“You know we’re sitting on four million pounds of fuel, one nuclear weapon and a thing that has 270,000 moving parts built by the lowest bidder. Makes you feel good, doesn’t it?”
Michael Bay’s Armageddon is a tough nut to crack. On the one hand, it fits right into Bay’s filmography; it’s an all out assault on the senses full of explosions and one-liners. On the other, its mish-mash of genres—family drama, comedy, romance… but oh yeah, this is a sci-fi/disaster film—makes it difficult to pin down. It isn’t as mindless as the string of sequels to Transformers, but it does lack pretty much any hint of sophistication. It has numerous plot holes, stretches of logic, and filmmaking flubs, but its feel-good storyline of blue collar dudes saving humanity and the ensemble cast give the film decent momentum. It is certainly not something a fact checker or film snob would cherish, but for a straight up action film it works all right. As the director himself said, “Armageddon is like a total fantasy for a 15-year-old.”
Similar in plot to Deep Impact, which released the same year, Armageddon begins with an asteroid “the size of Texas” heading straight for earth; and, because NASA’s budget only allows them to view 3% of what’s out there, they somehow overlooked the thing until remnants of it begin raining down in cities. The clock starts immediately because the asteroid is only a couple weeks away from obliterating the earth. Harry Stamper (Bruce Willis), the best oil driller in the world (as Ben Affleck points out in the hilarious Criterion DVD commentary, why do people always have to be “the best” in these scenarios? Who even keeps track of this?), is pulled from his rig and asked to man the team that will save the world. He balks a bit; these highly trained astronauts do not know how to drill. Drilling is both a science and an art, you see? So he gets to take his own guys—A.J. (Ben Affleck), Chick (Will Patton), Rockhound (Steve Buscemi), Oscar (Owen Wilson1), Bear (Michael Clarke Duncan), and Max (Ken Campbell). The plan is to save the earth by landing on the asteroid, drilling an 800 foot hole into it, and setting off a nuclear bomb that will split the asteroid in two.
The film reportedly had nine different writers (including a young J.J. Abrams), but it is hard to tell that it had one at all. The lines are mostly cheesy and shallow, and the quieter moments are obviously there only to give the film some semblance of balance.2 But I knew what to expect going in. I’ve seen The Rock (1996) and Pearl Harbor (2001); I know Michael Bay unashamedly chooses to have exposition, plot, and dialogue to take a backseat in favor of spectacle. In that regard, the film is a non-stop highlight reel of action pieces, to such a degree that the viewer becomes almost numb to it by the time the bomb finally splits the asteroid in two.
The film has a manipulative emotional arc3 and relies on a cheap sense of patriotism throughout. Its characters are mostly cardboard cutouts, and its story beats are easy to predict long before they happen. Since the film is so long and easy to dissect, and the interactions so meaningless, this viewer fell into the unfortunate habit of mentally compiling a list of inaccuracies and plot holes,4 a duty I took no pleasure in but could not keep myself from doing. And if the shaky cams don’t make you nauseous, the rapid cutting in almost every scene surely will.
Given the subject matter and the cast, I was hoping Michael Bay would have been able to tone down his pyromaniacal tendencies and deliver something with some real meat to it. The beginning of the film actually showed some promise, but by the time we get to the Russian space station, the whole thing rapidly descends into camp territory. Lev Andropov (Peter Stormare) helps the teams refuel, but a small mistake leads to the entire station exploding and Lev having to join the team. From there, we experience endless explosions in space—you know, space, where sound does not travel because it is a vacuum. Not to mention that the ground vehicles designed for the team to drill into the asteroid have freaking Gatling guns attached to them. At one point, Rockhound (We’re told that he’s called hound because he is always horny) gets “space dementia” and begins shooting the gun all over the place.
Billy Bob Thornton turns in a good performance as Dan Truman, a NASA executive who leads the team from the ground. He is limited by the script but is able to give his forlorn character an air of sincerity. William Fichtner also does a good job with his role, Colonel Willie Sharp. His last line (“Miss Stamper. Colonel Willie Sharp, United States Air Force, ma’am. Requesting permission to shake the hand of the daughter of the bravest man I’ve ever met.”) is oddly affecting after the gobs of cheese throughout the film.
The film features no less than four Aerosmith songs (‘I Don’t Wanna Miss A Thing’ was written specifically for Armageddon (Liv Tyler is Steven Tyler’s daughter)), and features several sections of montage that recall Bay’s days of directing music videos and commercials.
So, it’s not completely terrible, but it is pretty bad. If you have almost no scientific knowledge, are willing to forgive poor acting from usually good actors, and are satisfied by pure action, you’ll have a nice evening munching on your popcorn and forget all about it the next day. If you’re looking for substance, art, or engaging storytelling, look elsewhere.
1. Wilson plays that same manic mind-going-a-million-miles-per-hour dude he plays in many films. But this was before he became famous, and it was amusing to see his character killed off midway through. He has one of the best lines, speaking to NASA psychologist during a pre-mission screening: “I’ll tell you one thing that really drives me nuts, is people who think that Jethro Tull is just a person in the band.”
2. To be fair, I may have secretly enjoyed the scene where A.J. tries to seduce Grace (Liv Tyler) with Animal Crackers.
3. The concise editing as Harry presses the detonator is one of the few things that didn’t feel cheesy or campy, and actually felt like an inspired bit of filmmaking.
4. E.g. the asteroid is the size of Texas, so drilling 800 feet into it is barely 1/100th of 1%.
Sources:
Lyman, Rick. “Watching Movies With: Michael Bay; A Connoisseur Of Illusions”. The New York Times. 18 May 2001.
Affleck, Ben. Feature length commentary. Armageddon, directed by Michael Bay, 1998. The Criterion Collection.