Armageddon (1998) * * * (out of four) Starring Bruce Willis, Billy Bob Thornton, Ben Affleck, Liv Tyler, Will Patton, Steve Buscemi, Michael Duncan and Keith David Directed by Michael Bay Rated PG-13 for planetary disaster, profanity and pillow talk Theatrical aspect ratio of 2.35:1 Released in 1998 Running 150 minutes
Armageddon, in itself, symbolizes everything that is wrong in modern filmmaking. Stories have been replaced with special effects; character development gets overshadowed by bad dialogue; plotting consists of a bunch of shit getting blown up. Armageddon is as stupid, as loud and as shallow as any movie you'll see come out this summer, or maybe even any other summer. But I loved every freaking minute of it.
Believe me, I'm just as shocked as you are. Hell, I don't even know why I went to see it in the first place. The previews were so annoying that I predicted this was going to be the worst film of the year, or at least in the running. I'm sorry, but "Somebody dial 911!!!" isn't quite the tagging that's going to sell a movie. It isn't too wise either to market the film using the movie's stupidest lines ("Beam me up Scotty" - yeah, that sure is great writing...). I mean, let's face it; Armageddon's previews rival The Truman Show's as being some of the worst of the year. Neither of them even come close to doing their respective films justice.
Of course, you all know the story. When the Earth is threatened with total annihilation via an asteroid the size of Texas, NASA calls in the US's top oil drillers (!) to go into space (!) and implant a nuclear device eight-hundred and someodd feet into the asteroid (!).
In the coarse of all this mayhem, we are introduced to some interesting - and not so interesting - characters. Belonging to the former group is Rockhound (Steve Buscemi), a horny little womanizing genius who's always full of wisecracks, even when flying into space at a huge amount of G's. Also, there's the always cool-as-hell Billy Bob Thornton as Dan Truman, the bigwig at NASA who recruits all the drillers. He kind of reminded me of Ed Harris in Apollo 13, only without the intensity and great lines to deliver. Then on the flip side of the coin is the tired, contrived character of Harry Stamper (Bruce Willis, who does the whole movie employing with annoying accent I can't quite place), the leader of the pack as well as Liv Tyler and Ben Affleck as the token lovers you must have in any summer movie.
Basically, that's about it. As I said, this is hardly a film about plot. It's another summer blockbuster with plot points that are beyond unbelievable and dialogue and characters that are mostly completely wooden. Case in point: NASA doesn't know that there is even an asteroid on it's way until eighteen days before impact - huh? Another example: at one point in the movie, two children are playing with toy space shuttles in front of a poster of Kennedy. How pretentious is that???!!! Want another one? Okay; before the oil drillers blast off into space, one of them starts singing "Leaving on a Jet Plane", and soon, all the rest join in. Did Michael Bay attend the school of sappy filmmaking before he made this picture?
But naturally, all this sappiness, melodrama and special effects accumulate to one bitchin' time at the movies. And don't get me wrong - despite all of the things I found wrong with Armageddon, I still very much enjoyed it. So even if you don't win one of McDonald's free tickets, it's still definitely worth checking out.
Copyright 1998 Jason Wallis
Jason Wallis rwallis@inreach.com http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Boulevard/7475
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