Meltdown: Days of Destruction (2006)

Director: John Murlowski
Writer: Rick Drew
Starring: Casper Van Dien, Amanda Crew and a whole lot of nobody.


Favorite Line: "I'm not gonna walk in and tell the directors I'm scrubbing the mission 'cuz 'Dr. Chicken Little' has a bad feeling."

Favorite Scene: The gang finds a frozen food factory, go into the reefer to check things out & there's a frozen guy sitting there with his eyes open and an actual icicle hanging from his nose...classic.

Have you ever noticed that when science fiction movies contain more science and less fiction, it kinda pisses you off? When Luke and the gang go to Endor in Empire Strikes back you're like "Okay...little furry creatures living in a primitive culture, I can accept that, because it's a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...continue to entertain me, Mr. Lucas." But when a crew of douchebags (led by King Douchebag) fly a couple of space shuttles out to an asteroid in order to drill into it and blow it in half, your reaction is more like, "Oh, c'mon...that's soo not gonna happen, ever", and "Why the hell is Steve Buscemi doing this piece of crap?"

Doomsday movies do this a lot; they use muddy scientific logic seemingly in hopes to befuddle the movie watcher into believing the unbelievable. The Day After Tomorrow, Deep Impact, Armageddon & tonight's victim, Meltdown, all share this particular fondness for futility. The premise is not only flimsy, it's frighteningly unbelievable; some scientific agency (which is never named)throws a nuke at an asteroid the "size of Iceland" that's hurtling toward earth at "ten times the speed of a bullet", the nuke blows the asteroid into three parts, the biggest of which is still on a collision course with Earth, but evidently there's a miscommunication because the asteroid skims our stratosphere, nudging the planet of its axis, and pushing it closer to the sun, causing a 10% spike in temperature, therefore plunging us into global blackouts, drought and looting...all within the first 24 hours.

I don't even know where to start making fun of this movie. The only real reason I watched it to begin with is because of Casper Van Dien...if you've read this blog at all, or you know me personally, you know that Starship Troopers is my favorite crappy movie. Casper is a horrible actor, with no real redeeming qualities, and has about as much depth as Harrison Ford, but he seems to put a lot of enthusiasm into his roles, it's kinda fun to watch...plus, he's completely oblivious to his own mediocrity, and that's admirable. He's married to royalty, you know.

Well, I paid the price--dearly--for watching this flick. It's no Starship Troopers, I'll tell you that. Seems like the only thing that sucks more than Syfy channel originals is Lifetime originals. It starts with a well-meaning but "my hands are tied" scientist type (Vincent Gale) telling his greedy bureaucrat boss that throwing a nuclear weapon at an asteroid is irresponsible, and that the human race is gonna pay the ultimate price, to which boss man argues that if they don't, the asteroid will destroy the planet regardless, so what's to lose? Difficult to argue with that logic, to be honest...perhaps they should have brought in Bruce, Ben and the rest of the Space Douchebag crew to fly out and drill it first...it worked out in that asteroid movie. By the way, am I the only person who thought Armageddon sucked? How did they get that many credible actors to agree to that piece of shit?

From there, it's like Armageddon meets The Stand meets The Day After Tomorrow. Officer Tom and friends embark on a seemingly futile trek to--get this--the Arctic. Along the way, they experience cars blowing up due to gasoline back firing in the fuel line into the gas tank...umm, wouldn't the radiator blow first? I mean, it's only 116 degrees...I've been in that kind of heat, never saw any cars blow up; they go into a series of drainage tunnels and run across some "tunnel people" and a dirty cop that ends up kidnapping Nathan (with some help from his paramilitary friends in a suburban outfitted with some kind of refrigerant re breathing system) because Nathan knows a guy with an airplane; they retrofit a refrigerated truck to make a vehicle like the one they took Nate away in, only to be shot at & leaking freon; then stumble upon a refrigerated food factory (where the dead icicle guy is) just in the nick of time...freon for EVERYONE, HAHAHA!! Ultimately they end up at an airport, Nathan and Officer Dirty are there, Nathan's friend's plane blows up due to that back firing fuel issue when he flies too low, lots of people get shot, and there's a predictable ending that comes a little prematurely...I mean, you're looking at the clock saying to yourself, "They've only got five minutes left, they better wrap this shit up". Another, "Let's finish this fucker, we're outta money."

Here's the 411 on how they ended it: Kimberly asks Nathan the scientist if the whole Earth too close to the sun thing could ever be fixed. "Sure," Nathan says, and goes on to lay down a crazy theory about the other planets' gravitational pull correcting the Earth's orbit, and if that happened, it would begin to rain due to the planet shifting back into its cool path. Well, guess what? That's exactly what happened, after all the shooting (Nathan gets hit in the leg, but is walking fine by end credits) and the fuel back firing, and the dead people and all the rest...here comes the rain. Boom. Happy ending.

See? Even in doomsday films, people win every damn time. It's sad when you think about it...our inability to admit defeat, even when the demise of our species is caused by our own stupidity. One day a film maker is going to make a movie where EVERYBODY gets it in the end...that would be a brave move, not pandering to the fragile human psyche.

This movie has no redeeming qualities; the explosions are crap, the dead people are caked in sloppy makeup, the dialog and the science are offensively ignorant...I'm actually bummed that I watched it, but like I said, I did it for Casper.

If you ever see this movie on your channel listings, please, I beg you, watch something else.

Don't believe me? Check out the trailer.