If you were around in 1998, you probably remember the great space rock war. It was the year Hollywood decided, twice over, that a giant hunk of space debris was going to end us all. On one side, you had Armageddon, which was basically a two-hour Aerosmith music video with oil drillers and explosions. On the other, you had Deep Impact, a movie that actually cared about things like "physics" and "human feelings."
At the center of that more thoughtful apocalypse was a wide-eyed teenager named Elijah Wood.
Before he was Frodo Baggins, he was Leo Biederman. He wasn't a hero with a machine gun or a rugged astronaut. He was just a kid in a high school astronomy club who accidentally found a comet while trying to impress a girl. It’s a weirdly grounded starting point for a movie about the end of the world, but that’s exactly why Elijah Wood in Deep Impact remains one of the most relatable performances in disaster cinema history.
What Really Happened With Elijah Wood and the Discovery of Comet Wolf-Biederman
Most people forget that the movie starts with a simple party. Leo isn't some government scientist; he’s a fourteen-year-old taking photos of the sky through a small telescope. He’s more interested in Sarah Hotchner (played by Leelee Sobieski) than he is in celestial mechanics.
He captures a fuzzy white smudge on film, sends it to a professional astronomer named Dr. Marcus Wolf, and—boom—humanity is on a collision course with a seven-mile-wide comet.
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The name "Wolf-Biederman" is a nice touch of realism. In the world of astronomy, you get your name on the thing if you find it first. But for Leo, this isn't a badge of honor. It’s a death sentence with his name on it. Honestly, Wood plays this with a sort of quiet, numb terror that feels way more real than the "let's go kick some asteroid" vibe of other 90s flicks.
The Famous Motorcycle Scene and the Driver's License
Here is a fun bit of trivia: Elijah Wood actually had to get his driver's license specifically for this movie.
There's a massive, climactic sequence where Leo is on a dirt bike, weaving through a nightmare of gridlocked traffic and debris to find Sarah and her family. Director Mimi Leder wanted the stunt work to feel urgent. At fifteen, Wood wasn't a seasoned rider. He had to train on an obstacle course to handle the bike like a pro.
That bike ride is one of the most iconic images from the film. It's not a high-tech rover on a comet surface; it's a kid on a Yamaha trying to outrun a tidal wave. It’s desperate. It’s messy. And it’s arguably the most high-stakes moment in the entire movie because it focuses on three kids—Leo, Sarah, and her baby brother—climbing a hill while the Atlantic Ocean eats the East Coast.
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Why Deep Impact Still Matters (Even Next to Armageddon)
If you look at the box office, Armageddon won. It made over $550 million. Deep Impact "only" made about $350 million. But if you talk to actual scientists or people who like a little substance with their spectacle, they’ll tell you Leder’s film is the one that aged better.
- The Science: NASA advisors worked on this. They didn't just make things up.
- The Stakes: The movie isn't afraid to kill off main characters. Big ones.
- The Lottery: The "Ark" scenario is chilling. It explores the idea that if the world ends, we choose who lives based on age and luck.
- The Quiet: There are scenes where people just sit on a beach and wait for the end. It's haunting.
Critics like the late Roger Ebert famously pointed out that while Armageddon was a "rock-'em-shock-'em" good time, Deep Impact actually belonged on a list of serious films. It treated the extinction-level event (E.L.E.) like a tragedy rather than a playground for pyrotechnics.
The Chemistry (or lack thereof) Between Leo and Sarah
Some people complain that the romance between Leo and Sarah feels a bit flat. There was actually a lot more to their story in the original 3.5-hour cut of the film. Test screenings apparently led to a lot of their "love story" being trimmed down to keep the pacing tight.
Wood and Sobieski were both very young—Leo and Sarah are supposed to be high schoolers—and their "marriage" in the film is basically a legal loophole to get her family into the bunkers. It’s not a sweeping romance; it’s a survival pact. When you view it through that lens, the awkwardness between them actually makes total sense. They are children playing house because the world is ending.
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The Bridge to Middle-earth
It’s impossible to talk about Elijah Wood in Deep Impact without looking at what came next. While filming The Faculty just a few months later, his co-star Harry Knowles told him about a project Peter Jackson was starting: The Lord of the Rings.
Wood’s performance as Leo Biederman proved he could carry the emotional weight of a massive blockbuster without losing his soul. He had this "everyman" quality that worked perfectly for a Hobbit. He was small, he was vulnerable, but he was capable of incredible bravery when pushed.
If you watch the ending of Deep Impact—where Leo is standing on that mountain, holding a baby, watching the world change forever—you can see the seeds of Frodo Baggins. He has those huge, expressive eyes that do 90% of the acting work. You don't need a monologue when you can see the apocalypse reflected in Elijah Wood’s pupils.
What to do if you're revisiting 90s disaster movies:
- Watch for the cameos: Keep an eye out for a very young Jon Favreau as one of the astronauts on the Messiah spacecraft.
- Compare the tsunamis: The VFX of the New York City wave was groundbreaking for 1998. It still holds up better than a lot of CGI from five years ago.
- Check the science: Look up the real-life NASA mission also called "Deep Impact" that happened in 2005. They actually slammed a probe into a comet (Tempel 1) to see what was inside. Life imitating art, sort of.
- Double feature it: Watch this back-to-back with Armageddon to see how two different directors can take the exact same premise and make two completely different genres of film.
Whether you're a fan of 90s nostalgia or just want to see a young Frodo face a different kind of doom, Deep Impact is worth a re-watch. It’s a movie that asks what we owe each other when time runs out. Honestly, that’s a lot more interesting than just watching things blow up.
Next, you might want to look into the 2005 NASA Deep Impact mission results to see how close the movie actually got to the reality of comet composition.