Super Tanker (2011 TV Movie) User Reviews

Fast Action, Poor Scene Planning

[ekiker · 4/10 · 1 June 2015]

Supertanker has a great tie-in to dark matter arriving on Earth in a meteorite, but no explanation why it lasted on the ground for many years in contact with normal matter rather than exploding. However, it is the only movie I have seen which treats dark matter at all. I would like to see others, especially if they give a better discussion of the properties of dark matter and how dark matter can be handled.

On the other hand, there were problems with the technical aspects of film-making. There were some sequences where the film prints people into scenes and loses parts of them.

The most striking and egregious mistake I saw was scenes of a Pentagon press conference which showed two U.S. flags behind the presenter. One was right-side up and the other was upside down. How in the world did that EVER get past an editor? Perhaps a joker on the set crew?

Is this film for real???

[newwick · 18 October 2011]

I watched this so you don't have to! Stumbled upon this amazing film tonight, and - what a treat! It is the most incredibly bad film I've seen in a long time. I found a steaming pile of Hollywood offal that makes you wonder whether studios are running off tax deductions alone.

It comes complete with just awful computer graphics, repeated pentagon stock footage and an appalling textbook plot. The scenes which were so badly stitched together, the noses were removed from faces with no bother to replace them... It had husky voiced commanders evil villainous admirals, innocent children crouching in paradise as the giant cloud causes the city to explode... and tough guys who won't give up. Oh, and the bird.

Even the bikini babes were C grade in this film. I just can't express how bad this film is. It could almost be a comedy if it weren't so poorly put together. I was laughing at the beginning, but dry reaching by the end. I was gasping for it like a drowning person running out of air. 1 out of 10.

There are several words to describe this film, and "super" is NOT one of them!

[TheLittleSongbird · 1/10 · 23 February 2012]

I should have expected this, knowing SyFy's overall track record, which is a sprinkle of tolerable movies amidst a sea of awful and bottom-of-the-barrel ones. I can describe Super Tanker in several words and phrases, and super isn't one of them. More like hilariously awful and bottom-of-the-barrel. Is it the worst SyFy movie? Not quite, with Titanic II and Quantum Apocalypse. But it is down there in the bottom 10, maybe even bottom 5.

Actually, I would go as far to say that Super Tanker is one of the worst films I have seen in a while, making atrocities like 2010: Moby Dick, Camel Spiders, Almighty Thor, Dinocroc vs SuperGator AVH: Alien vs Hunter and Battle of Los Angeles Best Picture worthy in comparison.

Super Tanker, like a lot of SyFy's output looks really cheap. The scenery and settings have a really dull look to them, the costumes do look like they had been retrieved from a dressing up box and the effects are some of the most slapdash and inconsistent I've seen. Add to that, a really disjointed, predictable and sluggishly paced story, the cheesiest dialogue I have seen from any movie in the past three months, repetitive stock footage and clichés enough to fill a 500-1000 page novel and you have a film that is just as disastrous and the characters', none of which you care for by the end of the day, predicaments.

But I can't not mention the acting, which is either overdone(the admiral) or non-existent(the leads), even from the bikini clad girls. All in all, if I could rewrite the title I would call it Awful Stinker, it's that bad. 0/10 Bethany Cox

The best bad film I've seen in a long time

[FinerFilmFanatic · 1/10 · 25 January 2012]

How you perceive this film depends on what you expect going in. If you're hoping for a high-octane disaster film with great special effects you're going to be sorely disappointed. If, on the other hand, you expect

1) a terrible story

2) special effects that look like they were created in Paint

3) terrible casting

4) terrible acting

5) terrible dialogue

6) every cliché known to man

7) even terrible costumes

then you're really going to enjoy this.

The plot, as such, has some ultra-destructive element being taken to the deepest reaches of the ocean to protect the world from Armageddon. It was contained somewhere in Canada, but due to oil drilling in the area it has to be moved. Taking it by plane is hopeless, as the speed at which it travels renders it unstable, so the only solution is to take it via the world's biggest tanker. On the way it comes up against a "rogue" wave that appears out of nowhere, despite all the latest gadgetry on board and the fact that it's constantly being tracked by satellite. Various calamities befall the ship, meaning they have to "vent" the element several times to stop it from combusting. These vents create deadly clouds that destroy anything in its path - including a plane that decides to divert JUST when it's about to go into the cloud, a cruise ship with flabby belly'd "hot" girls sipping cocktails, and Hawaii. Watch in a total absence of awe as these things are destroyed by terrible special effects.

