Meteor (1979)

Astronomers have spotted a new comet that is streaking toward the asteroid belt.  Calculations show that it is going to hit Orpheus, a massive asteroid.  NASA redirects the Challenger 2 spaceship (a manned mission to Mars) to observe.  Sure enough, the comet impacts and sends the shards on a course to hit Earth!  Dr. Paul Bradley (Sean Connery), an MIT professor, is hastily brought to NASA.  He had been key in the Hercules program, which was designed for exactly this purpose.  NASA administrator Harry Sherwood (Karl Malden) provides details and sends Bradley to Washington.  The Hercules satellite doesn't have enough missiles to counter the largest chunk of Orpheus from impacting.  The President (Henry Fonda) calls upon the Soviet Union for help.  Dr. Dubov (Brian Keith) and his interpreter, Tatiana (Natalie Wood), arrive in New York to discuss detente in the face of this global emergency.

Following the 1970s love of disaster movies, this one is single-minded in following the efforts to stop the meteor.  There is a lightly-touched and unrequited romance between Dr. Bradley and Tatiana.  There is some character development and plenty of tragedy.  To insert some action, there are multiple meteor fragments that arrive ahead of the big one.  Hong Kong gets washed away by a tidal wave, a Swiss resort is buried after a strike, and Manhattan is partially flattened.  Trevor Howard has a series of cameos via video conference as the man tracking the incoming fragments.  Martin Landau is a general who views cooperation with the Russians as a bad idea and Orpheus as no cause for concern.  Huh?  You were at the meeting with the President!  Yes, that was bad writing and really damaged his character.  He was just a blowhard buffoon.

The science is atrocious.  A manned-mission to Mars could not possibly reroute to the asteroid belt and still be able to return to Mars.  We don't have that technology today!  Worse, what did NASA expect to happen when sending the Challenger 2 in the vicinity of a comet colliding with an asteroid?  The missiles that were fired at the meteor had their rockets burning the entire time; that's a lot of fuel.  Modern SpaceX rockets have about 3 minutes of fuel; the ones here just go on and on.  In fact, when the fuel runs out, the rocket just dies and drifts away.  No, it should continue on the same flight path.  One of the reasons that both the US and the USSR needed to combine forces was because neither had enough firepower alone.  Okay, but the closer it gets to Earth, the more firepower is needed.  They waited until Orpheus was just a couple of hours from Earth before firing their missiles.  Gah!  Their goal was to vaporize the meteor when it should have been to deflect the meteor.

Both Natalie Wood and Brian Keith were fluent in Russian, which surely helped in their casting.  Wood's parents were Russian immigrants.  I have no idea why Keith was fluent in Russian.  Having an interpreter for central characters is awkward and just slows the story.

Overall, mediocre.  It falls closer to Armageddon (1998) than Deep Impact (1998).  Even so, Armageddon, though even more ludicrous than Meteor, was more entertaining.  If you are looking to watch a disaster movie in this genre, Deep Impact is the one to see.