Subject: Review: Armageddon (1998)

From: [email-masked] (David Thiel)
Date: 16 Jul 1998 05:54:53 GMT

WARNING: SPOILERS abound in this review. If you don't want to know what 
happens, skip it.

***

The more I think about this movie, the less I like it. 

"Armageddon" compares very unfavorably to this year's *other* asteroid opus, 
"Deep Impact." That film excelled by using its spectacular special effects 
sequences sparingly, and allowing room for its characters to ponder the 
reality of the End of the World.

There's no time for pondering--or even rational thought--in "Armageddon." The 
film bangs, booms and thunders at warp speed, with herky-jerky editing that at 
times makes it impossible to tell which of Our Heroes has just been impaled by 
a piece of flying space debris.

Just like "Deep Impact," "Armageddon" deals with the discovery of an enormous 
asteroid bearing down on Earth, and involves a mission to land a team of 
astronauts on the rock, plant a nuclear device and blow the space bogey 
off-course. However, whereas "Impact" sent an efficient, well-trained group of 
specialists into orbit, the makers of "Armageddon" thought it would be more 
fun to charge a crew of incompetent oil-drillers with this all-important 
responsibility.

According to the film, Bruce Willis' gang of unruly drillers is supposed to be 
the best of the best, but we never see them in that fashion. They dork about 
with the equipment during training, break a lot of stuff and--the night before 
the Mission to Save All Life on Earth--they get plastered at a strip club and 
are arrested. Most of what they accomplish during the course of the film has 
more to do with blind luck than skill. 

Actually, most of the characters in this film are incompetent in their own 
ways. The Russian space station is a floating deathtrap run by a slightly 
crazed Cold War stereotype. The astronauts attempt to land their shuttles 
on the asteroid like aircraft, despite the lack of a runway--real astronauts 
would make a soft landing ala the moon missions. The President of the U.S. 
decides to detonate the nuke before it's been properly inserted in the core 
of the rock, despite knowing fully well that a surface explosion would have no 
effect at all. The mission commander, when attempting to defuse the bomb, 
doesn't know whether to cut the red wire or the blue wire--absurd, considering 
that the bomb is one of *ours*. And on and on.

While I normally hate it when folks pick on the science in science fiction 
films, this one got my dander up because of its present-day setting and its 
use--for the most part--of existing technology. There are such howlers as a 
pair of space shuttles rounding the moon in what appears to be a matter of 
moments, rather than days. The asteroid itself is a bizarre, spiky landscape 
which bears no resemblence to its real-life counterparts. And if the deadly 
rock is the size of *Texas*, as this one supposedly is, how would a single 
nuke cause sufficient damage? If you drilled an 800-foot hole into Texas soil 
and dropped in a bomb, could you split the Lone Star State in half? Any why 
800 feet? Near the end of the film, there's a big hoo-ha about reaching the 
magic 800 foot depth. Wouldn't 797 feet have sufficed?

No one in the film seems concerned that if one could split an asteroid the 
size of Texas, pieces the size of Dallas/Ft. Worth would likely rain down on 
our heads. And what of the other house-sized rocks that appear to be flying in 
the wake of the big one? Apparently, they're just for show.

The characters aren't much to care about, and indeed, they don't seem to care 
much either. With the end of humanity in the balance, there's never a sense 
that Our Heroes are worried about anything other than their own skins (or the 
prospect of never having to pay taxes again). In the big climax, with just 
seconds left to the Point of No Return, Bruce Willis' character takes time out 
from popping the nuke to make a lengthy, allegedly touching speech--never 
mind the fact that we've seen plenty of examples of sudden death in the 
hostile asteroid environment. What if, mid-speech, a flying chunk of gravel 
took his head clean off? I don't think the population of Earth would be happy 
about that--though at least it'd get him to shut up.

Oh, it's not all bad. There's some funny dialogue, most of it coming from the 
ever-buggy Steve Buscemi. (However, there's a shot angled up inside Buscemi's 
snaggly mouth which gave me the willies.) The destruction scenes--though all 
too obviously computer effects--are nicely realized. 

But when all was said and done, I found myself strangely unmoved--neither 
thrilled by the out-of-this-world heroics nor relieved at the ultimate 
survival of the species. Even a selfless sacrifice in the film's final moments 
didn't affect me in the same way as a similar sequence in "Deep Impact."

The short of it? If you want to see an asteroid movie and haven't seen "Deep 
Impact," do so while it's still on the big screen. "Armageddon"'s effects 
benefit from the theater experience as well, but if you wait for home video, 
you'll at least have a fast-forward button.

David Thiel / Champaign, Illinois                 1:1 
E-mail: [email-masked]
WWW: http://www.prairienet.org/~drthiel/homepage.html