Earthstorm (2006 TV Movie) User Reviews

Moon begins cracking up: you'll crack up too

[MartianOctocretr5 · 4/10 · 12 March 2007]

Because of an enormous meteor impact, the moon begins to break up, threatening to pummel the Earth with an immense number of meteorites, as well as ravage it with bizarre atmospheric conditions.

It's all routine, incoming meteors threatening the end of the world. Going in, you know this is just escapist nonsense (fashioned suspiciously like Armageddon, but with a lower budget), and will require suspension of disbelief on a grand scale, but be prepared for a meteor shower of plot and character clichés, cheap effects, and an obvious outcome.

The movie spends a lot of time developing likable and interesting characters, and the respectably good acting helps accomplish this. If only the script writers had been just as conscientious about scientific plausibility, the movie would have been better off. You expect less than awesome special effects on this budget, but some of them look downright cheesy. The fireball meteors, for example, looked phonier than Monopoly money.

Clichés: we got 'em: dumb government big shot who makes a nuisance out of himself and mocks others, maverick scientist, meteors targeting big city skyscrapers and nothing else, unknown nobody whose expertise (in this case a building demolisher) saves the world, etc.

Plot holes are far too numerous to list; my two favorites are 1) nobody except the principals suspect the smoking moon (which oddly is always a full moon) and accompanying asteroid bombardment might be related, and 2) the Space Shuttle dodgeball game at a zillion mph with a million meteorites--right out of an old video game. I expected to see the pilot's game score appear in the upper corner of the screen at any moment.

Fun, and laughably outrageous. Looking for plot holes is but one way to enjoy this. Any movie about a guy who implodes buildings being called upon to implode the moon, that's a movie to see, folks.

Nice Try, But Really a Bad Movie

[arstyle27 · 3/10 · 22 August 2007]

I've always enjoyed movies that deal with the Earth/ Space relation ship ie. "Armageddon," "Deep Impact," and "Red Planet." I stumbled upon "Earthstorm" at my local RedBox. I wasn't expecting much from a movie I hadn't heard of before or from a cast where Stephen Baldwin is the only recognizable name. Straight up, this is not a good movie. The premise is decent, but the plot execution and the dialog is terrible. Special effects were also horrible. They must've used so generic CGI, because nothing looks very realistic. I won't even talk about the whole "A.S.I." and errors in the movie. I only paid $1 for it, so Earthstorm was decent bang for the buck. The best thing about the movie is hottie Anna Silk, she's gorgeous!

My mother always said if you don't have anything nice to say...

[JaQaL · 3/10 · 26 June 2007]

What can I say? This movie is putrid. I watched it because it was sci-fi and I hadn't seen any for a little while.

Stephen Baldwin confirmed that he really is a crappy actor with a wooden performance as the supposed hero. In fact, none of the cast did anything at all to suggest they have great Hollywood careers ahead of them.

Others have commented on the, um, lack of scientific integrity involved. When people are in space they tend to float around rather than walk up and down as if gravity was normal. Given the script included a nuclear-booster for the space shuttle they might as well have chucked in a line about inventing some new-fangled gravity field.

I don't recommend it to anyone, even as filler.

I'm giving it a generous 3/10.

Armagedon in the style of Ed Wood.

[kevinlangille · 2/10 · 11 December 2006]

This is what I get for being bored on a Monday night. I mean how bad can it be, Steve Baldwin, Dirk Benedict (Starbuck, where ya been). I at least hope they were able to pay their rent for the month after this.

As the title of this review states the movie is basically Armagedon but instead of an asteroid we are in peril due to the moon and a fault line which has opened up on its surface. The Ed Wood reference is because everything else in the film makes me think that if Ed was still alive and had even the slightest budget this is what he would be making. The shuttle set kept making me remember the plane cockpit from Plan 9, except no curtain for a door this time. All of the effects have a Nintendo 64 look to them (even a PS2 would be better) or a rip from a Discovery channel special on space travel.

Of the acting I can't really complain, nothing great but nothing overly bad. I was excited at the beginning to see Dirk Benedict acting again but he seems to just come in and out of the film.

In the end I think I laughed more then anything, not something to get worked up about for sure.

Also, not to my country's credit, this is a Canadian film not an American one as the IMDb site states. At the end of the credits it clearly states that it is a Ontario-Quebec co-production (so sad).

