Armageddon Review
by John W. Collins (number DOT 6 AT mindspring DOT com)July 16th, 1998
A Review From the Middle Seat Center
There is a widely held theory that a giant meteor slammed into the Earth, 65 million years ago and knocked the dinosaurs off their high perch as the dominant species of this planet. There is also a widely held belief that one day another meteor will strike and knock Man from that same lofty position. The first is just a theory that has never really been proven as fact, and the latter is just idle speculation. But while we are on the subjects of theories and speculations, I would like to discuss another theory that is gaining popularity and acceptance. This new train of thought is not coming out of such distinguished places as MIT, or Stanford, but out of Hollywood. That is the theory that if you can dazzle your audience with enough special effects, fast-paced editing, loud enough soundtracks, and constant camera movements, you can convince them that instead of seeing something that is substandard, they are really seeing something great; something that they can sit and stare in awe at; something that they can recommend to their friends to do too. Unfortunately, for us, the movie-going-public, many studios, producers, directors, and to some extent, writers, are moving forward with this theory and trying to prove it as fact. Touchtone pictures just spent 140 million dollars and exposed two-and-a-half hours of film stock to try and prove this Hollywood hypothesis by bringing us, ARMAGEDDON.
Directed by Michael Bay(BAD BOYS, THE ROCK)and staring action hero icon, Bruce Willis, ARMAGEDDON is a special effects filled, high octane thrill ride where images are thrown at you almost at the speed at which the meteor in the film is approaching Earth at, 27,000 miles per hour. Then thanks to the fast-paced editing and a camera that hardly ever stays in one place for more than a few seconds, these visuals are gone in the blink of an eye, thus giving the illusion that something spectacular and exciting is happening up on the screen when it is all just smoke and mirrors. Sadly, this is what is happening in ARMAGEDDON.Unlike its predecessor, DEEP IMPACT, this "mankind is doomed" tale relied on its special effects and directorial style to tell its story, rather than its characters.
After an orbiting space shuttle and parts of New York City are destroyed by a hail of meteors the size of basketballs and small cars, NASA realizes that that was just a precursor and that another meteor the size of Texas will arrive in just 15 days and end Man's reign on Earth. Our only hope is to land a team of deep-core drillers on the space rock, drill an 800-foot deep hole, drop a nuke in it, then leave and detonate from a safe distance. Simple. Right?
Of course, Willis is the best driller on the planet and is tapped to do the job. After insisting that he take his own team, we are introduced to a group of cliched, social misfits that are far from having the "Right Stuff." The group consists of: the young hot shot(played by Ben Affleck)that is also involved in a weak subplot romance with Willis' daughter(played by Liv Tyler), the loyal best friend, the comedy relief character, the token black, the loveable fat guy, and a couple of throw away characters that you know won't last long after the mission begins. We also pick up a kooky Russian cosmonaut along the way.
But the cliches don't end there. Once the mission is underway, everything that can go wrong, does go wrong. More than once we hear that the mission has failed and that Earth is doomed. At one point, CNN goes off the air so they can be with their families. We get everything: they landed at the wrong site and the rock there will be tougher to drill through, the surface of the meteor is breaking up around them, they are running out of drill heads and transmissions, the time to safely explode the bomb so the meteor will be split in half and miss the Earth is running out, and the shuttle will not start when it is time to haul ass.And that is just a few. There is even a series of events on the ground where the old "scientists vs. the mility" senario is played out. Then there is an ending that anyone with half a brain can see coming a mile away.
What all this boils down to is poor script writing. Not only is the script full of cliches, but they are plot holes big enough for this Texas-sized meteor to pass through. It has been reported that at least nine writers contributed to the script. Never a good sign. But as we discussed earlier, the thinking is you can cover all this up with dazzling special effects, fast editing, and dizzying camera movements. But while that is fun and exciting to look at, it is lazy film making. The story should be first and foremost and the rest should be used to enhance that story. It is on this point that ARMAGEDDON failed and DEEP IMPACT succeeded. The latter was character driven. While ARMAGEDDON was character driven to a small degree(especially at the end), it was a road we had all been down many times before. There is a line in the movie where after seeing the motley crew that has been assembled to save the world, someone says, "Is that the best you could do?" After seeing ARMAGEDDON, we should be asking the same of the director and screen writers.
Staring: Bruce Willis, Ben Affleck, Liv Tyler, Billy Bob Thornton, Will Patton, and Steve Buscemi.
Rated PG-13 for intense situations
I Give it ** out of a possible four.
That was the view from The Middle Seat Center.
John Collins
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.
