Armageddon

[baumer]

Review discuss and have fun!

[baumer]

Bay's best imo, and I love all of Bay's movies. May be spoilers. Armageddon was probably the best summer film in 98 and it holds that lofty opinion in my mind because it was as entertaining as they come. Jerry Bruckheimer has been making hits since the 80's when he gave us Beverly Hills Cop and he just keeps churning them out.When an asteroid is about to hit Earth, NASA calls on the best deep core drilling team in the world. This is comprised of Harry Stamper, Bear, Rockhound, AJ, Max and Chick and a few others that die early in the film. But what we have here is a colorful assortment of characters. But what these colorful assortment of characters bring to the table is perhaps what makes this film a few notches better than many other films that are similar to it, either with an asteroid plot or as a disaster film. Armageddon is head and shoulders above similar offerings like Deep Impact and the much inferior Canadian film, Last Night.I think the writers of this film deserve much of the credit for writing some very emotionally galvanized scenes that range from global despair, young love, family love, love lost that may rekindle and plenty of humour. Much of the humour is provided by two actors that have really come into their own since doing this film. Those actors are Steve Buscemi and Michael Clarke Duncan. Buscemi was quite famous before this film but his impeccable timing and perfect delivery of lines like, "Yea, I've seen this one. Isn't this when the coyote sat his ass down in the ACME rocket and chased the coyote? No really, isn't it? Because it didn't turn out too good for the coyote." And "Isn't it nice to know that if the space program fails, you'll always have a job at Helga's house of pain?" And Bear is played perfectly by Duncan. His best scenes are when he shows his vulnerability. Duncan is a massive man, about 6'5 and over 300 pounds so when you see him crying and asking for hugs, it accomplishes perfectly what the writers and director were aiming for. There are many seemingly flawless scenes in this film and sandwiched somewhere in between the humour and the action are some very powerful scenes with Harry and his daughter Grace and even with Chick and his former wife and son that doesn't know him. Bruckheimer and Bay wisely included a wide palette of emotions to keep everyone interested and it worked as Armageddon grossed about 500 million dollars on a world wide scale.Armageddon is a perfect summer film and it is one worth owning. Every once in a while throw the film into your VCR or DVD player and sit back and be entertained. There are few films that are better at pure entertainment. This is a grand movie on the scale of a Titanic. It is not quite as good as the sinking ship saga but it is certainly not as bad as many asinine critics will have you believe. There is enough action to please those from the Raiders of the Lost school, enough comedy to accommodate those from the Beverly Hills Cop school and enough romance and tear jerking situations to please those from the Pretty Woman school. There is really very little wrong with this film and if you haven't seen it, you have no idea what you are missing.9.5 out of 10-- The best summer film of 98!

[IndustriousAngel]

I have to disagree ... I found this trainwreck of a film cringeworthy even on initial viewing and this feeling is not getting any better. The cast was quite good (stellar, even) but they were completely wasted here. The science was laughable (always a bad thing for a SF film, especially if it's trying for the realistic approach). Liv Tyler's tearjerker scenes were hideous, took me completely out of the film (must have been put in by Touchstone's marketing division, sure didn't feel necessary) - some people actually laughed in my theatre. (Not me, I just grind my teeth on such occasions). The effects were good but this couldn't save this film for me.If you do such a film again: Make it completely action/fantasy (like Transformers - I don't like them, but at least you're not reminded every 5 minutes how wrong they got it because the whole concept is ridiculous from the start). If you try the realistic approach, get your science and procedures at least believable. For a desaster as portrayed in Armageddon, procedures would include multiple agencies, long planning times and a rather low-brow execution - more in the lines of this years "Contagion" which was interesting because it actually tried to portray a disaster as it would really happen.For the record, I liked "Deep Impact" (also from 1998) better. Propably I'm with the minority here but in "Deep Impact" at least they stayed true to their simple concept (focussing on the earth and the impact on people's lives and society).

[Noctis]

Atrocious. Horrid acting, terrible script, and commits one of the greatest sins in film: it's boring. It's so boring and uninteresting that I actually fell asleep watching it.

F

[Plain Old Tele]

B

I love a lot of ARMAGEDDON -- it really is sort of a shameless Saint Bernard of a movie; all it wants to do is jump on you and lick your face. A great goofy first hour, capped off by one of my favorite cheesy montages ever -- the dual shuttle launch with the President's speech -- but it starts to fall apart once they get into space and once they get on the asteroid, the movie just falls flat -- scene after scene feels simultaneously redundant and overdone. But I found the ending surprisingly poignant and the film ends on a high note. Arguably Bay's best film, for me (this and THE ROCK).

[Noctis]

COMPLETELY disagree.

[John Marston]

I enjoy this film very much. The ending is very emotional. I can't tell you how many people said they cried or felt sad. A movie is doing something right if that happens

[Plain Old Tele]

COMPLETELY disagree.

