Armageddon should have been the smash hit (if you'll pardon the expression) of the summer. It should have been an incredible film with great characters, great special effects, and a great plot. Unfortunately, it wasn't.
Oh, it had the great special effects. The effects were better than Deep Impact, in fact. It also had some good characters and some very funny character driven scenes. However, as far as the plot goes, Armageddon falls flat on its face.
The plot is simple enough: an asteroid the size of Texas is heading towards the Earth on a collision course, and it has to be stopped. This is demonstrated by New York being decimated by small meteorites crashing into buildings. The technicians at NASA then find that they have somehow missed a huge asteroid, and get the best drillers in the world to travel up to the thing, drill an 800 foot hole in it, and set off a large nuclear weapon.
However, as soon as they ask Bruce Willis' character to help them save the world, the movie becomes silly beyond belief. All of them fail the psych test, but are okayed for space flight anyway. They get to the asteroid, and the landing resembles something from Star Wars as the space shuttles weave in and out of debris like jet aircraft. The highly trained pilot misses the landing zone by over 20 miles. Once they finally begin, the stupidity becomes almost too much to mention.
As the viewer watches the military try to detonate the nuke early (and a bunch of laymen manage to disarm it), sees the most durable space shuttle in the world proven to be prone to bullets, and wonders why there is a gatling gun on a space drill anyway, s/he also wonders why they paid so much to see this movie. The ridiculous plot also manages to discredit the characters, and turns what should be a dramatic sacrifice (you can probably guess the character as you watch the movie) into a cop-out.
Well, at least the movie didn't have any completely ridiculous lines, even if the plot was idiotic. And, the special effects did look nice.
So, in the end, the grade is 2/5. It could have been worse, but it could have been much better. Wait for video for this one; it isn't worth seeing on the big screen.
Robert B. Marks
--
The future has not been written, / The past is set in stone,
And I am but a lonely wanderer, / With time as my only home.
-- from _Demon's Vengeance_
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