. Current Distance from Earth to Sun is 0.000015558 light years. How long is a light year in Earth years? For most space objects, we use light-years to describe their distance. A light-year is the distance light travels in one Earth year. One light-year is about 6 trillion miles (9 trillion km). That is a 6 with 12 zeros behind it!

It takes about 3 days for a spacecraft to reach the Moon. During that time a spacecraft travels at least 240,000 miles (386,400 kilometers) which is the distance between Earth and the Moon. The specific distance depends on the specific path chosen.

How long did it take to get to the moon in 1969? It took Apollo 11, that's the spaceship that carried Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin to the moon in 1969, 4 days 6 hours and 45 minutes to get to the moon. They took off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 1:32 pm on 7/16/1969, and the lunar module landed on the moon at 8:17 pm on 7/20/1969. (I herewith reserve my doubt of their Moon Landing claim)

The minimum distance from the Earth to Mars is about 33.9 million miles (54.6 million kilometers). However, that doesn't happen very often. The total journey time from Earth to Mars takes between 150-300 days depending on the speed of the launch, the alignment of Earth and Mars, and the length of the journey the spacecraft takes to reach its target.

The temperature at the surface of the Sun is about 10,000 Fahrenheit (5,600 Celsius). The temperature rises from the surface of the Sun inward towards the very hot center of the Sun where it reaches about 27,000,000 Fahrenheit (15,000,000 Celsius).

What is a flare on the sun? Sometimes a sudden, rapid, and intense variation in brightness is seen on the Sun. That is a solar flare. A solar flare occurs when magnetic energy that has built up in the solar atmosphere is suddenly released. On the Sun's surface are huge magnetic loops called prominences. Inside a flare, the temperature typically reaches 10 or 20 million degrees Kelvin, and can be as high as 100 million degrees Kelvin.

New record set for world's most heat resistant material. Researchers have discovered that tantalum carbide and hafnium carbide materials can withstand scorching temperatures of nearly 4000 degrees Celsius.

Based upon all of the above-mentioned, even they made a spaceship that could resist the heat of the Sun; even the space travel would slow down those astronauts' aging process, but you think a small atomic bomb with several mega ton explosion power could dismantle or dissipate a Sun Flare that might thousand bigger than the Earth, albeit the incredible sizes of the Sun and Earth: The Sun is 864,400 miles (1,391,000 kilometers) across. This is about 109 times the diameter of Earth. The Sun weighs about 333,000 times as much as Earth. It is so large that about 1,300,000 planet Earths can fit inside of it. If we put the Earth in front of the Sun, the Earth is just a tiny dot. The spaceship from the Earth would be just a micro dust, even the atomic bomb could be activated in time before melting, the explosion to the Sun would just like nothing happens, even less meaningless than a mosquito bite.

So folks, please don't waste your time to become as stupid as the movie itself. Watch "Star Trek" series, or "Star War" franchise. But most important advice from me is to avoid "The Wondering Earth", because I just couldn't believe the Chinese writer and the Chinese movie maker could be so stupid and shallow in basic science.

With the earlier comments from other critics summing up many of my feelings about this movie, I will make this short.

This is not a great movie, but it was a lot of fun to watch.

It has all the tell tale signs of an epic sci-fi tale that was trimmed down way too far (like Dune or The Black Hole). Great acting edited down to shreds, plot lines that go nowhere (but feel like they should), and great special effects to fill in the blanks.

I havent seen the original release yet, but will search for it just to see an alternate cut, as it seems the original intent was to make a masterfull sci-fi thriller, but the US release falls a bit short of this ideal.

I have seen it twice now, and for all it's misgivings, it makes for some good popcorn time.

But with some bad taste faults. Yes, it's distracting to have someone read the text that is shown on screen. You start to read, then you get distracted by the narrator. Then you stop reading only to find out that this text now is not narrated. And Alex Noffe's storyline is 1. underwritten, 2. consequently sometimes awkward, 3. not very well acted by Annabel Schofield in the end sequence.

These are however not huge faults. The special effects in this film (excluding again the end sequence) are good, and, yes, very reminiscent of 2001: A Space Odyssey. The plot does for once NOT stretch the limits of credulity, although I kept wondering throughout the film whether the ridiculous coincidence or superhero moment is just around the corner. I figure that the film can be perceived as flat, but it doesn't try to be engrossing, but reflective, sort of Zen, and I would say that it does create a nice reflective mood, where the subject of reflection is perfection: Perfection through science or through nature, perfected human beings and their imperfections. Not at all pretentious, perhaps a little commonplace, but specific enough in substance to carry this type of film, if damaged some by the presentation of the Alex Noffe storyline.

I saw it together with Forbidden Planet. I imagine it can also be seen together with ZARDOZ and profit from it. Those are far better films of course, but I rather see an original effort like this than a remake of Solaris, say.

This su*k! Why do they have to make movies that they must know su*k from the beginning? I mean, look at Alien from 1977. If the movie you´r about to make is not better than anything made billions of years before, why make it? I had problems with the plot and who the main character was. That's not good either.