Picking Nits
The panel largely punts because the premise invites limitless objections, but preserves the ex-wife reversal, nameless president, sound in space, impossible communications, A.J.’s navigation, and elastic time.
In the discussion (6)
Approx. transcript time · 01:16:33Read transcript
- Chick’s ex-wife bars contact and then immediately embraces him as the boy’s father after the mission, a reversal one host finds unearned even after saving Earth.
- The president makes consequential speeches but is never given a name; a proposal suggests Bill Pullman should have played every fictional 1990s president.
- The movie ignores the absence of sound in space and solves a prolonged communications blackout with one satellite bounce that produces crystal-clear final video.
- A.J.’s crashed vehicle locates Harry’s group despite enormous potential separation, as though crossing metropolitan Los Angeles.
- The asteroid is struck by more asteroids, and the countdown repeatedly stretches to allow global assembly, training, transit, reunion, and emotional pauses.
- Eating, sanitation, and survival during the surface drive disappear from the story.