One can't go into a Werner Herzog documentary expecting a Discovery Channel or National Geographic style affair. Fireball is characterized by Herzog's iconic eccentricity, off-beat narrative style, quiet but intense narration, and sometimes far fetched and even seemingly non sequitur connections among ideas. He connects science, folklore, art, and other cultural histories through their connections with meteorites. I found this documentary fascinating, mysterious, and in some parts simply beautiful in the humanity on display.

I watched this at 2x speed and it still felt slow. the thing that stood out the most was the camerawork. It was really sloppy, and felt like it was done by the intern. some questionable camera angles and shots that were held way to long. the narrirator was sub par, and the presentation of information felt disjointed. it feels like all the budget went into the exotic locations.

3/10: amateurish

Rocks are cool, I suppose, and those from space more so, but it's a stretch to hold interest through others looking at and talking about them for an hour and a half. Fortunately, Werner Herzog's narration can hold interest like no other, and some of the anthropological examinations of meteorites and their craters is compelling, including in the formation of the ring of Mayan cenotes. A replay of the common story of the extinction of the dinosaurs from the same Chicxulub asteroid also works. Even some of the more routine interviews with scientists or those otherwise interested in space dust are raised by their enthusiasm and sometimes is even rather ASMR triggering. The Antarctic scenes of people lining up along the ice to search for stones looks nice.

I gather "Fireball: Visitors from Darker Worlds" is similar to Herzog and co-director Clive Oppenheimer's prior documentary "Into the Inferno" (2016),where Oppenheimer's specialization in volcanology came into play, as his scientific background continues to serve this doc in him doing the interviewing while Herzog brings the idiosyncratic narration and decades of filmmaking experience of a New German Cinema director. Speaking of volcanos and asteroids, I suppose I ought to feel special given that Herzog claims here that only a few had known (although probably not true if even I knew about it) about NASA and others' efforts to track and, perhaps one day, divert large asteroids from impacting Earth. That people are watching these space rocks and devising plans--whether or not it involves nuclear weapons and probably not in the sense as depicted in "Armageddon" and "Deep Impact" (both 1998)--to potentially respond to them is probably why I'm less concerned that humanity's extinction will be from an asteroid impact. Those supervolcanos seem more of a problem (as ridiculously depicted in "2012" (2009)) given that they may be more unpredictable and impossible to do anything about, as well as anything akin to "The Core" (2003),as in that of the Earth, or a Sun burp ("Knowing" (2009)),or, forget rocks, what if an entire stray planet or large black hole wandered into Earth's orbit. We're sitting ducks. Something to think about.