Horibble acting and special effects

[bendawson-1 · 1/10 · 11 December 2006]

This movie was just another Armageddon ripoff except with VERY bad acting and even worse special effects. The story is not even believable and they use a lot of technical jargon to try to overcome the obvious flaws in the plot. I cant believe I actually watched the whole thing! Stephen Baldwin should have not even been in this movie.

The rest of the cast didn't flow well together. There were way too many computer generated special effects that were too obvious. I can not stress enough how bad this movie was.

I don't recommend this at all!

SIMPLY HORRIBLE on sooooo many levels!!!

Wow. Just wow.

[jamsavage · 1/10 · 7 February 2007]

I thought I'd seen bad environmental disaster movies before, but this film takes the cake. Usually people setting out to make a science fiction film do *some* research, at least enough to know that gravity and air don't exist in space. Also, the ability to calculate what the effects would be of the moon blowing up, in real time, was impressive...

Apparently modeling the weather for such a disaster only takes a few minutes, not the years that scientists have been telling us. Worth watching just to mock; you will get a laugh out of it. I'd call this a modern candidate for MST3K.

I never knew that a building demolition expert would be that good with nuclear and magnetic calculations. BTW did you know that magnetism in space looks like lightning? LOL they even had to make a different space agency; I can't see NASA ever allowing their name to associated with this.

I liked Anna Silk though - she's cute... great in that quitting smoking ad.

Definitely Canadian made. I'm so sad.

Hilarious! Great Fun! Oh, and terrible

[BigGuy · 2/10 · 10 March 2007]

Alright, if you are at all thinking about seeing this movie, you already know that it is going to be terrible, but the question is will it be terrible in a fun way. For me it was.

Looking at the list of actors, the only recognizable names were Dirk Bennedict and Stephen Baldwin. Of the two I would give Dirk a very slight edge. The actresses do a good to passable job in their roles (in sci-fi channel movies, all the actresses are inevitably very pretty and much better at acting than the men. Of course they are usually confined to sex appeal roles such as in Earthstorm where the assistant is wearing shorts in the opening scene where everyone else is wearing jackets... Aside over), even if they don't have much to work with.

The science in this movie is just terrible. This might have been excusable in the 1950's, but not anymore. Although much of the terrible science is due to bad movie cliché than attempts at actual science. Take the shuttle flying as if there was air in space. Most people aren't ready to have the shuttle flying around with the engines off, or pointed the "wrong way" (since really the shuttle would be spinning like mad to orient the main engines to thrust generally perpendicular to the direction of travel). Then there is the whole gravity on the shuttle thing. This is a cheap movie, no budget to fake zero-G. At least they didn't make believe that there is an artificial gravity, they just ignored that little problem. Oh, and ducking into a tent, that's right a tent, to escape the debris from a collapsing building. Too funny.

Oh, and the clichés! They run rampant. Renegade scientist whose theory ends up saving the day. Child who rebelled against her father, who conveniently died before the movie starts, acts to honor him. The master crackpot scientist who is in charge of creating every do-dad needed in the movie, says it can't be done then does it in twenty minutes. Oh, and let's not forget the evil scientist/politician who constantly stands in the way of the real scientist. It would be hard to put more clichés in this movie.

The funniest part, to me at least, was that they were afraid or perhaps banned, from using NASA in the movie. Unfortunately they couldn't seem to decide if "ASI" stood for American Science Institute or American Space Institute. They also had to make up a science university in Boston, the Plymouth Institute of Technology. Ha ha ha.

Really, if you go into this with a sense of humor, you might get some enjoyment out of it.

There needs to be a way to vote 0 on a movie,

[runner-15 · 1/10 · 10 March 2007]

Just when I thought the Sci-fi channel had hit rock bottom with their low budget movie of the week and couldn't go any lower, somebody breaks out a jackhammer and digs rock bottom deeper. I've seen B movies. But this one should be called an F movie. Bad, Bad, Bad. Don't get me wrong the acting wasn't that bad, but the total disregard for scientific fact ruined any chance this movie ever had. If anyone involved in the making of this Stinking pile of dog do-do reads this, PLEASE don't ever try making a science fiction movie again. Go back to making Soap-Opera's. There is a reason it's called Sci-Fi. The Sci is short for SCIENCE. There should at least be an attempt to work within scientific fact. Shuttles don't go to the moon. You there is no air on the moon so you can't fly a shuttle up from the moon. You can't walk around on a shuttle in space. The three main shuttle engines can't run after you dump the external tank. I could go on and on. I wish I could give this movie a 0 but you can't vote that low.

