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Tear Jerker / Deep Impact

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  • And they come fast and loose once Jenny's mother commits suicide, especially as certain main characters come to terms with (or merely accept) their own impending deaths.
  • When Jenny gives up her seat on the helicopter so that Beth and her daughter can survive. The whole scene is painful to watch - Jenny finds Beth alone in the newsroom, cuddling the baby, shaken and crying about wanting to be somewhere high up, just in case it might be a chance. Then Jenny decides what she's going to do, snatches the baby and strides off to the roof with Beth chasing after her with cries of protest - until they get to the helicopter and it becomes clear she's not taking the baby away, she's saving them both.
  • Jenny gets another one when she reunites with her father, and when she clings to him just before the tsunami crashes over them.
    Jenny: Daddy...
  • Sarah's family insisting that she go on ahead with Leo so she has a chance of surviving as they strap her baby brother to her chest, and her parents hugging one another before they die.
  • Just the deaths of untold hundreds of millions of people across the globe after the first comet hits the Atlantic Ocean. The scenes of mass panic as everyone tries in vain to outrun the wave becomes more gutwrenching the more you think about it. Especially upsetting are the scenes of children among the panicked crowds trying to flee the incoming destruction; Death of a Child is brutally implied here.
    • Just the sheer scale of the tragedy we're witnessing; Entire cities, and likely entire nations have been wiped out and civilization has we know it has been irreversibly altered. Even with the demise of the second and larger comet (which would have ended the Human Race had it struck Western Canada), the world may rebuild, but it can never get back what was lost. Though as it's revealed by President Beck, the damage was mostly limited to the eastern US (by far the hardest hit as Boston, Philadelphia, Miami, New York City, Atlanta and Washington DC and anything alongside the Eastern Seaboard were near ground zero of the impact), parts of Eastern Canada (especially Montreal and Quebec City). The wave was also strong enough to hit Europe, meaning countries such as the UK (alongside Scotland, Wales and Ireland), Iceland, France, Germany, Spain, Belgium, Norway and the Netherlands, and Africa (though it's implied Africa wasn't nearly hit as hard compared to the US) were the ones that were hit by the resulting megatsunami, with millions of people confirmed dead from the overall disaster.
  • The crew of the Messiah saying their goodbyes to their families. Hell, the entirety of the Bittersweet Ending.
    • Fish not being able to see his two sons, but instead tells his deceased wife that he'll be coming home to her soon.
    • Special note goes out to Oren, the blinded crew member. Oren gets the chance to talk to his wife (and infant son Oren Jr.) for the last time, especially considering that Oren was blinded earlier in the film and it's a son he'll never see. The rest of the crew whisper to him what the baby is doing on screen, just so his wife doesn't know that he's been blinded.
      "Be good, Oren... be good..."
      • That scene was brutal. "Look at it this way: we'll all get high schools named after us."
  • The Heroic Sacrifice of the crew of the Messiah.
  • President Beck remains ever the statesman during the movie, but as things continue to grow more and more dire, he visibly grows more and more distraught. When he's forced to report that the missiles have failed to deter the comets, he doesn't even realize he's on camera and has to be told so. Some scenes feature him silently brooding in the Oval Office - after all, he might go down in history as the last president.
  • James Horner's poignant score, particularly the Lonely Piano Piece that plays over certain scenes and during the end credits. Especially so in light of the composer's death.
  • The death of Gus Partenza. Tulchinsky, who prior to this had been The Stoic, pleads with Sturgeon to go after Gus (even dropping an f-bomb in the process) but Sturgeon refuses to risk the mission or crew. As a devastated Tulchinsky takes his seat we see Jenny reading out a brief memorial for Gus on the news.


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