• Directed by “Alan Smithee” (Richard C. Serafian)
• Written by Joe Gannon and Crispan Bolt, based on the novel by Takeshi Kawata
• Starring
  • Tim Matheson
  • Charlton Heston
  • Peter Boyle
  • Annabel Schofield
  • Corin Nemec
  • Jack Palance
• Produced by Richard Edlund, James Nelson, and Morris Morishima
• Executive produced by Furuoka Hideto, Takeshi Kawata, and Takehito Sademura

$55 million isn’t exactly chump change; I wouldn’t turn up my nose at it if it were thrown at me. And back in 1990, it was even more money, especially in a movie industry yet to really feel the pressure of coming rampant production inflation. (Some figures for perspective: The top-grossing movie of 1990, Home Alone, cost $15 million. The Best Picture winner, Dances With Wolves, cost $15 million. The biggest budget of any movie in the year’s top ten grossing features was $70 million for Die Hard 2, and the average budget for the top ten was a hair over $30 million.)

With a budget of $55 million, then, Solar Crisis didn’t break any records, but certainly wasn’t impoverished. And I believe (and someone out there can correct me if I’m wrong) that with a pricetag like that, Solar Crisis is the costliest movie to ever be dumped directly to video without a domestic theatrical release.

[Edit: A reader has written to tell me that Solar Crisis did, in fact, have a theatrical release; he saw it on the big screen. My options now are to admit an error on my part, or to deride my correspondent as a delusional liar. I'm still deciding.]

“It’s a small thermal exhaust port, right below the main port…”

It’s easy to see where the money went, at least to a certain degree. Extensive space station and spaceship sets, beautifully-done external space shots (both of which incorporated production design by Syd Mead), complex desert location shoots, and a fair stable of name actors. It’s just as easy to see why distributors dumped it to video instead of pouring money into theatrical release, and why director Richard Serafian (who had certainly never shied away from less-than-stellar projects) went so far as to remove his name from it. In a word, it stinks.

A Japanese/American co-production instigated and financed by the Japanese, Solar Crisis is based on a novel by Takeshi Kawata. I’m betting it’s a pretty thick novel. And every last bit of it is here. Unlike some other more successful novel-to-screen adaptations of recent years (you know, like this one or this one), nobody involved in the production seemed to care about adapting it, i.e., changing it in ways designed to take advantages of the strengths of the cinematic medium. Instead, one gets the impression after watching Solar Crisis that someone has just read the entire damned novel to you in just under two hours. It’s a huge collection of subplots, composed largely of expository speeches, rendered in some of the clunkiest dialogue ever forced on an actor.

As explained in not one, but two screen crawls (complete with a narrator to read them for you), in the middle of the 21st century, the sun has been acting up for the past three years, and the Earth is overheated and parched. Now some predict a dangerous solar flare of huge proportions, possibly powerful enough to end life on Earth entirely. So a plan has been put together to send the spaceship Helios to the far side of the sun, armed with an antimatter bomb, to set off a solar flare far from the Earth and defuse the situation.

That’s right, the Earth is going to be saved by… a giant Space Pomegranate.

Our mission commander is Captain Kelso (Tim Matheson), a man troubled by his past, notably the death of his wife — so much so that he neglects his teenage son Mike (Corin Nemec), now enrolled in a military academy. How do we know this? Why, his Executive Officer, Commander Borg (!) (Dorian Harewood) tells the crew all about it, in a scene in which every crewmember tells all about himself and explains the entire mission to other crewmembers who already know what the mission is. (Then, when Borg leaves the scene, some other crewmember takes it upon himself to explain the competitive backstory between Kelso and Borg.) We’ve also got a biogenetically enhanced crewmember, Alex Noffe (Annabel Schofield), and a character who hits on other characters (as he cheerfully explains), and Dr. Minami (Tetsuya Bessho), who helped design the smart bomb they’re using and fully expects to sacrifice himself for the mission.

Ah, the smart bomb. I don’t know why, but somebody decided that a bomb containing five tons of antimatter needs to have artificial intelligence, but it does. It’s named Freddy (voice of Paul Williams — yes, him), and it’s slightly neurotic. I waited all movie for someone to attempt to teach it phenomenology; in this, as in so many things, I was disappointed. I also don’t understand how complicated it must be to pilot a bomb into the sun from close orbit — are you expecting to miss or something? — but the plan calls for an expendable pilot to go along, just in case something goes wrong with Freddy and he finds he just can’t manage to fall down an inescapable gravity well.

Back on Earth, meanwhile, there’s an evil corporation called IXL which owns just about all of the world, and has its eye on the remainder. In fact, from a long expository dialogue by corporate hard-ass Teague (Peter Boyle), icy yes-woman Claire (Brenda Bakke), and naively moral scientist Dr. Haas (Paul Koslo), we learn two things: 1) IXL can make a killing on futures if the Helios mission fails, and 2) Peter Boyle just cannot play a corporate hard-ass. Teague sets things in motion for the Helios mission to be sabotaged by a blond Frank Sagarino-lookalike (never caught his name, so I don’t know what actor he was).

They don’t even get Chuck to hiss, “Oh — my — God!”

