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Armageddon Customer Reviews (73 - 75 of 90 Reviews)

A new opinion on "Armageddon"
I am walking a thin line here. Contrary to my previous review, "Armageddon" has been a personal favorite action movie of mine for some years. But even I admit that it has as much intelligence as a pop-up book. However, I will try to avoid being a serious critic in my review and I will also avoid patronizing.

The story is set in the present day (Or in Summer 1998. You decide). A giant asteroid the size of Texas has been spotted coming towards Earth. NASA, led by Dan Truman (Billy Bob Thornton) is totally unprepared for such a thing. Worse, they have only 18 days to stop it. The only hope for Earth is to send the world's best deep core oil driller Harry Stamper (Bruce Willis) and a team of his drillers to combat the threat. If you don't spend too much time laughing at the improbabilities, you might find some of the dialogue (Intentionally) hilarious. Steve Buscemi is particularly likable as "Rockhound", a horny geologist ("Do you think we'll hazard pay out of this"). However, General Kimsey (Keith David) is pretty much correct when he states "The fate of the planet is in the hands of a bunch of retards I wouldn't trust with a potato gun".

The problem with "Armageddon" is lack of focus. Apparently, the screenwriters think that by putting a romance story into the plot that a larger audience will be attracted to the film. So, a subplot between Stamper's daughter Grace (Liv Tyler) and one of his top drillers A.J (Ben Affleck) is put into place. This only drags the film's length and, to add insult to injury, variations of Aerosmith's "I Don't Wanna Miss a Thing" are played during these scenes. I also never felt much for the A.J and Grace characters, since the only signs that they ever love one another are shown by using pretty close ups.

I, for one, try to relax when I watch popcorn flicks like this. However, even I noticed how phony this film is. And I am not talking about the plot either. I mean, if you thought "2001" was unrealistic in it's space travel depiction, check this film out. The sets look like that; Wood and cement, rather than rock and iron. So where did that budget of $100 million or so go? Must have been the bill given to McDonald's for all that merchandising.

In my previous review, I mentioned that the military is shown negatively in this film. While the depiction isn't always positive towards them (The higher ranking leaders attempt to detonate the nuclear device on the asteroid's surface and they don't put much faith in NASA's plan to use drillers), the producers had to have military cooperation in this movie. Thus, most of the scenes showing the training have expensive, high tech military gear and planes as props or in the background shots. Come on, your going to have a briefing in the same hanger that is also occupied by a B-2 stealth bomber and two SR-71 Blackbirds? These civilians (Both on and off the screen) have more opportunity to admire these advanced warplanes than do many of the same military servicemen training them.

But, like I said earlier, it would be moronic to take this movie seriously. Like "North by Northwest", "Star Wars" and The James Bond Series, this is one movie not to be treated in the same class as "The Godfather". It's a disaster flick, like "The Poseidon Adventure" or "The Towering Inferno" and if you take it as fun, pointless and overall escapist entertainment, you will do fine and probably even get a kick out of it.

Now as to whether this film deserved treatment from the Criterion Collection. No doubt, this is a great special edition set, with two audio commentary tracks, a special director's cut and various documentaries on the movie's making. I am just surprised that it is preserved by such a brand name company. But it's satisfying and worth shelling out the dough for.

Setting new precedents for awful movie making
This is the sort of movie that makes me afraid for the future of the human race. Seriously. You watch something this bad and read thousands of positive reviews on Amazon and it just makes you wonder. Where does such a trend end? Will future generations find it entertaining and worthwile to smash their heads with hammers?

Complete Lack of Reality Makes For A Lot of Fun
After watching Armageddon I am sort of reminded of the release of The Arrival and Independence Day where both movies dealt with a similar plot and one tried to be somewhat realistic while the other went the campy B route. The same can be said of Deep Impact and Armageddon. Like Independence Day, Armageddon is a big budget B movie. Also like Independence Day, it is a lot of fun.

In this movie an unseen comet slams into the Asteroid Belt and sends a bunch of rocks toward Earth. A brief, but very destructive, meteor shower precedes the main event that will be played by an asteroid the size of Texas. In the eighteen days that Earth has left a team of the world's fines oil drillers is assembled and sent into space to plant a nuke to blow up the asteroid. A simple plot.

During the course of the movie we realize that the writers no nothing about Oil drilling, oil companies, astronomy, NASA, gravity, or most any other topic raised in the movie. There are a number of things I found particularly amusing. The first was the rough-neck driller (Bruce Willis) who is also the owner of the Drilling Company and drilling rig and is also a multi-millionaire. The rest of the drillers also seem to earn far more that their real-life counterparts. I was also amused at the fact that with all life on Earth being threatened, including bacteria, that the President of the United States has the authority to scrap the mission to save the world (there are at least five countries directly involved in the operation).

Among some of the other amusing points are the space shuttles (with a metal skin and not ceramic tiles) have the maneuverability of an F-14 Tomcat. They do some wonderful daredevil flying that is a credit to Top Gun (and without atmosphere yet). The asteroid, which resembles a giant black snowflake, has some gravity. There is enough that people don't move any differently than on Earth but little enough that a jump can carry you for miles or break out of the gravity well. Then there is the aging space station that blows up. Although the fuel is in a pod at the end of a long extension, there seems to be highly explosive material in every inch of the station. The first meteor that hits lands next to a guy arguing with another guy. The other guy is struck dead (no pun intended) and resulting in a hole that goes through to the subway system but leaves the first guy just a little dusty.

While Armageddon is a B movie it does have elements of other classic films including The Right Stuff. I also liked the pro NASA and pro Space Program plugs that keep popping up (Thornton is excellent). This is a fun movie but the plot and continuity have more holes than the average storm-door screen. If you want a fun movie, this is the one to watch, if you want something a bit more serious, check out Deep Impact instead.

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