The Final Countdown (1981)

[Alan Smithee]

I somehow felt compelled to see this movie. In short, the aircraft carrier is the best thing about the movie. All Kirk Douglas does is pace around and bark orders. Martin Sheen just stands around. And the rest (aside from Charles Durning) are non-actors contributing nothing to the movie. The ending is anticlimatic. The timewarp storm conviently shows up to send everyone back home.

Skip it.

[Ash]

This is the one where the aircraft carrier gets sucked in by a big spiral singularity and goes back in time right?
Don't they pit F-14's against Japanese Zero's?

[Neville]

True. But then they realize they don't have enough budget to stop the Pearl Harbor attack and the captain decides not to interfere with historical events. I remember this film, it is moderately entertainning but little else. Don Taylor's filmmaking, to make things worse, is too stale and TV-like, despite the big names in the cast.

[Fearless Freep]

The best part was the Tomcats against the Zeros...

Ending was anticlimactic

[The Burgomaster]

I bought this DVD when it was released a year or two ago.  I agree - - it's mildly entertaining at times, but mostly pretty dull.

[Dr. Whom]

I watched it way back when it first came out, and even then I found it anticlimactic. Still plenty of shots of Navy jets, though.

[AndyC]

This used to be a favourite of mine, back when I was a kid of 12 or so, and it was first airing on TV. Time travel, cool black hole looking storm, big ship. That was all I needed.

Granted, I was less impressed the last time I saw it, but I still think it was one of the more interesting depictions of time travel in the movies. You don't find too many stories based on the idea that things only happen once, and the time travellers were always part of history. And I can't think of another movie that has it (Planet of the Apes kind of went in that direction, I guess). Movie time travel is mostly of the Back to the Future variety of rewriting history, which is great as a fun plot device, but would be really problematic in a serious movie. The thing I liked about The Final Countdown was that, for all the effort made to change things, they always turned out exactly as they were supposed to, despite and even because of those efforts. The storm's reappearance at the end was no cop out, but necessary to the plot. If they had gotten to Pearl Harbor, that would have defeated the whole point of the movie.

I liked the way time travel was presented (even if it means the future is also set, when you think about it), and I liked the cute little twist at the end. It's not the greatest movie, but I have a soft spot for it.

[BoyScoutKevin]

I, for one, saw it when it first came out, and I enjoyed it. Of course, I haven't seen it since, so I don't know what my opinion of it would be some 25 years later.