But wait — in yet another corner of the rich tapestry of our plot, we have Captain Kelso’s father, Admiral Kelso (Charlton Heston), who berates Kelso for ignoring Mike, to the point that Mike has stolen an aircraft and gone AWOL from the academy. Unknown to them, Mike has crashlanded said aircraft in the desert, where it promptly exploded once he was out; he manages to stumble across a crazy desert hermit (Jack Palance), who has a long and complicated backstory himself, but jeez louise, I’m getting really tired of shovelfuls of exposition by this point. Let me do something for you that the production team never did for me: Let me attempt to summarize.

Kelso and Alex develop the least believable Instant Attraction for each other in cinematic history (and considering the movies I’ve seen, you should take that claim seriously). But Alex is soon compromised before their ship leaves spacedock, as the Fake Zagarino sedates her in her shower and uses a laser to… um… I dunno. It beams in her eye, and has something to do with her being bio-enhanced, and basically programs her to sabotage the mission.

Meanwhile, Admiral Kelso has co-opted far more military equipment and manpower than he can probably justify to find his missing grandson.

Meanwhile, Teague leaves the still-protesting Dr. Haas in the desert to die.

Meanwhile, hermit Palance tries to help Mike get to Red Sands so he can catch a shuttle up to the space station to say goodbye to his dad.

Meanwhile, Alex starts having a breakdown aboard the station, thanks to her new programming.

In the future, there will be even MORE excruciating ways to watch Solar Crisis!

Meanwhile, we’re given tons of exposition on the formation of sunspots and possible repercussions (heat sufficient to turn the surface of the Earth to glass would only inflict 50% casualties? You mean we’re going to be able to grow crops in the glass or something?) and the electromagnetic shielding on the ship. We’re also given some moments of false tension when a ship docking almost-but-not-quite goes wrong; after all, exposition is plenty exciting, but some people might want a change of pace, right?

Meanwhile, Dr. Haas is rescued in the desert (by Michael Berryman, whose name in the credits is the only reason I picked up this mess in the first place) and taken to a desert bar which just happens to be where Mike and the hermit end up. Meanwhile, IXL spooks are searching for Haas, and end up also looking for Mike. Meanwhile, Heston gives a big speech about possibly losing his son and his grandson at the same time, and how he never did all those things he always wanted to, etc. Meanwhile meanwhile meanwhile…

Of the many problems here, the most consistent is what screenwriters call “on-the-nose” dialogue. It’s not a good thing. People in the real world don’t walk into a room and immediately explain what’s bothering them and what they need while recapping the entire situation even though their conversant already knows it. Yet every character here does that, explaining who they are and why they do what they do at every conceivable opportunity. We don’t have time for clever or natural dialogue here; how the hell else do you expect to touch on every single subplot and theme in an 814-page novel in 111 minutes? (Either that, or this is the inevitable social consequence of a full half-century of Dr. Phil.)

And now, the cameo we’ve all been waiting for…

Every once in a while, there’s a glimmer of hope for the movie. At one point, some part of the Helios’ engine gets stuck, and Kelso has to choose a crewmember for a guaranteed suicide mission, then listen over the intercom as the crewmember burns up with radiation as he repairs the problem. But such rare moments of honest drama are defused by compensatory scenes such as Teague and the captive Mike Kelso, discussing the applicability of the prophecies of Nostradamus to the current crisis. And the entire project becomes a write-off when Mike looks at a television showing continuous images of famine, rioting, and other signs of discord and deprivation all over the world, and say, “This solar crisis has brought the whole world together.” The mind boggles.

Eventually, of course, it all works out for the best: It ends. The movie, I mean, not the world. Though the latter might not be a bad thing, as long as it brings about the former.

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 8
• breasts: 2
• explosions: 6
• ominous thunderstorms: 1
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 11
  • Dan Shor (“Harvard”) played the Ferengi “Dr. Arridor” in the TNG episode “The Price and the Voyager episode “False Profits”
  • Brenda Bakke (“Claire”) played “Rivan” in the TNG episode “Justice”
  • Paul Williams (the voice of Freddy) played “Koru” in the Voyager episode “Virtuoso”
  • Michael Berryman (credited as “Matthew”) played “Starfleet Display Officer” (under tons of latex) in Star Trek 4, and “Captain Rixx” (under blue makeup) in the TNG episode “Conspiracy”
  • Roy Jenson (“Bartender”) played “Cloud William” in the classic episode “The Omega Glory”
  • Jimmie F. Skaggs (“Biker”) played “Glinn Boheeka” in the DS9 episode “The Wire”
  • Paul Carr (“IXL Executive #2″) played “Lt. Lee Kelso” in the classic episode “Where No Man Has Gone Before”
  • Louie Elias (“IXL Man #4″) played “Technician #1″ in the original episode “And a Little Child Shall Lead” and “Troglodyte #2″ in “The Cloud Minders”
  • Terrence Beasor (the narrator) has done voiceover work in most of the Star Trek films and the modern series
  • John Deadrick (“Bandit”), aka Vince Deadrick, played “Matthews” in the original episode “What Are Little Girls Made Of?”, “Romulan crewman” in the original episode “Balance of Terror,” and is the stunt coordinator on Enterprise
  • Eurlyne Epper (“Bandit”) did stunts in Insurrection