Armageddon (1998/I)

User Rating:

6.0/10   

Director:

Michael Bay

Writers (WGA):

Robert Roy Pool (story) and
Jonathan Hensleigh (story) ...

Release Date:

1 July 1998 (USA)

Genre:

Action | Adventure | Romance | Sci-Fi | Thriller

Tagline:

It's Closer Than You Think.

Plot:

When an asteroid the size of Texas is headed for Earth the world's best deep core drilling team is sent to nuke the rock from the inside.

Plot Keywords:

Asteroid | Drill | NASA | Nuclear | Astronaut

Awards:

Nominated for 4 Oscars. Another 12 wins & 27 nominations

Cast

Bruce Willis	...	Harry S. Stamper
Billy Bob Thornton	...	Dan Truman, NASA Administrator
Ben Affleck	...	A.J. Frost
Liv Tyler	...	Grace Stamper
Will Patton	...	Charles 'Chick' Chapple
Steve Buscemi	...	Rockhound
William Fichtner	...	Colonel William Sharp, Shuttle Freedom Pilot
Owen Wilson	...	Oscar Choi, Geologist
Michael Clarke Duncan	...	Jayotis 'Bear' Kurleenbear
Peter Stormare	...	Lev Andropov, Russian Cosmonaut
Ken Hudson Campbell	...	Max Lennert (as Ken Campbell)
Jessica Steen	...	Jennifer Watts, Shuttle Freedom Co-Pilot
Keith David	...	Lt. General Kimsey
Chris Ellis	...	Walter Clark
Jason Isaacs	...	Dr. Ronald Quincy, Research

MPAA:

Rated PG-13 for sci-fi disaster action, sensuality and brief language.

Runtime:

150 min | USA:153 min (director's cut)

Country:

USA

Language:

English | Russian

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

2.20 : 1

Sound Mix:

DTS | Dolby Digital | SDDS

Certification:

Taiwan:PG-12 | Philippines:PG-13 | Finland:K-12 (1998) | Canada:14 (Nova Scotia) | Canada:G (Quebec) | Canada:PA (Manitoba) | Canada:PG (Alberta/British Columbia/Ontario) | Argentina:13 | Australia:M | Belgium:KT | Brazil:12 | Chile:14 | Denmark:15 | France:U | Germany:12 (w) | Hong Kong:IIA | Iceland:LH (video rating) | Iceland:L (original rating) | Italy:T | Netherlands:12 | Norway:15 | Portugal:M/12 | Singapore:PG | South Korea:12 | Sweden:11 | Switzerland:12 (canton of Geneva) | Switzerland:12 (canton of Vaud) | UK:12 | USA:PG-13 (certificate #36122) | USA:Unrated (director's cut)

Filming Locations:

4th Street, Downtown, Los Angeles, California, USA

Company:

Touchstone Pictures

Trivia:

Director Michael Bay had the actors write their list of demands on the papers that Bruce Willis read from.

Goofs:

Continuity: When the two ships are docking, the radar shows that both are docking at the same time, but the shot from space shows one docking after another.

Quotes:

[first lines]
[Camera shoots past the moon to slowly zoom in on the Earth]
Narrator: This is the Earth, at a time when the dinosaurs roamed a lush and fertile planet.
[From behind the camera, a giant asteroid appears, speeding towards the Earth ahead of it]
Narrator: A piece of rock just 6 miles wide changed all that.
[Blazing through the atmosphere, the asteroid impacts with a spectacular display of fire and destruction]
Narrator: It hit with the force of 10,000 nuclear weapons. A trillion tons of dirt and rock hurtled into the atmosphere, creating a suffocating blanket of dust the sun was powerless to penetrate for a thousand years. It happened before. It will happen again. It's just a question of when.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Bad Santa: Not Your Typical Christmas Movie (2004) (V)

Soundtrack:

Sweet Emotion

It's not that it's bad - I just don't like being taken for stupid!

There are far too many high quality reviews on this film for me to make any real impact with my humble views. However... I re-watched Armageddon on TV a few nights ago and now, ten years after it was unleashed, I feel I can take a more pragmatic view.

Most of the articulate and intelligent reviews that have already been written cover off the preposterous nature of the science which underpins the woeful script. For example, the varying degrees to which gravity obeys the laws of dramatic tension rather than the laws of physics, the absolute necessity to have some serious Gatlin guns mounted on the drilling vehicles (what were they expecting – annoyed aliens?), the ludicrous notion that NASA would let the moronic men-children anywhere within fifty miles of a shuttle - rather than simply train their own highly disciplined astronauts to operate a drill, the cardboard cut-out Russian cosmonaut whose script direction read "SHOUTING" at the beginning of each line. And... nukes with big green countdown read-outs on them, 12-inch diameter drills that make 36-inch diameter holes, Earth shorn of time-zones and the amazing a ability to put on sun-glasses whilst wearing a space-suit helmet. You get the gist, the list is endless.

All these and many other inconsistencies, inaccuracies and failures of reason are just about forgivable if the movie delivers what it is meant to, which on some levels it does, I suppose. The thing that really gets me though, and this is the bit that I find pretty unforgivable, is that the makers of the movie assume that I (and you) are morons who will let these issues go without questioning. Maybe for some of the Cletuses and Darlenes out there – well, OK. But the vast majority of us average intelligence movie goers will say, "Whoa, hold on buddy. Do you expect me to swallow that premise or this notion?" To which Bay and his ilk say, "Sure, why not, eat your popcorn." That's what really irks me. The fact that they had all this money to spend and they used four dollars of it on technical advice for the script. Sheesh.

"Space dementia"... really, I ask you.