Steven Baldwin Does Scientific Calculations.....Suspension of Disbelief Problems Ensue

[ark30inf · 1/10 · 10 March 2007]

OK,

1) Main Shuttle Engines don't run without fuel tanks.

2) Shuttle tiles will not stand up well in debris fields at speeds in excess of 20,000 mph.

3) Gravity in space is problematic.

4) Baldwin doing on-the-fly astro-magnetic calculations in his head is somehow not believable.

5) Constructing magneto-bombs that will weld the moon back together out of duct tape and empty food packages is asking too much suspension of disbelief except in Canada.

6) Why are asteroids magnetically drawn to impact only major cities.

7) If you have mission control for space missions, you should have a good backup electricity generating plan...which includes more than one can of diesel fuel for the generator.

What a mess.

Terrible movie

[funstuf · 1/10 · 20 December 2006]

This is a 10$ version of Armageddon and other comet/asteroid movies. Someone needs to explain the laws of gravity in space to the producers. ;-) worth a good laugh though and I thought that was Starbuck from BS in the movie, he has aged well. Anyhow if you really do not have anything better to do to waste your time on a non school night or whatever or are really really bored so ahead and watch it. People cannot walk around in space on a space shuttle unless it is spinning really fast to create some artificial gravity Acting was okay although the woman actress could probably use a few more lessons.

funstuf

hilarious

[bingethinker · 31 December 2006]

Wow. Where do I start? This is a really silly movie. Any knowledge of space that the writer or director may have comes from watching old "Star Trek" reruns. One ridiculous and impossible thing follows another. I laughed out loud a few times at how cheesy it was. They should have hired a scientific consultant, but I'm guessing they didn't have the budget.

I definitely wouldn't pay to see this movie, but I got it as part of my monthly movie package, so I don't mind. If you don't take it seriously, it's kinda fun.

Warning: This movie's writer also did "Solar Strike" (2005, TV), which is equally silly and scientifically sketchy. Watch it only if you feel like making fun of a bad movie.

Appalling but watchable

[mr-bob79 · 10/10 · 13 April 2012]

A made for TV film starring one of them Baldwin chaps. Surprisingly watchable.

A massive asteroid smacks the s**t out of the moon and earth is showered by pieces of the moon which have broken away. It transpires that the moon is proper f****d, will split in two and destroy the world. Baldwin plays a demolitions expert. Face from the A-Team plays the bloke who runs the NASA type agency. Despite all the geologists and lunar experts in his employ, Face decides that Baldwin is the only man who can save the day. Good call, Faceman,because guess what..... YEAH! Baldwin only goes and does it... Thanks, Baldwin.

The Sky is Falling!

[Mark-129 · 7/10 · 16 March 2007]

Compared to the last few years worth of SCI-FI originals, Earthstorm was pretty good. Certainly, the plot is full of holes and scientific inaccuracies. The chase through the meteor field and gravity aboard the shuttle come to mind as especially glaring. The special effects while adequate for a TV movie should have been a little better, especially in the last half. Still, Earthstorm has much to offer. The pace is fast, which helps the occasionally shallow plot. The characters are all well cast and likable with a few exposing character depth. A rarity in most SCI-FI productions. This is not supposed to be an accurate representation of a possible disaster, just a fun, popcorn adventure that tries hard to please and pretty much succeeds.

His wife died three years ago. (Spoiler--laden, folks)

[stumpmee77 · 1/10 · 12 March 2007]

He's working himself to death because his wife died three years ago. The film's potential love interest for Mr. Grieving Wife had father who died disgraced and she starts off as icy because she's ashamed of not backing him (You know she'll soften up towards male lead by the end). Mexico bites the bullet under the earthstorm. Some other place bit the bullet due to the earthstorm--But where's the darn footage of devastation? Why isn't America sending the Red Cross over to help the stricken nations when, darn it, we're obviously doing everything else in this flick???

And the U.S. likewise should be looking for other countries' aid as it took them how long to differentiate the asteroid's matter from the moon's? I've never been trained for space travel--I'm just a demolition's expert--Whose wife died three years ago--Why would the powers that be waste time in taking him along? Best buds in the demolition business are shown buying the farm--but oh no, they're okay--just like the skirt-thinking guy who was the colleague of the meteorologist in "Path of Destruction".

