Deep Impact, Bad Parents And Flawed Heroines

Spoiler Alert – This post will talk about Deep Impact and it WILL contain spoilers. If you haven’t yet watched this awesome comet disaster movie from the previous century (1998 – grins), you might wish to skip this post.

Deep Impact is my favorite comet disaster movie. I really like that it has a news media/journalism angle to it and that it talks about how a government might cover up a possible world ending disaster.

(It stars Morgan Freeman as one of my favorite movie world leaders which is a huge plus.)

I also like that the characters are fully developed, including some seen-only-in-one-scene characters like the older gentleman reading his paper.

Jenny Lerner and her parents are especially nuanced. Jenny, as a high profile journalist, has a guaranteed spot in the humanity saving ‘arc.’

If she chooses, she can survive the disaster.

You and I suspect she won’t survive it because she’s the heroine, yes, but also because she has character traits that serve as flaws in any disaster situation.

She is soft-hearted and VERY easy to emotionally manipulate.

Her mom knows this.

Jenny’s mom doesn’t have a place in the ‘arc’ and she realizes her daughter won’t allow her to die alone. Jenny will, if given the choice, walk away from her place in the ‘arc’ and sacrifice her life to be with her mom during the comet strike.

So Jenny’s mom makes her own sacrifice and ensures Jenny doesn’t have that choice. She does everything left in her power to increase the odds her beloved daughter will survive.

That’s how much Jenny’s mom loves her.

Jenny’s dad also knows Jenny is easy to emotionally manipulate.

And he, being a selfish bastard, has no qualms about doing that to ensure HE doesn’t die alone. He, without hesitation or any hint of regret, emotionally blackmails his daughter, knowing it will result in her death.

I hated him for doing that.

But I LOVED that the writers built this nuance into the story.

The writers could have given Jenny solely the expected-in-an-action-movie heroic motivation of saving an innocent child and stopped there.

But they gave her a secondary motivation. She is manipulated by someone she loves.

Someone whose last act shows he doesn’t love her enough.

And that is great writing.