Armageddon Review
by Martin Thomas (drmartin32 AT earthlink DOT net)July 10th, 1998
"Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it"- Santyana
...Blah, blah, blah. Man, I don't know about you, but I am truly tired of hearing that quote. Not that it isn't true, mind you, but it's invoked way too often and usually in conjunction with denouncing the horrors of the Holocaust, slavery or the South during post-Civil War Reconstruction. What bummers! Personally, I believe the quote's validity can proven with a more contemporary and less grandiose atrocity ...say for instance, Bruce Willis.
Today's history lesson takes us back to 1988- A time when the 'one-man-army' action movie genre looked to be on it's last leg. It seemed that Stallone's and Schwarzenegger's best work was behind them and their movies were vying with each other to see which
could most resemble a Tex Avery cartoon. Then, out of nowhere came a little movie named DIE HARD.
What set DIE HARD apart from the others wasn't so much how smart the script was, it was the clever twist of the main
character: not an ex- Green Beret, ex-mercenary, ex-CIA agent, but just a NY City cop. A regular Joe. One of us. No longer could a building full of hostages only be rescued by an Austrian Superman. It could just as well be an average guy who used his brain and had a rudimentary knowledge of firearms. "Hell, it could've been me!" What made it all even more of a 'goof' was that it was Bruce Willis in the role of John McClane. Balding and not 'matinee idol' handsome but charming in his own simian sort of way. Not really out of shape but not a person who'd choose a protein shake over a beer. In fact, he was already famous for hawking wine coolers and being MOONLIGHTING's David Addison: smart mouthed,
blitzed-out party guy. A slacker. A screw up. "Hell, if Bruce could do it I KNOW I could do it!" It was a 'goof' on top of a 'goof'. So what happened? While we all high-fived and celebrated how funny the punchline was we somehow forgot the joke it was
attached to. During this bout of amnesia Reality folded in on itself and Bruce Willis became known as a legitimate action hero. He was invited to become a partner in Planet Hollywood and was parodied alongside Schwarzenegger and Stallone on such tv shows as ANIMANIACS and DUCKMAN. Our forgetfulness yielded a condemnation that was quick and severe and in the form of THE LAST
BOY SCOUT, LAST MAN STANDING, THE JACKAL, MERCURY RISING and most recently ARMAGEDDON.
In the first five minutes of ARMAGEDDON New York is devastated by a shower of VW-sized meteors. The Powers-That-Be
discover that they are actually the by-product of a giant asteroid plummeting toward Earth...with an ETA of 18 days! Since detonating all of the worlds nuclear bombs on the surface of the asteroid would do no more damage than a firecracker held in an open palm
(????), the government enlists the aid of Harry Stamper (Bruce Willis), the greatest oil drilling 'wildcat' in the world. Harry and his ragtag team of roughnecks blast off into outer space to implant a nuke in the asteroid and save the world. Between numerous mishaps and their own hijinx, though, there may not be enough time.
Double deja vu, huh? Just last year we had two disaster movies about erupting volcanoes (DANTE'S PEAK, VOLCANO) and this
year we have two movies about the imminent destruction of Earth by meteors. I figured the obvious thing to do here would be to compare and contrast DEEP IMPACT (a more realistic and sensitive look at the last days of Earth, reminiscent of TESTAMENT and
THE DAY AFTER) to ARMAGEDDON (uh...it blows up stuff real good), but I've decided against it .
"...OF ALL THE MOVIES THIS SUMMER, ARMAGEDDON IS THE BEST..." -raves Martin Thomas of The Reel Deal
-Hey, rather than let the studio assign a truncated pre-fab quote to me (like so many other lesser critics who just want to hear their name on tv), I just saved them the work. Of course, what follows "... " would be:
"...AT TYPIFYING EVERYTHING THAT'S GENERALLY INSIPID ABOUT BIG SUMMER MOVIES!"
ARMAGEDDON is a brain dead, suspense-free, artless movie with scribble pad characters, a 'make-it-up-as-we-go' plot, Aerosmith songs every 15 minutes (did I mention that it also stars Liv Tyler), and has a sense of humor that is of, by, and for middle-aged frat
boys.
Other than bringing in people who like independent movies, Steve Buscemi's and Billy Bob Thorton's only purpose seems to be to share scenes with Bruce Willis and drive home the point of what a rotten actor he is. There's no sense of urgency and you never feel that the world is really going to end...and you don't care! The characters in the movie sure don't seem to. With only two days left to save the Earth they take a night off to go to a strip club.
Probably the worst thing about ARMAGEDDON is knowing that it's gonna make more money than God.
ARMAGEDDON is a studio exec's wet dream. It's a combination of TRUE LIES, INDEPENDENCE DAY and CON AIR
synthesized in a lab with everything fun, clever or new already extracted. It fits perfectly into it's genealogy of TWISTER-ID4-THE LOST WORLD-SPEED 2-BATMAN & ROBIN-GODZILLA-***. Movies that promise the world then do an insulting bit of 'bait and
switch'. Movies we'll sometimes like only because we had our hearts so set on it. It's the history lesson we never seem to learn. 'Santyanna's lament' I call it.
I suppose compared to an F-5 tornado that only kills two people, an alien technology that interfaces with a MacIntosh computer, a T-Rex that drinks water from a chlorinated pool rather than a nearby ocean, a Bat-credit card, and a lizard that's as tall as a skyscraper yet small enough to lay eggs in Madison Square Garden, I guess an asteroid the size of Texas not being detected until eighteen days before impact is not all that outrageous. Even when you consider that XF11, the real life mile-wide meteor's brush with Earth has been pinpointed thirty years in advance (Oct. 16 2028 1:30pm). I guess I'm just nitpicking now.
"Dude, it was just meant to be a rollercoaster ride movie and there's something wrong with you if you can't just sit back
and enjoy it! You can't compare it to a 'thinking' movie."
So, is this what we've come to? Do I now not compare the cooking of Paul Prudhomme to that of Wolfgang Puck, but rather the
taste of a corn-fed cow's dung to that of a slaughterhouse cow? This has all made me question my judgement and put me in a self- reflexive mood.
It's not like I haven't loved movies that either require you to check your brain at the door (SPAWN, THE SAINT) or movies where the lead actor can't hold his accent (THE GHOST & THE DARKNESS, THE DEVIL'S ADVOCATE) or movies with terrible dialogue
(WILD THINGS, BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS).
I think the key word is EITHER/ OR, as opposed to AND. I guess I require that a movie have SOME merit other than lining the pockets of hack directors and schlock producers (you know who you are). Sure, it's possible to "check your brain" and enjoy ARMAGEDDON, but you may be too embarrassed to ask for it back afterwards.
It might have some questions you don't want to answer.
-MARTIN
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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.