The roles reach as much depth in terms of characterization as a cake being frosted and don't get me started on predictability. That feel good ending puts me in mind of "The Day after Tomorrow" being just as unbelievable in terms of everything's just comes out all right--Even George Pal's When World's Collide in the 1950's had a bitter edge to its ending. And why is it depicted that only the Americans know what's going on and is working at solving the problem?

Why am I writing so incoherently, you the reader asks? Because this movie was an incoherent mess. And oh yeah, I think it was the demolition guy whose wife died three years ago.

horrible

[tha_bommer · 18 December 2006]

The effects in the movie are horrible. As stated before they look like N64 type graphics. The plot seems to be ripped off from Armageddon. An asteroid hits the moon causing a fault and chunks of the moon start flying towards earth.

The one thing that was cool is that ASI is actually Mohawk College in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada dressed up. To be more specific it is the college's I-Wing, which is the Information Technology wing. And the circular room with the TV in the wall is actually there... not just for the movie.

To sum up in one word "underbudget" I wouldn't buy the movie.

Another movie that falls in the hilariously awful category

[TheLittleSongbird · 1/10 · 16 June 2012]

Having a lot of time on my hands since a busy day yesterday, I sat down with nothing else better to do to watch Earthstorm expecting little. As with a movie like Vipers, which I also saw recently, Earthstorm fits in the hilariously awful category. So what was wrong exactly? Well, pretty much everything. The film is poorly made, with very artificial-looking special effects and choppy editing. The script is full of technical jargon, which makes the film horrendously and very amusingly stilted and unintentionally cheesy. The story is dull, predictable and full of plot holes especially with the smoking moon. The characters are clichéd, and none of them ring true or are likable. And the acting is terrible, with Stephen Baldwin giving a bored-looking and sounding performance. So overall, awful but in a hilarious way. 1/10 Bethany Cox

Earthstorm - The Worst

[mikey_55128 · 1/10 · 11 March 2007]

If you're going to spend the money to make a sci-fi movie, at least let's respect the audience, most of whom have at least a rudimentary understanding of basic physics. There are so many flaws in this movie I lost count, and I was using a calculator. Navigating a shuttle at Mach 8 or better through an asteroid field moving in the opposite direction at close to the same speed is only one I'll mention. Artificial gravity on the shuttle? Hitting one of the asteroids without sustaining catastrophic damage? Diving into a seismic-active, 1000 mile-long gash in the moon? I have to quit, I'm getting a headache. If this had been presented on the Comedy channel I could understand, but on Sci-Fi it's worse than the most horrible water-cooler joke you've ever been exposed to. Mystery Science Theater 3000 material at best!!

Incredibly bad

[denieuwehoorspelers · 1/10 · 12 March 2007]

After Plan 9 from Outer Space one could think that it can't get worse. Wrong! It CAN get worse. It's incredible but this film is worse. After so many years, Plan 9 finally has found a worthy successor of the questionable honor of being the worst SF film ever.

Though the acting isn't all that bad, almost everything else is. Many films have some flaws. When you spot them during the viewing, you kind of accept them. Earthstorm, on the other hand, contained so many flaws that it really became annoying. It is an utter waste of time and money. As well the creation of this film, as the watching of this film. Regrettably, it has set a new standard of how bad a film can be.

Excellent comedy!

[billrw-29-219733 · 2/10 · 16 April 2011]

Thanks to the complete disregard by the makers of this movie of anything resembling science, I found it quite enjoyable. Yes, there is something called a "space shuttle", and the moon does exist, but that's about where the scientific facts end. Lots of fun trying to spot all of the plot elements that completely disregarded various law of physics; though I lost count after a while. I especially enjoyed how they would just string together some random technical-sounding words to explain each new problem encountered. Loved how to shuttle was able to magically levitate within the moon crevasse. The "goofs" page documents a few more items, but I imagine they also gave up after a while. Great fun!

The Wrong Stuff

[cheathamg · 2/10 · 15 September 2008]

The only reason I'm bothering to write a review is because nobody else used "The Wrong Stuff" as a title for their review. I knew it was going to be bad when I recorded it because it was a SciFi Channel production and it starred Stephen Baldwin. However, I like bad SF movies. In movies like "The Blob" or any of the Roger Korman films, one can turn off one's brain and relax. In "Earthstorm" however, you can't turn off your brain. It is so full of bad science that you are kept on the edge of your seat waiting to see what absurdity they are going to come up with next. And they pile absurdity upon absurdity until you begin to wish the mission to save the earth would fail and put us all out of our misery.

