Solar Attack: a.k.a. "The Sun is mad, and lashing out at the Earth"

The Earth has to deal with a serious case of sunburn, or something...

The world is in danger again. This time the plot focuses on global warming, and how much methane is in our atmosphere. I promptly got distracted by jokes about cow farts, and don't really know the ultimate outcome.

I remember Solar Attack decides that the way to save the world is to shoot nuclear missiles at the North Pole. Okaaay.... Sounds reasonable in a B-movie world, I guess. Then there's something about Russians versus Americans, and all that old Cold War conflict coming to the surface now that an American billionaire used Russian technology to launch his personal manned craft into low orbit, but it blew up, killing an American astronaut/pilot, and everyone wanted to blame the Russian technology, but it was really because of a huge "coronal mass ejection" that lit the methane in the atmosphere on fire and incinerated him, and then the billionaire knows what's really going on but no one will believe him now, but he has friends with Russian subs so he takes matters into his own hands to save the world... and stuff.

All I really remember is that after a slew of disaster movies in my recent viewing history, this one at least didn't have a precocious kid that needed a healthy dose of discipline and a lesson in manners. This one at least didn't have a contrived treacle-filled sub-plot about family sticking together through tragedy, or society trying to carry on in the aftermath of disaster. This at least just stuck to questionable science, showed plenty of pretty lights to make sure we know there's lots of "coronal mass ejections", and a requisite fist fight/action scene or two.

It just didn't keep my interest, however. I don't think it's all the movie's fault. I think it's because I've seen so many of this genre of film in the last few days, and just got burned out. I know I fell asleep a couple of times trying to watch it, but there wasn't anything going on that made me sit up and take notice. It's just another typical "we've got to save the world...again" movie.

I watched it mostly for Mark Dacascos since he's sunk to the level of Casper Van Dien and Lorenzo Lamas. Decent actor, has plenty of action star chops, but he's not so good that he can rise above mediocre roles like this. Sometimes he's funny, and then sometimes intentionally so. I also watched it for Louis Gossett Jr, an actor I feel deserves more respect than a movie like this. I didn't watch it for anything else except a morbid curiosity about how bad this would get.

To sum this up, I tried to watch yet another disaster movie, and got absolutely nothing out of it, including an even halfway decent review. I'll give it another try in a few months and see if my "disaster movie tolerance level" has subsided, but I don't have high hopes that anything will save this movie for me.

In the meantime, I'm eagerly awaiting my next movie from Netflix, Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus, and the following trailer will tell you why!