mica404 To begin with, some positives: the cast did pretty well with what they were given, most of the subplots were interesting and resolved pretty well, and unlike a lot of similar movies, the emotional layers were played realistically.So this is not irredeemable, but as with all science fiction, it lives or dies on the science.There are three ways it can work: 1). I don't care if a movie goes for fantasy science, as long as it is upfront about it and tries to be consistent, or 2). even bad science where the science is fudged for the sake of the story, IF the story is a fun ride. Obviously 3). Good science throughout is best, but how many movies manage that?This piece tries for option 3, with detailed scientific explanations everywhere, but almost every use of science is wrong. As other reviews show, some people can look past that. Personally the rest of the movie is not good enough to cut them that much slack and in any event I just found the constant stream of errors grate more and more as the film went on. It was almost as is the writers thought that they could just say anything and no-one would notice.I really don't want to pick the details apart, but one example to highlight my irritation.The basic premise is that a small piece of highly dense material hits the moon and wackiness ensues. Firstly they call it Brown Dwarf Star material, which is not super dense. The description isn't of that material, but instead of dead cold star material - a black dwarf. That is fine, except that astrophysicists don't think it actually exists yet. Instead of Black Dwarfs there are White Dwarfs, which would be OK for the plot, except you can easily see them. They might have meant Neutron Star material, except that would have been way heavier that they wanted (mass of Sun not Earth) which would wreck the rest of the plot.Secondly, whichever option they actually meant, something that dense, that fast hitting the moon is likely to shatter it and keep on going. Funnier would be that if the fragment hit the moon and stuck as in the film its momentum (remembering that the fragment was 6-10 times heavier than the moon) would knock the moon completely out of orbit.Lastly, the object has to be a fragment of White Dwarf/Neutron Star/whatever as a whole one is way too big for the plot to work. The only problem with that is how on earth you break a piece off of one of the densest objects in the universe.It feels nit-picky to go through things like this, but the same is true of every part of the plot that is science-Dependant. By the time the tanker started floating, while the water nearby was unaffected, and non-metallic objects were flying around, while cars were not, I was not sure whether I should laugh or cry.

vfrickey I mean that, too. Part of the dumbing-down of the civilized world (not just America) is that something that used to be taught in high school, the Law of Universal Gravitation, is blithely tossed out the window in this Leaden Turkey of a movie. Things happen which anyone with a pencil and paper and knowledge of equation F=G(M(1)xM(2))/r squared at his disposal could show would never happen in a few minutes of paperwork. It's not even calculus - just simple algebra. Isaac Newton was able to figure it out in the seventeenth century.There is absolutely no excuse for this film. It is an amalgam of willful, sorry ignorance of scientific facts wrapped up in a glittering cinema production. The writers of this script should hang their heads in shame, for they have demonstrated a great deal of highly-counterintuitive idiocy in their screenplay.There are American films I am proud are shown overseas. This one makes me want to hang my head in shame at the thought that the screenwriters' VERY sketchy grasp of science is being shown outside the country, helping to give our people a mostly undeserved reputation for crass stupidity.If I could burn every reel, tape and DVD of a movie, it would be this one.

Menno OK so there are some problems with this movie I'll give you that but still I want to focus on the positives. I give it a 6 out of 10 for those.1 The acting is okay. For those who don't agree: We had a politician here who made a campaign film, now that was bad acting! 2 It's internationally oriented. For once it is not just the United States who is affected and who magically saves the world. Actually the Europeans and Russians play their part.3 Even if it is just for a brief moment the Germans and French talked German and French. For the rest of the movie regional accents are heard. Not the whole world speaks American English.4 It was enjoyable to watch if you don't focus to much on the negatives.The trouble I had with it are the following: 1 It's scientific basis is as good as a 1950's movie there are a lot of things that don't add up. It's fine for a movie back then but now moviegoers know more and are therefor more demanding on this point. They should have taken a little more care in getting the basics right, even if the higher science doesn't add up.2 that the US would decide on this without consulting it's international partners (I believe that China, Russia, the EU and others would want a say in that and all hell would break loose if they didn't get a say) this would be the spoilerisch bit, even if I believe anyone would see this coming. 3 that the US president would be stupid enough to prefer the option of the army over the option presented by a large international team of scientists (who are in consensus for once). Especially when the option by the military is considered as counterproductive for years by scientists and administrators for years.

drhugh Arthur C. Clark did the film world a great disservice when he made the memorable comment that "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."Arthur C. Clarke, "Profiles of The Future", 1961 (Clarke's third law)Film producers NOW think that SCIENCE = MAGIC. Really, folks, if any illiterate can make a science-fiction movie, why do universities BOTHER giving film degrees? There was a highly-readable article in the April 2009 Scientific American describing what is a "brown dwarf". A white dwarf, a superdense left-over from the life-cycle of a star like our sun, cools down to a BLACK dwarf, and certainly that would screw up the orbit of the moon and make a nasty hole. Perhaps the censor board wouldn't let them use the term "black dwarf" with the word "penetrate"...Fiction or no, it is simply wrong to mislead the public, poor ignorant sods that they are, about something any fool could learn on Wikipedia. Not that anyone would look it up, since the movies tell us everything we need to know. And if anything doesn't make sense, or if Spartacus is wearing a Rolex, then "Wizards did it"!