MovieChat Forums > Meteor (1979) Discussion > Spectacularly bad production

Spectacularly bad production

posted 13 years ago by fnj2002
11 replies | jump to latest

This thing was the most spectacular waste of good-to-wonderful acting talent ever perpetrated. When many of the actors underperform like this, who is at fault? The director? Even the outstanding actors who performed well (Sean Connery, Henry Fonda, Trevor Howard) couldn't come close to saving it.

The special effects and miniatures were ridiculously amateurish even by the standards of a decade before. Just compare the cheap plastic toys and unconvincing effects to the brilliance of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), Star Wars (1977), and Alien (1979).

Heck, as well as being a 1,000 times better movie in general, the effects and miniatures of Forbidden Plant (1956) had the pants beat off this thing. Destination Moon (1950) was better than this. This was closer to Buck Rogers from the 1930s.

[–] richard.fuller1 12 years ago

The miniature effects didn't sink this. The misguided plot and over-emphasis on somethng irrelevant as the cold war lingering is what made it dull and uninteresting.

That saddled with some idea that the music and then the models would really intensify things just made all that bickering completely unnecessary.

And tossing in little things like the Siberian family, the Japanese family and the ski bunny as tho the viewers would now go OMG, then turn wide-eyed back to Landau, Malden and Keith arguing and Connery and Wood flirting and think what? Oh, how romantic!

Definitely one odd puppy.

[–] MettaQueensbridgeWarfare 12 years ago

If they cut even half of the slow moving shots of the missiles in space, they could've shaved like 15 mins off the film. Talk about dragging stuff out. LoL

[–] Akzidenz_Grotesk 11 years ago

You think the Cold War was irrelevant? This was made before the Gorbachev thaw. Nuclear holocaust was something very possible, not that it isn't anymore. Yes, in 2013 the Cold War seems a dull plot point but it was a reality then and its legacy is still far from irrelevant.

Hell on Frisco Bay!

[–] richard.fuller1 11 years ago

Dr_Esqueleto: "You think the Cold War was irrelevant? This was made before the Gorbachev thaw. Nuclear holocaust was something very possible, not that it isn't anymore. Yes, in 2013 the Cold War seems a dull plot point but it was a reality then and its legacy is still far from irrelevant."
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Friend, when I watched Meteor for the first time in the early '80s, I didn't have an ever-lovin' clue how the cold war would be regarded over thirty years later.

When the movie came out wasn't the 1950s. We didn't hide under our desks from nuclear bomb threats. We were the cynical generation after the anti-establishment late '60s and '70s.

If a bomb was dropped on us, it was going to be someone else's fault.

[–] TVholic 9 years ago

Don't presume to speak for everyone. Sure, we didn't duck and cover, but there were still plenty of us who couldn't be sure if someone in the Soviet Union wouldn't get an itchy trigger finger one day. You may have been a cynic, but we knew the Cold War was still on at the time. Just because it might be "someone else's fault" wouldn't have made us any less dead, especially those of us in the biggest cities in the US, who knew we were the prime targets.

[–] ghoolsby 10 years ago

I noticed just how old it looks. I actually went to see this when it came out but it looks like something made 15 years before.

[–] mike_cable 12 years ago

I have to agree with all three posters on this thread. This is one bad result of a production when on paper it had everything going for it.

[–] Raimar_Lunardi 11 years ago

Bad is the image... even the "dvd" have a quality poorer than my old VCR...

[–] 11 years ago

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[–] 10 years ago

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[–] oknar1977 9 years ago

it's like we watched two different movies. amateurish? what did you expect? lady macbeth? this is sci-fi pop corn movie, not broadway