The Michael Bay Retrospective Series - Armageddon (1998)

Written In October 2013

So you guys all remember how I said I grew up watching Armageddon on TV when I was younger? Let me ask you guys something else, you ever get the impression when watching a movie on TV because of the breaks and the stuff they have to cut out for time and edit out because it’s offensive or something? It’s kind of annoying right? Well, I just realized while watching this movie that almost nothing was cut from the broadcasts I watched as a kid. This is the most the rushed 144 minutes i’ve ever watched. I feel like I could have liked these characters more if I actually got to know in those 144 minutes. As it stands? Well, let’s get to plot.

(Plot Summary Taken From Wikipedia)

A massive meteor shower destroys the Space Shuttle Atlantis and bombards New York City, America's East Coast, and Finland. NASA discovers that a rogue comet the size of Texas passed through the asteroid belt and pushed forward a large amount of space debris. The Texas-sized asteroid itself will collide with Earth in eighteen days, creating another extinction event. NASA scientists, led by Dan Truman (Billy Bob Thornton), plan to bury a nuclear device deep inside the asteroid that, when detonated, will split the asteroid in two, driving the pieces apart so both will fly safely past the Earth. NASA contacts Harry Stamper (Bruce Willis), considered the best deep-sea oil driller in the world, for assistance and advice. Harry returns to NASA, along with his daughter Grace (Liv Tyler), to keep her away from her new boyfriend, one of Harry’s young and rambunctious drillers, A. J. Frost (Ben Affleck). Harry and Grace learn about the asteroid, and Harry explains he will need his team, including A. J., to carry out the mission. Once they have been rounded up and the situation is explained, they agree to help, but only after their list of unusual rewards and demands are met.

As NASA puts Harry and his crew through a short and rigorous astronaut training program, Harry and his team re-outfit the mobile drillers, named the “Armadillos”, that will be used on the asteroid. When a large fragment from the asteroid wipes out Shanghai, NASA is forced to reveal its plans to the world and launches two military space shuttles, named Freedom and Independence. Once in orbit, the shuttles dock with the Russian space station Mir, manned by Lev Andropov (Peter Stormare), to refuel. A fire breaks out during the transfer, and the station is evacuated just before it explodes, with Lev and A. J. making a narrow escape. The shuttles slingshot around the Moon in order to land on the back side of the asteroid. Traveling through the asteroid’s debris field Independence’s hull is punctured and crashes onto the rock. Grace, watching from NASA headquarters, is distraught about A. J.’s apparent death.

Freedom lands safely, but misses the target area by twenty-six miles, so the team must now drill through an area of compressed iron ferrite rather than the targeted softer stone. When they fall significantly behind schedule and communications are about to fail, the military initiates “Secondary Protocol” to remotely detonate the nuclear weapon on the asteroid’s surface, which apparently will not have any effect. While Truman delays the military at Mission Control, Harry persuades the shuttle commander Willie Sharp (William Fichtner) to disarm the bomb so they can complete the drilling.

Distracted by “Rockhound” (Steve Buscemi), who is having a mental breakdown, the Freedom crew loses their Armadillo and its operator (Ken Hudson Campbell) when it strikes a gas pocket and is blown into space. World panic ensues as the mission is assumed lost, just as another meteorite destroys Paris. Suddenly, A. J., Lev, and “Bear” (Michael Clarke Duncan), having survived the Independence crash, arrive in time in the second Armadillo to complete the drilling.

As the asteroid approaches the Earth, it heats up, causing a dangerous rock storm that damages the bomb’s remote trigger. They realize someone must stay behind to detonate it manually. After all the non-flight crew volunteers, they draw straws, and A. J. is selected. As he and Harry exit the airlock, Harry rips off A. J.’s air hose and shoves him back inside, telling him he is the son Harry never had, and he would be proud to have A.J. marry Grace. Harry prepares to detonate the bomb and contacts Grace to say his last goodbyes. After the Freedom moves to a safe distance, Harry pushes the button at the last minute (after some difficulty) and his life passes before his eyes as the asteroid is destroyed. It breaks in two and both halves fly past the Earth.Freedom lands, and the surviving crew are treated as heroes. The film ends with A. J. and Grace’s wedding, complete with photos of Harry and the other lost crew members present in memoriam.

This film is an atrocity, I like it more than Bad Boys, but it’s REALLY not good. Why is it not so good though? The character development in this film is null and void. The most developed characters we have in the film are Harry who goes from despising AJ and thinking he’s a little bitch to sacrificing himself for the boy,  AJ himself who goes from having an animosity toward Harry for refusing to let him see Grace to pleading with the man to let him be the one to risk his life to set off the explosion, screaming that he loves him and doesn’t want him to do this, Grace who goes from calling her father immature to reassuring him that she does love him regardless of the fact that his wife/her mother left, noting that she left both of them, and Dan who is revealed midway through the film to have desires of going into outer space but never could get into the astronaut program because of his weak legs. Also, while I complemented The Rock for having believably incompetent feds, this movie goes out of it’s way to villainize the military and the government, by having them try to blow the meteor remotely and having a firearm aboard the ship for Willie to use in the event that remote detonation was needed. I don’t disagree entirely with the actions being taken, but it’s pretty clear that in the eyes of this film the people making this choice are making the wrong one. The logic of the film in general is extremely questionable, so much so that Affleck himself allegedly approached Bay and asked him if it would’t just be easier to have actual astronauts be trained to drill instead of having actual drillers be trained to be astronauts, to which Bay (again allegedly) replied “Shut up!”

As it stands, I’ll give the movie this praise, it has a great ensemble, and I’m a big fan of most the actors in it. The acting from Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck, especially during the ending is very good, and watching Ben in this movie gives me a good feeling for him as Batman in the upcoming 2015 to sequel to Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel. Ultimately, I’ll give the movie a 2.75 out of 5, it’s not an abomination but really isn’t something you need to see.