Oh, Please!

[hjassol · 1/10 · 13 March 2011]

This is just awful. Where to start? The moon has a crack in it which is causing horrific storms on earth and meteors crashing to earth as well. Some genius decides to fly the space shuttle to the moon and drop nuclear explosives in the crack to make it implode and seal itself. There's your plot.

Dirk Benedict plays the formulaic snide, condescending administrator (with a direct line to the president) pretty well. The rest of the cast is nondescript except our old pal, Stephen Baldwin. Stephen is the demolition expert. Oh, Stephen, what hath thou wrought? I have to admit, Stephen Baldwin makes me nuts. This is just another in a long line of roles that he was totally suited for. He looks like a man who is uncomfortable in his own skin and that doesn't translate well to the screen. Well, neither does this movie.

The whole thing is just foolish. I mean, I had no idea that you could fly the space shuttle to the moon. I also didn't know that the shuttle cockpit was finished in sheetrock with little hex-shaped portholes, no less. And those portholes have nice windowsills where you could put a potted plant, or your chia pet! Also, you can apparently walk around inside the shuttle while in space, as if you were walking around in your living room, amazing!

This movie is a joke. Totally appropriate for Mr. Baldwin's acting chops. Which is to say - don't bother. 1/10.

Crappiest sci-phony movie EVER!

[bartsa-991-989126 · 1/10 · 2 March 2011]

So many inaccuracies. A shuttle flying like a certain other well-known sci-fi spaceship which will remain nameless to avoid it's name being tarnished by being associated with this piece of crap.

The chances of us not seeing a HUGE asteroid (large enough to take a significantly large bite of the moon) on a collision course are 0. And even after that it never makes up for itself by continuing to go further down the inaccuracy road. If there was ever a movie which needed negative numbers then this would be it!

Also: Sending a space shuttle to the moon is physically impossible, it simply does not have enough fuel or engine power to get there, atomic boosters or not! Even if you did manage to get it there then there is NO way at all to get it back, and it just was not built for an Apollo-style direct re-entry, you really do need an ablative heat shield for that!

If it was possible to give this to a movie then this one would get negative 9,998,887 out of 10

It's Entertainment, not Science Class

[garyd-1 · 7/10 · 29 June 2008]

There seems to be a group of viewers who find fault with every movie Sci-Fi channel airs. The nit picking is extreme. The purpose of a movie like this to to give some of an opportunity to side out of real life and enjoy a distraction.

It's not just these films, John Wayne's revolver held more than 6 shots. They obviously had to stop the camera so he could reload. Who cares? That's Entertainment! I'm a bit older than some of the commentators, but when I was a kid, I was taught if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. I don't believe in vampires, werewolves, mummy's and all that nonsense, but they keep making them and selling tickets.

If Sci-Fi couldn't attract a sponsor for the on air time, the movie wouldn't be shown. They seem to fund all of these 'awful' movies, so someone must like them. When I want to know facts, I can watch National Geographic Channel, History Channel or the Military Channel.

Airball

[stevan-account · 1/10 · 6 July 2012]

I have just watched big part of this movie. It looks too much as Armageddon, but now they send a man without any training to the Moon ( Bruce Willis has had some training), and they reach Moon in less than 24h ( What? Speed of light?). After taking a ride to the Moon, they realize they should have took different type of bombs, but they have no time to go back, although it'd take 10 minutes.

Effects are so poor that you can search YouTube for something like Freddiew or The Key Of Awesome for better experience. I don't say I can make better, but come on, watching this movie, you get a feeling of watching something you made, some video which sucks, and you can't believe how much does it suck.

Watch this movie only and (capslock)only(/capslock) in case you wish to understand what are bad effects and what means plagiarism of another movie, and not a good plagiarism, a bad one, indeed. Bitch please.

omg Stephen does it again

[toolmanproductions · 25 October 2011]

Just when you though there was now way you could top the effort in 'Darkstorm', Baldwin has come up with a beauty in 'Earthstorm'. We pray that he gets over his drug addiction or replace the word drug with any other vice that comes to mind, there must be some excuse for taking these roles. But we live in a world of relativism, and relatively speaking he may not be as good as Alec, or have Adam's comedy. But enough said on that matter, because those boys look like they could put down. Anyhow the movie is worth the trouble if you need to play a practical joke on a friend, how you seen this great movie and couldn't stop watching it. Good trick on getting your name marked off on someones xmas list.