Supernova

The Sun cuts loose and attacks the Earth! This must surely be one of the worst movies ever made - an abysmal script, ridiculous sets and effects, woeful actors, outrageously poor accents, unbelievable story, ridiculous conclusion, etc, etc It's like a Godzilla movie, but without the finely-tuned character development and deeply thought-out plot - hell, it makes Godzilla look like Shakespeare.

Set in Sydney - oh really?? did they do ANY research AT ALL? Do they have any clue what an Australian accent actually sounds like? Peter Fonda has a sort of minor role - boy, he must have been pretty hard up for money to accept a role in such a turkey.

Plan 9 From Outer Space updated to the 21st century!

Oh where to begin? Leaving the incredibly bad science out of it (and believe me, as a former astronomer I gotta say the science was so bad!), the people who made this movie did obviously NO research on what Australia is supposed to look like.

Not only did just about everyone have an American accent (and most of those who affected an Aussie accent need to fire their dialect coach), but just about every detail was way, way off. I could handle some of the small stuff (i.e. phone numbers here have 8 digits, not 7), but they got some pretty major stuff wrong too.

Whlle the cars were at least driving on the left, they all had the wrong kind (possibly European) of licence plates. Aussie plates don't look anything like what they had. Imagine a movie set in New York where all the cars had bright pink tags.

But the BIGGEST blunder that anyone who had ever set foot on this continent would recognise: Australia doesn't have the death penalty. Like in most civilised nations, it was abolished years ago. This was a major plot point in the movie, and if they had bothered to do a lick of research, they would have known they needed a major rewrite.

Sloppy

Almost as funny as Robot Monster, or any of the magnificent Ed Wood Classics, but without the deep scientific grasp of those earlier films.

Read a dozen or so reviews -- the reviewers put a lot more into their posts than anyone connected with this incredible turkey -- I didn't see any review mention that our sun can't supernova, it isn't the right kind of star. It can nova, and its furthest expansion will reach the orbit of the inner planets, probably out to earth, but will not fill the whole solar system, as stated by one of the characters.

Great observation by one of the reviewers on how, after surviving in those Phoenix locations, the lucky few come to the surface and get to work on constructing a new sun. Excellent! And naturally in an actual nova there most certainly won't be anyone coming up, and probably no earth remaining to come up from -- but also no sun, and that wasn't comprehensible to anyone involved with this nonsense. No one in the whole project who knew any science at all, with tens of millions of dollars to burn -- pun definitely intended.

During the opening scenes I thought the story would involve the supernova of some distant giant star finally reaching our solar system seven million later. Silly me, that would have been far too stuck in boring reality.

The weirdest part is from start to finish I couldn't stand any of the characters. Can't say that about any of the Ed Wood masterpieces.

I'm sorry the science is bad. I'm sorry it wasn't filmed in Australia and they got a lot of accents and details wrong. I'm sorry some people don't think much of the acting.

But I really enjoyed the scenery. It was well photographed. The acting was decent and the women were nice to watch.

All in all, It was a pleasant flick to spend a rainy afternoon on.

Why, oh why, do I keep getting suckered by promotional trailers for DVDs? Anyway, if you have seen the promo trailers for this film, be warned: they are clearly concerning another film never made, brief clips of which showing up in this one for no discernible reason whatsoever.

The principle problem here is a script that thinks it's a remake of "The Day After" but which would fit just about any daytime soap-opera. Since the premise of the film derives from astro-physics, the finale - a typically empty 'happy ending', having absolutely no grounding in any science whatsoever - makes no sense whatsoever.

Although the film actually avoids religion, let's put the matter in religious terms for clarification: Imagine Judgment Day; and God is really pee-ed off and decides no one is worth saving. Suddenly, Peter Pan's Tinkerbell pops up and reminds God that if he really really believes, creation can be saved. God smiles down on a half-dozen soap-opera stars (no, they haven't repented, what's to repent?), and suddenly we're all back in Eden.... - Scientifically speaking, that's "Supernova".

What brilliant con-artist convinced anybody this film could be made? And who are the emotionally troubled people who would like this garbage? By the way, if you're wondering whether one could watch this turkey all the way through, the answer is no; after giving it some 20 minutes, sheer boredom demanded I started skipping scenes sequentially trying to find something interesting to watch. I didn't. But I did watch the whole of the finale to see if there was anything important I'd missed. There wasn't.

And there wouldn't be anything important missed if you skipped the whole film.