I was getting worried there -- our opinions on a few other movies were dangerously similar!

[JamesFord92]

Armageddon would be one of my top guilty pleasures, except that I really don't feel guilty about it all. It has all the classic Michael Bay elements that I hate in most of his other movies, but with Armageddon somehow I'm able to look past all of that and just be solidly entertained for 2 1/2 hours. One of the things that the film does surprisingly well is introduce a solid set of characters with distinct personalities. In a lot of disaster movies many of the characters are bland and sort of blend together in my mind. But in Armageddon there are at least 9 or 10 characters that are fairly well drawn, and most of them are entertaining to watch. I'm sure the Armageddon screenplay never gets much praise, but it is impressive how quickly the writer(s) was able to introduce so many characters.

Special effects and music are both pretty great. Even now 14 or so years later the effects still hold up. They're not groundbreaking or anything, but all of the space scenes still look pretty awesome. A lot of great quotable lines too, "Requesting permission to shake the hand of the daughter of the bravest person I've ever met" is pretty great, and somehow delivered completely straight-faced by William Fichtner. And the ending is honestly pretty powerful considering this is just a fun action movie.

The only thing stopping Armageddon from being up there with my favourite action flicks of all time is Liv Tyler. I feel like she just brings down every scene that she's featured prominently in. Luckily her role is pretty much reduced to staring off into the distance in NASA headquarters for the majority of the film. Still I can pop Armageddon into my DVD player anytime thoroughly enjoy it, no matter how many times I've watched it now.

A-

[Plain Old Tele]

One thing that separates ARMAGEDDON from the rest of the Bay Collection is there was an army of seriously good writers all working on it; J.J. Abrams, Jonathan Hensleigh, Robert Towne, Tony Gilroy, Pau Attanasio, etc. It might be a mess sometimes, but it's a punchy talented mess.

[baumer]

Those of you who complain about the science being off, you have to watch the Criterion DVD in which Bay says that he knew that the science was not correct. He was more concerned with entertainment than accuracy and decisions in my opinion were the right one.

[Noctis]

Those of you who complain about the science being off, you have to watch the Criterion DVD in which Bay says that he knew that the science was not correct. He was more concerned with entertainment than accuracy and decisions in my opinion were the right one.

I couldn't care less about the science. It's the only film that has been able to put me to sleep. It was appallingly boring.

[baumer]

Well, sorry you found it boring. I'm really stunned that anyone could find this boring. It moves at a brisk pace, the film is funny every other scene and there is plenty of action.

[Noctis]

Well, sorry you found it boring. I'm really stunned that anyone could find this boring. It moves at a brisk pace, the film is funny every other scene and there is plenty of action.

Well, I've seen hundreds of films, maybe even a thousand, and it has the honor of being the ONLY film to put me to sleep. Bay is an idiotic filmmaker.

[Plain Old Tele]

There's so much action --and redundant action -- in the second half it becomes a bit dreary. There's only so much streaming and drilling explosions and shattering bits of stalagmites you can take before it all starts feeling like the same thing. And in terms of science, yes, I'm more than willing to forgive all sorts of liberties up to a point (and in fact I appreciated the little explanation they gave for why the drillers weren't floating around in zero gravity); but some of the stuff was just embarrassingly silly and didn't add anything to th entertainment value (flying a shuttle like it's an F-18, for example).But again, at the end of the day I care about th characters, and that's what matters.

[baumer]

Well, I've seen hundreds of films, maybe even a thousand, and it has the honor of being the ONLY film to put me to sleep. Bay is an idiotic filmmaker.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

[baumer]

bump

[Gopher]

I know this won't be a popular opinion 'round these parts, but I thought that this and The Rock were Bay at his absolute finest. I'm surprised that during the Transformers trilogy he didn't look at his own movie and remember that this is how you do a really big stupid movie. Don't believe me? Tell me these aren't some of the best quotes in blockbuster history- "Sir, the override is overriden" "The fate of the planet is in the hands of a bunch of retards I wouldn't trust with a potato gun." "Sire, tis a continental breakfast." "And last thing, these guys don't want to have to pay taxes again... ever" "I know the presidents' chief scientific advisor, we were at MIT together. And, in a situation like this, you-you really don't wanna take the advice from a man who got a C minus in astrophysics. The presidents' advisors are... wrong. I'm right." "Have you ever heard of Evel Knievel?" "No, I never saw Star Wars." "I ain't gonna kill him. I'm just gonna take a foot off of him. A man can work with one foot."

[4815162342]

You forgot my favorite:"Russian components, American components, ALL MADE IN TAIWAN!!!!"

[baumer]

One of my faves is when Bear asks the doctor or a hug, while in a tank top with tears streaming down his cheeks and his mountainous arms bulging.But my favourite part of the movie is when the kid says:"Mom that salesman's on TV.""That's not a salesman, that's your daddy."