Armageddon Review
by Cheng-Jih Chen (cjc AT interport DOT net)July 10th, 1998
Yes! A movie less plausible than "Independence Day"! And I'm counting the Giant Lizard Steps on New York movie, though that one came close (Especially when they didn't take the FDR to get to the Brooklyn Bridge. The 59th Street Bridge was closer anyway.)
I saw an early screening of "Armageddon" on Sunday morning. What can I say but that the laws of physics are strung up by the thumbs and violated in the worst way, that the folks on screen are cut from varying thicknesses and grades of cardboard, that the broad outlines of the film are trivially predictable, that the bomb is defused/asteroid destroyed with 3 second left on the clock, that the special effects departments are the biggest component of the credits and that there's a cute dog that doesn't die?
Remarkably and innovatively, New York City is only slightly damaged by horizontally streaking, slow moving meteors. It's Paris that gets it, perhaps because of some issue with the French. This is also the first movie I've seen with a NASA disclaimer at the end, right next to the "No Animals Were Harmed": NASA neither promotes nor endorses the contents of this film. To sum up, it's a summer flick, one of those delicate perenniels that must be cultivated in intense AC and popcorn. The question is whether it's a good summer flick or a bad one. I lean towards not bad, certainly a good cut above "Godzilla" (which says little), but not particularly memorable either.
I missed the first asteroid-with-an-attitude movie. Mixed reviews, and all I really wanted to see was the big tidal wave in "Deep Impact". Ten minutes of effects would not be worth nine bucks and two hours of Hallmark-like platitudes. It'll be at a second run house soon enough, so it might be worthwhile then.
In any case, for "Armageddon", they decided to go for serious hyperbole in the size of the rock. After carefully pointing out that the proposed dinosaur killer was about six miles wide (and then correctly showing the impact to be just off Cancun), they made the new rock something the size of Texas. Why not the size of Alaska, while we're at it? It'll hit in eighteen days, and Earth's only hope is to send up Bruce Willis and his deep drilling team into space aboard spiffy, remarkably maneuverable and very roomy space shuttles. The idea is to drill into the rock, drop a standard issue nuclear bomb down this hole, and blow up the thing that way. Perhaps no one noticed that there have been innumerable underground nuclear tests, perhaps not in Texas but certainly in nearby Nevada, and none of them have cut much of a hole on the earth's surface. Nuclear weapons really aren't hammers of god, at least compared to large hunks of rock and metal.
But this asteroid is remarkable. Not only can it be shattered by a dinky bomb, its surface is covered with crystal growths, retains an atmosphere sufficient to generate a melodramatic wind, has gravity out of proportion to its size (except when inconvenient to plot), and blows up in a Big Ring Explosion (so fashionable with big bangs in modern movies, but apparently the result of misreading of Vietnam war footage). This asteroid has an attitude, a touch of sentience or at least petulence regarding Willis's drilling activity, hailing the drill site with small rocks and methane flares at dramatically convenient, must-push-button times. Oh, methane: a by-product of biological activity, right? I suppose all this indicates that the asteroid is really alive, its spawn of little baby meteors having the power to seek out concentrations of human habitation, and it just happens to be pissed at the French.
The most important thing is that the special effects are decent, not great, but decent. "Lost in Space" probably has the best effects so far this year, and "Armageddon" doesn't come that close. The second most important thing is the soundtrack. No Celine Dion, so it's OK -- I guess having Liv Tyler in the movie means at least one Aerosmith song. In terms of plot and character development, well, they make an attempt, which is much, much more than what can be said about "Godzilla", but how much can you do without getting in the way of the special effects?
They actually set up a couple of conflicts and relationships. There's a father-daughter conflict, between Bruce Willis and Liv Tyler, and there's a father-prodigy conflict, with Bruce and Ben Affleck. Stuff gets resolved by the end: Bruce and Liv reconcile, Bruce and Ben learn to trust each other. We should not be surprised. A better question may be, how well do these actors pull off the emotional torture thing? Well, Liv is sort of there, but not really. Ben does his Angry Young Hotshot thing reasonably well; he was better in "Good Will Hunting" by far, though that may be because he had more screen time and more to do. Bruce is OK. It's a less interesting role than, say, "Twelve Monkeys", but he's quite sufficient.
Besides this, there was the handy ad campaign that showed each major character's face with some tag line underneath, like "He's doing it for the money", "He's doing it for his country" or "He's doing it for the donuts." First time I saw these at a bus stop, I couldn't figure out what they were selling. Sneakers? The advertising, however, is false, as these strokes of character and personality are all but invisible in the actual movie. "Seven Samurai" this is not.
The amount of American rah-rah jingoism is actually remarkable. In some ways, images of the American flag and America as savior of the world (no, let me rephrase: "Savior of the World") are more pronounced than in, say, "Independence Day". At least there, we felt a sense of wackiness to the proceedings, and the jingoism is, well, obvious. "Armageddon" does it more seriously and more subtly, mainly by putting the Stars and Stripes in the background when Bruce Willis makes a speach about honor and loyalty. It's not a big can't-miss-me flag, a la "Patton", but it's there.
Oh, there was a preview for "Blade" just before this movie. I really want to see it, if only so I can say, "humpf, Buffy can kick Blade's ass."
--
"The court determined that Fox TV does not impede free and fair competition in the teen-angst soap-com genre, therefore Party of Five need not be broken into five 'Parties of One,' one being distributed to each of the other networks."
Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
