Armageddon (1998) and Deep Impact (1998)

[dudalb]

On 3/7/2017 at 12:11 PM, filmlover said:

Godzilla '98 (lmao that movie deserves its own thread) and Pearl Harbor were just plain bad movies and audiences fled from them accordingly. Armageddon isn't a great movie by any means, but at least one can't really say it doesn't accomplish exactly what it sets out to do.

That is why I find it more fun then DI. DI is the more ambitious of the two films, but it fails in it's ambitions . It really falls apart in the  last half hour.. a classic example of a movie 'Blowing It In The Ninth".

[excel1]

I rewatched DEEP IMPACT a few months ago and actually have a newfound appreciation for what it tries to do. Some of the scenes, ala the evacuation of DC, are pretty strong. Though was someone else noted, it's equally absurd to see people reading the newspaper and grocery shopping when the wave they all know is coming hits NYC 🤣. What ARMAGEDDON understood, unlike DI, was it needed action scenes throughout the film. ARMAGEDDON largely handles this by having an entire asteroid field headed towards Earth, not just 2 ala DI, so ARMAGEDDON can flip to NYC, Hong Kong, and Paris getting destroyed right when the film feels slow. The absurd space station explosion scene in ARMAGEDDON is hilarious stupid, though. 

 

I actually read the first draft of DEEP IMPACT aa few years back somewhere online and liked it more than the film. It was mostly similar but draft 1 was a but more morose, i.e. when they know the wave is coming, entire crowds flocked to the beach spend their final moments in their favorite place, vs. the film is just Tea Leoni and her dad, etc....1 more script tweak with DI, which expedited the evacuation stuff and had a few smaller comets hit Earth sooner to give some more action, would have made a big difference.

 

ARMAGEDDON is an all-time epic crowd pleaser, though. Michael Bay does a shockingly great job with the emotional story beats that completely offset the absurdity of the story. The aforementioned PEARL HARBOR could have been a much better film with a few basic script tweaks. 

Edited February 24 by excel1