Armageddon (1998)

After discovering that an asteroid the size of Texas is going to impact Earth in less than a month, NASA recruits a misfit team of deep-core drillers to save the planet.

Director:

Michael Bay

Writers:

Jonathan Hensleigh (screenplay), J.J. Abrams (screenplay)

Stars:

Bruce Willis, Billy Bob Thornton, Ben Affleck

Nominated for 4 Oscars. Another 15 wins & 36 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Bruce Willis	...	Harry S. Stamper
Billy Bob Thornton	...	Dan Truman
Ben Affleck	...	A.J. Frost
Liv Tyler	...	Grace Stamper
Will Patton	...	Chick
Steve Buscemi	...	Rockhound
William Fichtner	...	Colonel Willie Sharp
Owen Wilson	...	Oscar
Michael Clarke Duncan	...	Bear
Peter Stormare	...	Lev Andropov
Ken Hudson Campbell	...	Max (as Ken Campbell)
Jessica Steen	...	Co-Pilot Jennifer Watts
Keith David	...	General Kimsey
Chris Ellis	...	Flight Director Clark
Jason Isaacs	...	Ronald Quincy

Storyline

It is just another day at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), a few astronauts were repairing a satellite until, out of nowhere, a series of asteroids came crashing into the shuttle, destroying it. These asteroids also decimated New York soon thereafter. Then, NASA discovered that there is an asteroid roughly the size of Texas heading towards the Earth, and when it does hit the Earth, the planet itself and all of its inhabitants will be obliterated, worse, the asteroid will hit the Earth in 18 days. Unfortunately, NASA's plans to destroy the asteroid are irrelevant. That is when the U.S. military decides to use a nuclear warhead to blow the asteroid to pieces. Then, scientists decide to blow the asteroid with the warhead inside the asteroid itself. The only man to do it, is an oil driller named Harry Stamper and his group of misfit drillers and geologists. As he and his drill team prepare for space excavation, the asteroid is still heading towards the Earth. When...

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Plot Keywords:

cranberry | asteroid | astronaut | outer space | bomb | 

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Taglines:

School's out..... forever.

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Genres:

Action | Adventure | Sci-Fi | Thriller

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Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

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

Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English Russian Indonesian

Release Date:

1 July 1998 (USA)

Also Known As:

Armageddon

Filming Locations:

Los Angeles Theatre - 615 S. Broadway, Downtown, Los Angeles, California, USA

Box Office

Budget:

$140,000,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend USA:

$36,089,972, 5 July 1998

Gross USA:

$201,578,182

Cumulative Worldwide Gross:

$553,709,788

Company Credits

Production Co:

Touchstone Pictures, Jerry Bruckheimer Films, Valhalla Motion Pictures

Technical Specs

Runtime:

151 min 153 min (director's cut)

Sound Mix:

DTS Dolby Digital SDDS

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.39 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

Arnold Schwarzenegger was considered for the role of Harry Stamper.

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Goofs

Steve Buscemi opens fire with what appears to be a variant of a General Electric GAU-8/A Gatling Gun which has an effective recoil of approximately 10,000 pounds-force (45 kN) per round discharge of armor-piercing ammunition. The vehicle carrying the cannon does not buck upwards or backwards at all. When the significantly decreased gravity of the asteroid is factored into consideration, at the very least the vehicle should have rocketed backwards or flipped upside down. Additionally, the barrels would have been cold-soaked to something close to -273° Celcius when the spinning asteroid was pointed away from the Sun, the heat generated by the rapid fire rate (combined with the friction of the slugs passing through the barrels) would certainly cause the frigid barrels to shatter like glass. It is unlikely that NASA would fit a Gatling-Gun on a drilling platform.There are chemical lasers that would be much more effective and certainly lighter in weight should a mission call for the option of blasting one's way through an obstacle.

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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 ...

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Crazy Credits

Portions of the video of Grace Stamper and A.J. Frost's wedding are shown during the final credits.

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Alternate Versions

The TV version concludes on the runway after the return of the shuttle crew. The wedding scene and related "home movie" footage is not shown.

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Connections

Referenced in BoJack Horseman: The Kidney Stays in the Picture (2019)

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Soundtracks

Starseed
Written by Mike Turner, Raine Maida, Chris Eacrett and Arnold Lanni
Performed by Our Lady Peace
Courtesy of Sony Music Entertainment (Canada) Inc. and Columbia Records
By Arrangement with Sony Music Licensing

User Reviews

One of Those Guilty Pleasures

After discovering that an asteroid the size of Texas is going to impact Earth in less than a month, NASA recruits a misfit team of deep core drillers to save the planet.

The real mystery surrounding this film is how it got released by the Criterion Collection. Both this film and Michael Bay's "The Rock" received the Criterion treatment at one time. And while both are very enjoyable films, do they really belong with Criterion? I feel that by merely being released by them, there is an added importance stamped on the film.

But as far as guilty pleasures go, this is a fun and entertaining film. I could do without the romance angle, but the idea of blowing up an asteroid before it hits earth (which assumes a lot of questionable science) is just classic science fiction, here given more legitimacy and budget than ever before.