As for the special effects, clearly the people responsible have never seen such things as a plane taking off or landing, nor have they ever looked at a cloud. You sit looking at the screen thinking, "How on earth..." Bad doesn't come close, they're hilariously awful. The green screen work is also terrible - faces that seem to melt into the background, for example, or the whole scene in the cemetery.

Then there's the casting. The guy who plays the Admiral is wrong on so many levels - completely lacking in authority, a terrible voice, and he's not helped by a uniform that looks like he's pulled it out of the fancy dress box. The female lead is played by "Jon Mack", whose career has included the dizzying heights of "FBI Agent #3". Of course, it doesn't help that the dialogue she's been saddled with is like something written by school children, but she is dire. All other actors are bad, but those two stand out.

The dialogue seems to have been cut-and-paste from every other disaster movie ever made, from the angry confrontation scenes between the military top brass, to the final lines spoken in the cemetery. You could watch this with the sound off and still know what they were saying.

There are simply too many clichés here to list, but don't be surprised to find the Chinese computer whizz that nobody can understand, the alcoholic brought in to save the day, the military who are stupid and devious, the government official who cares more about saving face than anything, and there's even a child rescuing a dog who is momentarily lost. Yes, they cram everything they can into this film!

I've given this 1 star, based on the premise that this was supposed to be a halfway decent film. But really I want to give it 10/10 as I thoroughly enjoyed every excruciating moment. If you're expecting Die Hard on a boat, forget it. If you're willing to turn your brain off for 90 minutes, you might just find you enjoy it.

What a great way to cure insomnia!

[Russell62 · 1/10 · 29 May 2012]

Usually only I am to blame for our "B" movie choices. My wife rolls her eyes at the latest turkey I have wasted time and hard-earned money on, but this one was her idea! It really is surely one of the most preposterously bad movies ever made in the hallowed annals of bad movies. It starts out well enough, a meteor falls to earth somewhere and scientists extract "dark matter" from it. It's downhill on a roller coaster from there.

Several of the cast have a reasonable pedigree, they don't look as if they are desperate to get in any movies going. So I can't see why they bothered to show up for this dud. To be fair, some of them did their best with the atrocious script and ludicrous "psudo science" (if that's what it was) The scene where they were all frantically tapping away on their laptops trying to "reconfigure a blank install" or whatever they called it had all the tension of three friends sitting in an internet café. When one of them announced "I can't hold it much longer, we're losing field integrity," I briefly recalled the original Star Trek and half fancied Scotty should make an appearance "The engines canna take much more, Cap'n" but that would have been too much to wish for.

The characters were mostly clichés. The Chinese man, played by someone called Jacky Woo, isn't even listed on the IMDb entry for cast (probably a wise career move on his part) His English was incomprehensible to anyone other than his two team mates, and the running gag of having the head of the military unit ask "What the hell did he just say?" was funny once, but got tired with over use.

Don't worry, I won't give away the "plot" (was there one?) The super tanker in the title seemed to have been mainly stock footage with a few scenes that my wife swears were shot with a plastic model floating in a large tank.

Even so, I laughed my head off throughout and enjoyed it in a perverse sort of way. Oh, and my wife? She slept from the first appearance of the "death cloud" until the end.

Why?

[tawlite · 1/10 · 9 December 2011]

Supertanker is dull as dishwater I recently reviewed camel spiders with its inept script and plot chasms. In comparison to supertanker camel spiders is a masterpiece. There must be a wealth of ideas out there are for a good sy-fy movie, so why Supertanker was scripted and filmed is beyond me it has absolutely no redeeming features whatsoever. Like all sy-fy movies it has a protagonists, in supertanker they are dark black clouds which do nothing much apart from hover over the tanker with an not at all menacing hint that they are devastating population areas such as Hawaii. The only other beasts in this movie are a couple of macho egos. There isn't much more I can say about supertanker except the acting is the usual third rate fodder from sy-fy productions. Supertanker cannot even pass as a disaster movie apart from the fact that the movie itself is a disaster.

The true nadir of the SyFy Channel

[Leofwine_draca · 1/10 · 19 February 2015]

SUPER TANKER has to be the worst SyFy Channel-funded movie ever. Even the title is boring. This is the pits, worse even than all the dodgy disaster movies they make and the monster flicks combined. The plot involves some nuclear cloud that has the power to form and destroy whatever it comes into contact with, and there's a lot of stuff on ships with various officious types ranting and struggling to prevent a disaster and to cover the whole thing up before anybody finds out.

The film's leads are vacuous and wooden and the whole thing is only notable for the familiar actors they've roped into appearing; David Schofield and Ben Cross must have been really hard up to agree to star in this nonsense. The special effects of the cloud are just about adequate but the various CGI ships and helicopters are appalling indeed. I like the way the scriptwriter plays casual racism for laughs, nice touch there bud. Just kidding...SUPER TANKER is a real mess and has no redeeming features whatsoever.

