Solar Crisis

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.

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.

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.

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.