Armageddon (1998/I)

Director:

Michael Bay

Writers (WGA):

Jonathan Hensleigh (screenplay) and
J.J. Abrams (screenplay) ...

Release Date:

1 July 1998 (USA)

Genre:

Action | Adventure | Romance | Sci-Fi | Thriller

Tagline:

It's Closer Than You Think.

Plot:

When an asteroid the size of Texas is headed for Earth the world's best deep core drilling team is sent to nuke the rock from the inside.

Plot Keywords:

Asteroid | Drill | NASA | Astronaut | Nuclear

Awards:

Nominated for 4 Oscars. Another 12 wins & 27 nominations

Cast

Bruce Willis	...	Harry Stamper
Billy Bob Thornton	...	Dan Truman
Ben Affleck	...	A.J. Frost
Liv Tyler	...	Grace Stamper
Will Patton	...	Chick
Steve Buscemi	...	Rockhound
William Fichtner	...	Colonel Willie Sharp
Owen Wilson	...	Oscar
Michael Clarke Duncan	...	Bear
Peter Stormare	...	Lev Andropov
Ken Hudson Campbell	...	Max (as Ken Campbell)
Jessica Steen	...	Co-Pilot Jennifer Watts
Keith David	...	General Kimsey
Chris Ellis	...	Flight Director Clark
Jason Isaacs	...	Ronald Quincy

Also Known As:

Armageddon (Argentina) (Spain) [es]
Armageddon - Das jüngste Gericht (Austria) (Germany) [de]
Армагеддон (Russia) [ru]
Armagedón (Venezuela) [es]
Armageddon (Slovakia) [sk]
Armageddon (Turkey: Turkish title) [tr]
Armageddon (Czech Republic) [cs]
Armageddon (Slovenia) [sl]
Armageddon (Denmark) [da]
Armageddon (France) [fr]
Armageddon (Greece) [el]
Armageddon (Croatia) [hr]
Armageddon - giudizio finale (Italy) [it]
Arumagedon (Japan) [ja]

MPAA:

Rated PG-13 for sci-fi disaster action, sensuality and brief language.

Runtime:

150 min | USA:153 min (director's cut)

Country:

USA

Language:

English | Russian

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

2.20 : 1

Sound Mix:

DTS | Dolby Digital | SDDS

Certification:

Taiwan:PG-12 | Philippines:PG-13 | Finland:K-12 (1998) | Canada:14 (Nova Scotia) | Canada:G (Quebec) | Canada:PA (Manitoba) | Canada:PG (Alberta/British Columbia/Ontario) | Argentina:13 | Australia:M | Belgium:KT | Brazil:12 | Chile:14 | Denmark:15 | France:U | Germany:12 (w) | Hong Kong:IIA | Iceland:LH (video rating) | Iceland:L (original rating) | Italy:T | Netherlands:12 | Norway:15 | Portugal:M/12 | Singapore:PG | South Korea:12 | Sweden:11 | Switzerland:12 (canton of Geneva) | Switzerland:12 (canton of Vaud) | UK:12 | USA:PG-13 (certificate #36122) | USA:Unrated (director's cut)

Filming Locations:

4th Street, Downtown, Los Angeles, California, USA

Company:

Touchstone Pictures

Trivia:

Footage from this film (namely the destruction of the Atlantis space shuttle) was utilized in a hoax which purportedly featured actual satellite photographs of the February 1st, 2003 destruction of Space Shuttle Columbia.

Goofs:

Factual errors: The Russian space station is an absurdity in itself: initiating a rotation to accommodate artificial gravity would in reality threaten the structural integrity of such a pronged modular craft, and spinning the station before docking would be unpractical, as it renders a normally tricky docking to be nearly impossible since the docking ports are on the external rotating pods. Furthermore, a rotating station would need its docking area along the axis of rotation, plus the docking vessel would have to match that rotation, and match its center of gravity along the docking point approaching along the station's axis of rotation.

Quotes:

[first lines]
[Camera shoots past the moon to slowly zoom in on the Earth]
Narrator: This is the Earth, at a time when the dinosaurs roamed a lush and fertile planet.
[From behind the camera, a giant asteroid appears, speeding towards the Earth ahead of it]
Narrator: A piece of rock just 6 miles wide changed all that.
[Blazing through the atmosphere, the asteroid impacts with a spectacular display of fire and destruction]
Narrator: It hit with the force of 10,000 nuclear weapons. A trillion tons of dirt and rock hurtled into the atmosphere, creating a suffocating blanket of dust the sun was powerless to penetrate for a thousand years. It happened before. It will happen again. It's just a question of when.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Eddie Izzard: Dress to Kill (1999) (V)

Soundtrack:

I Don't Want To Miss A Thing

It's not that it's bad - I just don't like being taken for stupid!

There are far too many high quality reviews on this film for me to make any real impact with my humble views. However... I re-watched Armageddon on TV a few nights ago and now, ten years after it was unleashed, I feel I can take a more pragmatic view.

Most of the articulate and intelligent reviews that have already been written cover off the preposterous nature of the science which underpins the woeful script. For example, the varying degrees to which gravity obeys the laws of dramatic tension rather than the laws of physics, the absolute necessity to have some serious Gatlin guns mounted on the drilling vehicles (what were they expecting – annoyed aliens?), the ludicrous notion that NASA would let the moronic men-children anywhere within fifty miles of a shuttle - rather than simply train their own highly disciplined astronauts to operate a drill, the cardboard cut-out Russian cosmonaut whose script direction read "SHOUTING" at the beginning of each line. And... nukes with big green countdown read-outs on them, 12-inch diameter drills that make 36-inch diameter holes, Earth shorn of time-zones and the amazing a ability to put on sun-glasses whilst wearing a space-suit helmet. You get the gist, the list is endless.

All these and many other inconsistencies, inaccuracies and failures of reason are just about forgivable if the movie delivers what it is meant to, which on some levels it does, I suppose. The thing that really gets me though, and this is the bit that I find pretty unforgivable, is that the makers of the movie assume that I (and you) are morons who will let these issues go without questioning. Maybe for some of the Cletuses and Darlenes out there – well, OK. But the vast majority of us average intelligence movie goers will say, "Whoa, hold on buddy. Do you expect me to swallow that premise or this notion?" To which Bay and his ilk say, "Sure, why not, eat your popcorn." That's what really irks me. The fact that they had all this money to spend and they used four dollars of it on technical advice for the script. Sheesh.

"Space dementia"... really, I ask you.