Overall, a very decent achievement.

[transientdreams · 5/10 · 29 January 2012]

As someone who loves Sci-Fi and who doesn't much care for the Sci-Fy channel's TV movies, I was very impressed to have my expectations upgraded slightly watching this film. The CG was certainly tolerable, acting considerably above what I expected, minus a few instances, and the music tracks were surprisingly well done to fit the scenes. Even the dialog was delivered believably in most instances. After having watched nearly 4-5 movies a week for almost 30 years I DO often judge books by their cover (Release information, budget and reviews included) when it comes to movies. Especially since IMDb came into existence. I gave it a 5 only because I remained interested the entire time and was actually surprised that I wasn't able to fully predict certain outcomes of various scenes.

It's not a smashing success but at least it doesn't insult your intelligence, make you squirm with eye-rolling incredulity, or bore you to the point of angry disinterest. It may be a 'B' film, yet it stands high on the shoulders of what is most often produced by the Sci-Fy channel. I would honestly recommend it for a rainy day.

Booooooo can we give 0.000001 ratings?

[scurvytoon · 1/10 · 14 February 2015]

I'm a sucker for shlock Saturday afternoon rubbish, ask any of my friends, but this is the all time worst steaming pile of poo I have ever had to watch. Worse than write by numbers, this turkey isn't even a serious attempt at taking the mick for laughs. It's just plain awful.

I will ask a random question, why is it that the only way SyFy films ever solve anything is by throwing nukes at the anomaly? Saves yourself the trouble, if this is on and there is absolutely nothing else on, stick Rocky Horror on the DVD or maybe early Doctor Who, at least you'll be happy and confident you didn't have to suffer.

On the other hand, Super Tanker is also a great way to torture your enemies, so it's not a complete waste of time I guess.

What did they expect?

[libertytomahawk · 10/10 · 20 November 2019]

Once the electromagnetic containment matrix was lost and they initiated the hard reset, combined with the wildly varying frequency modulation; the only option was to superimpose a secondary containment matrix over top of the first failed matrix . . . duh.

Straight to Video Fodder that isn't even good enough for that fate!

[jmupton2003 · 1/10 · 30 July 2012]

Two of my hard earned pounds were parted with on the impulse purchase of the DVD of the film so bad that for the UK straight to video bargain bin market they actually changed the title and I had to submit its new identity to IMDb!! The plot (for want of a better word) revolves around some unstable element extracted from a meteorite that is now causing a few problems (in this instance accidentally wiping a large chunk of Canada off the map following an accident) so rather wisely the authorities decide to discreetly get rid of it before anyone starts asking any awkward questions.

So far so good until we are first subjected to this film's extensive CGI effects budget. Literally tens of dollars must have been spent creating a CGI super tanker (which by the way in no way resembles the very nice DVD cover art work) as the aforementioned unstable material is transported away with the intention of sinking it in the deepest part of the Pacific Ocean.

Does everything go to plan? Of course not...

So with everything going wrong, daft plot devices - sorry - deadly clouds that destroy everything they come into contact with being released all over the place and general panic amongst the powers that be, it is time to bring in our heroes straight from central casting.

The obligatory trio is made up of the usual suspects, cardboard characters that consist of the emotionally damaged hero, his intelligent eye candy sister and superfluous comedy side kick Japanese guy, the history and juxtapositions of which are established in convenient three years earlier style flashback that actually has little whatsoever to do with the 'plot' at all.

They immediately clash with the military guy before descending into the bowels of the ship (or a disused warehouse in Bromsgrove which is more what it really looks like) and make a total Horlicks of the whole rescue operation, releasing another comedy cloud that proceeds to use up another ten dollars of the CGI budget as it wipes out Honolulu.

What is surprising in the midst of the cheap as chips mess is that there is some decent acting talent here, whilst the three specialists who are flown in to save the day are instantly forgettable, there is the presence of Ben Cross who was Spock's father in the recent Star Trek reboot but quite why he agreed to appear in this tripe is anyone's guess.

The Greek captain of the ship is also a decent actor and character who deserved more screen time and a far better script as well. The rest of the characters are so dumb as to be utterly unbelievable, not least whoever is flying the Super Tanker's seemingly endless supply of helicopters around, constantly not learning their lesson and flying into those deadly clouds every time in order to provide a further explosion to wake up the audience who by now have most certainly dozed off if they have not already walked out.

So overall it is a mess and yet another example of a poor film that probably started off as a good idea very badly executed having been saddled with a dire script, twenty dollar special effects budget (All right, lets be generous, say thirty five dollars) and then unleashed on the unsuspecting public.

