Solar Crisis

source: Solar Crisis

Solar Crisis

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.

There are few things funnier than a deadly serious Japanese sci-fi film. Solar Crisis (1990) stars Tim Matheson as the leader of an expedition to the sun (no, they don't fly at night). He's trying to prevent a huge solar flare from destroying the Earth. Charlton Heston is his father, a blustering admiral in charge of a space station. Corin Nemic (Parker Lewis Can't Lose, Stargate SG-1) is his son, an AWOL cadet, who stumbles onto a plot by Peter Boyle, typecast once again as a sleezy corporate type who somehow has found a way to make a profit if the mission fails. Jack Palance is (you guessed it) a crusty old coot. And Paul Williams is an overly cheerful anti-matter bomb, bucking for a promotion when the mission's over. Along the way, much scenery is chewed, millions of dollars of Japanese venture capital is spent (the special effects are quite nice), and the director has his name removed from the credits. If you don't expect it to make much sense it's great fun.

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 * 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

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.

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.

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.

Here's the set up. Earth is going to be half fried by a giant flare the sun is getting ready to shoot off. A ship is sent to drop a bomb on the sun to make the flare go off away from Earth. Not a bad premise, and the film has a lot going for it. But... The problem is with a subplot. Half the population is in danger of being fried to death, and someone on Earth wants the mission to fail. Why? Otherwise there are great special effects, a few tense scenes with real conflict. If they had edited out that sub plot, it would be a much better film. Still recommended for science fiction / space buffs. Worth a look.

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.