I quite enjoyed this rather foreseeable movie. Certainly, the whole doomsday setup makes you think of Armageddon in that it is 'do or die' for planet Earth. But while Armageddon is clearly pretentious and *wants* to be the greatest doomsday flick ever made, The Core doesn't try to provide 3 1/2 hours of non-stop heart-pumping fun and drama. I enjoyed the absence military types, CIA agents or others who might threaten to take over the mission once it got started. There was a definite slant toward the scientific aspects of the mission. In my mind, clearly a different take on this genre. Vanilla, sure, but it tasted just fine.