Memo to self, stop buying cheap DVD's from bargain bins...

BATTLE TANKER

[nogodnomasters · 1/10 · 16 August 2018]

Imagine a film company that gets its ideas from Asylum, but lacks their budget and writing skill. Also titled "Battle Tanker" is a horrendous film on all accounts.

A substance from a meteor lands in Alaska and is fabricated into a doomsday bomb that becomes unstable if moved too quickly through the earth's magnetic field. Following some plot continuity issues, it was decided to dump this device into the Marianas Trench by way of a huge tanker. In route the tanker has issues with "rogue waves" which causes the device known as ICE-10 to become unstable.

This leads to a venting of a deadly cloud. The civilians are at odds with the military as to how to handle the unstable device. This creates added drama. The science behind the whole film was terrible, as was the less than fifth grade knowledge of nuclear reactors on part of the writers.

They did manage to eliminate Asylums' problem with Navy insignias by not using any at all.

No-f-bombs, sex, or nudity

It would be a lie to say I hated it

[r96sk · 5/10 · 8 July 2020]

Listen, not good. However, relatively speaking and compared to other films of this ilk, it isn't absolutely atrocious.

'Super Tanker' has a silly premise which isn't grounded in any way, I was never on a level other than fantasy - these films need to feel believable, this doesn't. The cinematography and dialogue is very poor, as are the terrible special effects.

The characters lack major development, though in fairness one or two have a background story at least. Still, most are badly written, especially Jacky Woo's Jackie; whose broken English is made fun of at least six times, that's lazy 'comedy'.

The editing and direction isn't great either, with a few scenes missing a conclusion; namely in the third act, one with Robert (Ben Cross) and one with Capt. Spyrou (Velizar Binev). Those two, Cross and Binev, are probably the best actors on display... not that that's high praise necessarily.

As noted at the top, I'm not definitively sure how or why but I actually come away from watching this feeling alright about it. It's clearly low budget and has all the hallmarks of a cheap production from companies like The Asylum etc., but it would be a lie to say I hated it.

An average movie of its kind. You might like it

[stuart-wise · 5/10 · 8 January 2024]

I don't understand the super-negative reviews here. I didn't find it to be the worst thing I've seen and I have seen plenty. Granted, the story is like a disaster template that basically the producers just change the issue and the venue, but the characters are basically the same type. In this case, stupid military types, a married couple that separate over some issue and then make up, then some heroic action that saves the world. You pretty much know how it will end, so you go along for the journey for entertainment. So Super Tanker wasn't all that bad, nor all that good, just average fare you might expect if you find this on YouTube.

You people are kidding me, right?

[bahpofficer · 9/10 · 11 July 2012]

It is a SYFY movie correct? Did you expect a multi million dollar budget? Hang that! The movie was good. The dialogue was not bad and the acting came off as more believable than a lot of what comes off of that channel.

Ben Cross makes the film shine regardless of what one thinks of the effects and such. It is worth watching for him alone, but the rest of the cast was good with ONE exception--that was the actress playing the press secretary...She came across as flat to me. Thank God her part was small. She batted those eyes like a teenager rather than controlling her facial expressions like an adult. It also seemed as though she looked away off to her right instead of into a camera or an audience her character was addressing. Pathetic. At least Cross handled that podium scene well enough to cover up her snafu.

I am not going to put spoilers in here for those who haven't watched it but while the effects weren't that great, consider the budget. Yes, more could have been done in that respect but given what they had to work with, the cast and crew did well...

Unless you go to theaters, you won't get films with outrageous budgets to tickle your fancy.

A fun piece of action thriller trash

[Woodyanders · 8/10 · 28 April 2021]

A bunch of folks race against time to destroy a lethal super weapon by sinking said weapon in a large tanker ship deep into the ocean. The fate of mankind hangs in the balance.

Director/co-writer Jeffery Scott Lando keeps the enjoyably asinine zipping along at a snappy pace, treats the inane premise with admirable seriousness, generates a reasonable amount of tension, and blows plenty of stuff up real good as well as kills off a lot of people. The game cast play the silly material commendably straight: Callum Blue as burnt-out containment specialist Adam Murphy, David Schofield as a hard-nosed admiral, Jon Mack as the feisty Morgan, Jacky Woo.as the easygoing Jackie, Atanas Srebrev as rough'n'tumble macho jerk Colonel Hanley, Ben Cross as no-nonsense science expert Robert Jordan, Velizar Binev as the tough Captain Spyrou, and Jesse Steele as the loyal Randall. The dodgy CGI effects possess a certain endearingly schlocky charm. A total schlocky blast.