Supernova

This "movie" was one of the worst I have seen. With the representation of Australia, I wasn't sure what country I was looking at. The accents were very suspicious, something like a mix of South African, British, Kiwi (New Zealand) and Australia. Other errors, Australia does not have capital punishment, we do NOT execute prisoners. There were no locations that I recognised, so I am not sure where it was really filmed. Sure there were some "gratuitous" shots of Sydney, but they looked like stock footage. The mountains were not like any that I recognised in Australia. The "echidna" that came out of the door in the professor's home, looked more like a porcupine to me. When they came out of the mountains to look at the "ruins" of Sydney and in the commentary toward the end, there was nothing at all like it. In reality, when you come over the mountains from the west, the actual city is still 50 kilometres away and more of a tiny cluster of buildings on the horizon. Also, looking down on the city, behind it was a large body of water with a large landmass in the distance. Nothing like that exists. The acting was poor, the "structure", as such disjointed at best. The licence plates on the cars bore no resemblance to New South Wales (the state of which Sydney is the capital) plates. The graphics were third rate. In addition, anyone who knows anything about physics would know that a supernova would not "shatter" planets as in the beginning but simply boil them away. Also, the large asteroid that supposedly crashed into the sun would never have gotten that far, it would have also boiled away before being able to make impact (on what it would impact, I am not sure, since the sun has a very deep and dense "atmosphere" of super hot plasma). The sun is about 1.4 million kilometres in diameter and wouldn't even notice a little blip like an asteroid. All in all, if I were the producer of that "movie" I would hang my head in shame. The money could have been better spent on something more worthwhile. To the writers and producers I say "If you want to make a movie like this, do your homework." (By the way, I have used Australian spelling which is different from American spelling, so please don't get worked up over that.)

Watched it and wasted 3 hours this 9/10. Pretty hokey. They blew the production dollars on blowing up models and not so much on the script. The characters names in the movie doesn't match up with the IMDb credits. Perry - Christopher, Burton-Hill - Jenny, Bennett - Brooke. Perry did a good job of acting unconscious when the cattle prod hit him. I think he did the whole show that way. Wonder how much Peter Fonda got paid to phone in his surfer/stoner/astronomer character. I lost count on how many pairs of glasses he had on his head at once. Hot chick playing the bartender though. Hard to imagine them taking a direct hit from a fireball and not having the beach house destroyed. The star of the show was the Colt pickup, Ford's truck for Aussies and Kiwis. Looks as sweet as Tia Carrere did 10 years ago in Wayne's World.

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

What can I say, Oh I know how about: Before you make a movie set inanother country spend more than five minuets there and do some freaking research!!!!!!!!!!!!!! As an Australia I am deeply offended by this...thing. According to Steven H. Berman, Don Keith Opper and John Harrison the Australian population is approx 95% American, we have the death penalty, have some kind of strange English accent and our emergency services are English. It's obvious that they didn't like our native scenery as hardly any of it appears and apparently our own Government is so inept that we need the Americans to make all the decisions for us. For the love of god burn this thing now, never ever ever show it to another living person again! The best part of this whole thing was writing this comment. This pile of dung is not worth the brain cells, time or electricity required to watch it. Oh yeah, it's about the sun exploding, the end of life on earth and hope regained through a mistake made by the experts...sound familiar?? In case your interested there is also a bad guy chasing the leading characters family down in an act of revenge....sound familiar? A move/mini full of cliché and cultural ignorance.

Ugh! This formulaic disaster flick relies on all of the sophisticated scientists in the world predicting the sun will explode and destroy the earth. The predictions are based on research based on more basic research which, predictably, is flawed (the mathematician used a plus sign instead of a minus sign in a mile long formula!). Heaped on top of this mumbo-jumbo is a stupid sub-plot involving a homicidal maniac and a plan for subterranean cities to save the right gene pool for the human race to continue post apocalypse all of which is controlled by sinister military leaders calling the shots. On top of this is gratuitous violence, mediocre special effects and unbelievably poor acting with a new all time low performance by Peter Fonda. This is definitely one to overlook.

This is a standard end-of-the-world flick with low end special effects even for a TV movie. Some of the performances were worthy efforts, some of the dialogue was good, but not nearly enough. The plot often felt cobbled together, more like a rough draft. However, I had the sense that there might have once been a decent screenplay, but, perhaps once out of the writer's hands, it got rewritten innumerable times under the direction of some suit. You could almost hear the keys cutting and pasting in the script. The by-the-numbers feel seems to have effected the actors at times; here and there you felt they were just going through a well known routine. The overall sense I was left with was a lack of clear direction. Not so much in individual scenes, which were sometimes good, but in the movie as a whole. SPOILLER!!! The subplot of the protagonist's wife and child being threatened by a homicidal maniac that she had once helped put away was absurd. It belonged in another movie. My guess is that it was inserted in this one so the typically Neglectful Scientist, who has become standard in these movies, can re-bond with his family. That, and to add some thrills. I will say, however, the actor who played said maniac certainly had the right face for it. Good casting there. I hope some of the name actors have something better to go on to after this.

The Hallmark Network has chosen to create a series of movies to supplement their "Hall of Fame" product. They are off to a decidedly mixed start with "Supernova." Certainly, their timing could not have been worse, given events in New Orleans. Too bad they couldn't have scheduled another film for this time. "Supernova" would a made a pretty good two hour disaster movie. Cut out the "dime store" space special effects and the trite "serial killer" subplot and you'd have something pretty memorable. Unfortunately, the "solar flare" effects look about as realistic as Disney 2D animation. While not particularly surprising, given the limited effects budget for TV fare, the bad "space effects' contrast jarringly with the pretty good "earth effects" on display. Peter Fonda plays, flatly, a world famous astronomer who predicts the sun will go supernova (enlarge, then explode) within a month (or, was it a week). Luke Perry plays an astrophysicist(!), also flatly, and is the principal protagonist. Lance Henriksen plays his stock baddie. The women come off much better in the acting department, most notable are Tia Carrere (as a government agent), Emma Samms (as a crusading TV news commentator), Clemency Burton-Hill (as a scientist) and an unnamed actress who plays Fonda's bartender-squeeze. Jettison an hour and "Supernova" would be good enough for a "7". As presented, however, it barely squeaks by as a "5".