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Armageddon Customer Reviews (49 - 51 of 90 Reviews)

Outrageously adrenalin-packed but unbelievably unbelievable
The final hour of this film is filled with more over-the-top action, suspense and impending disaster than any other film in history, and this alone is worth the price of admission, but...it's also ridiculously unrealistic. Try these on for size: 1) An astronaut's face shield is shattered in space and some 10 seconds later he decides to let out an audible scream in the vacuum of space! I guess his head didn't explode either! 2) Space shuttles swiftly dodging chunks of asteroid with the agility of X-wing fighters. 3) A mining vehicle pulls an Evl Knievel-style jump over an asteroid canyon, landing safely after being put into orbit for a bit. There are plenty of other groaners. The blatant flag-waving patriotism and balls-to-the-wall machoism is laughable. Aerosmith music gets plenty of screen time (surprise!), and at times you think you're watching a music video. The scenes toward the end depicting various countries of the world looks so much like some telecommunication commercial it's disgusting. And the hyperkinetic edits during the action sequences are truly a statement on how low Hollywood is willing to stoop to entertain the ferret-on-a-double-espresso (thank you Dennis Miller!) attention spans of the younger generations. Oh yeah, the movie has its humorous moments (Steve Buscemi helps out immensely), but the "tragic" sequences had me weeping crocodile tears.

Good action, but....
Movies are a chance to lose yourself and escape reality for a while, so I'm usually willing to let a few implausible ideas slip by. But in Armageddon, there are so many major flaws that it becomes unforgivable. The premise of the movie involves a huge asteriod--the size of Texas, implying a few hundred miles in diameter--which is heading towards earth. To stop it, NASA has decided to detonate a nuclear weapon after landing on it and drilling down to...800 feet? Futhermore, this powerful blast is going to blow the asteroid into exactly two pieces, both of which will just miss earth provided the weapon is detonated In Time.

Since a highly trained team of astronauts apparently can't learn to drill a hole, NASA instead is convinced to let a drilling crew learn a crash course in being astronauts. Bruce Willis leads the crew, challenged for authority constantly by Ben Affleck, who is dating Bruce's daughter played by Liv Tyler. The crew land on the astronaut, where they encounter hazards galore. Here is where the reality suspension really occurs. After an explosion, one astronaut is sent spaceward by the lack of gravity; yet, another astronaut is able to grab them and pull them back to the surface. The asteroid's surface is "iron ferrite", which if it existed would be a compound between iron and...iron. Things continue at this pace for the duration of the movie, leaving me wondering if Jerry Bruckheimer was absent the day they taught science in science class. This movie was featured on the web site, "Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics", if that gives you an idea of the degree of bloopers.

The movie is of course full of edge-of-your-seat action, with the race to get the hole drilled In Time. The action is intense, and there are some scenes that stir the emotions. But the emotion is cheap, as is the story itself. In the end, it is a totally mindless action movie that requires complete suspension of logic and realism.

Criterion? Your kidding right?
Oh that Affleck. The summer of 98 featured two wanna-be blockbusters that featured "big asteroid hitting the planet and everybody dies" scenarios; Deep Impact and Armageddon. Armageddon was the worst of the two, and is clearly just another mainstream, crowd pleasing piece of film from wanna-be hotshot director Michael Bay (Bad Boys, The Rock, Pearl Harbor). Bruce Willis stars as the leader of a group of oil drillers who are recruited to drill a hole in the big rock, drop a nuke, and go back home. Naturally all doesn't go well, and we get an overly healthy dose of explosions, thrills, chills, and things we've all seen before. Plus, there is also a love story in all of this (naturally) between driller Ben Affleck and Willis' daughter played by Liv Tyler. Predictability is abound here, you'll know what will happen before it happens, and while Armageddon may be entertaining for some, it is mindnumbingly dull, and sometimes downright stupid. The large cast also features Billy Bob Thornton, Owen Wilson, Michael Clarke Duncan, Steve Buscemi, and Keith David among others. My only question here is why is this part of the Criterion Collection? Who is Michael Bay paying to have this released on Criterion? Oh well, at least Armageddon is better than Pearl Harbor.

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