Rift Thinks Your Movie Sucks! - Part XVIII
Good God... I just finished typing this out, and my mind is blown. This is probably the longest movie review I've ever written here on my LJ... o_o;
Behind this cut is that other one that was "far too long" for me to group movies 3,4, and 5 in one post. What could I possibly hate more than Batman & Robin?! To think there are three more to go after this! D:
Armageddon - 1998
Stars: Bruce Willis, Ben Affleck, Billy Bob Thornton, Liv Tyler, Owen Wilson, Michael Clarke Duncan, Steve Buscemi, Will Patton, Peter Stormare, William Fichtner, Jason Isaacs, Keith David
Directed by: Michael Bay
Trailer
I mentioned there being another movie that you'd never want to sit in the same room with me while watching. Behold...
Before you say it, let me confirm it: YES, I think Armageddon is worse than Batman & Robin. I fucking said it.
This is hands-down, the worst creation by Michael Bay I have ever sat through, it continues to degrade with each viewing. Every single time I watch this piece of shit, my fury levels intensify more and more.
I have never seen an action movie so chock-full of stupid to where I have to question my own intelligence for sitting through it. I saw it in theaters, and originally thought it was passable guilty pleasure material. I even bought it on DVD when it came out, putting up on that "so bad, it's fun" category... until I watched it again. The more I saw of it, the more I hated.
For starters, let me say how much Bay hates his editor. He tortures him on a regular basis by telling him to make hundreds of quick camera cuts that span over the course of only five minutes. Armageddon can make for a deadly drinking game. Get several bottles of whiskey (yes, you'll need several), get your friends, and take shots for every cut that's shorter than two seconds. Before the movie's even twenty minutes in, you will either be out cold, or dead from alcohol poisoning.
He is so fucking irritating with his camera work, how many times do I need to see spinning shots of the actors looking all distraught? The first one with Truman (Thornton) has an expression on his face, like he's thinking "My God... why am I here?"
How about that moment after the opening titles where that astronaut and his shuttle get shredded by a meteor shower? I giggled at the moment where the guy's faceshield flies off, and his terrified screams are sent echoing into space! I love how NASA is able to recreate all the exact same footage and camera angles from what we just saw when Thorton commands his staff to activate the instant replay machine. I especially loved that overacting extra with the headset, screaming one of the most cliched lines out there: "We've lost all contact!!" No, you didn't lose contact, dipshit. Didn't you SEE what happened on the crazy big screen TV? YOUR ASTRONAUTS ARE DEAD!
Man, even the New Yorkers knew they were dead, being that you see someone with a newspaper with the words "SHUTTLE EXPLODES" on the front page. Wow, breaking news that hits the paper the very same day something happens?
This movie plays like it's being filmed through the eyes of a hyperactive six-year-old with an intense case of ADHD. It just needs lots of explosions. Lots of big things flying into the air from said explosions. Lots of quick cuts of those explosions, so we can't tell what's going on. Lots of people getting killed or crushed in bloodless fashion, just to make sure that PG-13 rating holds true. Oh, and NO SCIENCE applied, at all.
Let's tap into the basics. At the very beginning, we get to watch Manhattan get torn to pieces (AGAIN?!) by that same meteor shower no one saw coming. I liked how the tip of the Chystler building comes careening down into the streets without grazing a single building around it, let alone leaving no dust or rubble. Have these people even SEEN a building get demolished? It immediately creates a clouded mess! Of course that's AFTER a shameful poke at another summer movie, as we see Eddie Griffin's pet pug attack a man's inflatable Godzilla. Oh Michael, you're so clever! :D
But yeah, kinda startling, since NASA's had the ability to predict such stuff in advance for quite some time, but now they're all like "OMG! WHERE'D ALL THAT COME FROM!" It's even more insulting when Manhattan's destruction instantly becomes the past, for we never see any characters outside of NASA's headquarters giving more than two shits about it. Something like that would make immediate news within seconds.
But wait a second. The cause of all this is a rogue asteroid. Uh-oh. We all listened to Charlton Heston's commentary at the film's start. A big rock like that would create the impact of ten thousand nuclear weapons going off at once! Umm... no. Try more like ten thousand times the size of the world's nuclear arsenal, and maybe you'd get a little closer. They even have this big giant digital clock, counting down to the very minute of impact, just to remind us how close to the end of the movie we are. I'm fascinated how they detected the rock 18 days before it's supposed to collide with us. What, were all the observers on vacation? How the fuck did they miss something so huge, especially since NASA's capable of detecting similar objects YEARS away from coming near us?
I like how it's the "size of Texas", yet they only need to drill 800 feet to plant a single nuclear bomb and break it in half... *head-desk* Yes, I know they mentioned there being a fault-line, but seriously?! That thing would have to be about 700 miles in diameter, don't sit there and tell me a blast on the outer skin will do that, let alone split the pieces apart so perfectly that they'll both miss the Earth. You need a fuckton more force than one piddly little nuke! What they're doing is the equivalent of scratching a zit!
Astronaut training's also a cinch, being it took a bunch of tough-guy rednecks from an oil rig less than two weeks to prep for it. Hilarity ensues! :D We're gonna see all these brainless dolts talking all tough, back-talking to their superiors, and demanding that the US government give into a bunch of silly demands, like never having to pay taxes, ever. Okay, while that bit was kinda amusing, the movie plays it off like it's all "cool" for a bunch of inexperienced roughnecks tell a bunch of people off who are clearly a thousand times smarter than they are. Who needs smart men to save the world, when we have MANLY MEN? :D
Because apparently oil drillers are smarter than science engineers, right? Smarter than people who've had extensive space training, spanning years... right? The same guys who put a man on the moon, and designed probes and satellites to retrieve detailed data from planets millions of miles a way? Fuck you. I know when my intelligence is being mocked, and I don't think it's funny. Wouldn't have it been easier to simply train their astronauts how to drill? Yes. Not even oil rig veterans would know how to drill through SOLID STEEL ROCK.
Seriously, Armageddon portrays NASA as a bunch of dimwitted idiots. As someone who's had a deep respectful admiration of NASA since he was a kid, I will tell you to go to fucking Hell.
The two shuttles dock with a Russian space station so they could refuel and continue their journey. Of course, something's gonna go wrong with the fuel transfer, causing the entire thing to explode. Wow, for a multi-billion dollar space station, it was pretty foolish of NASA to ignore installing fail-safe devices. But hey! Now they have a Swedis---- er Russian guy on board with them! Now we can have a foreign character there to make all sorts of American jokes! :D Shameless stereotyping! Can't have a Michael Bay movie without it!
I also wasn't aware space had wind resistance, for the shuttles whooshed and zipped around like fucking fighter jets as they approached the hulking asteroid. I'm willing to accept that with a movie like Star Wars, for those are strictly fantasy settings and worlds. They're using space shuttles, so they're technically trying to be realistic here. :P
But wait! The asteroid is full of chasms, mountains, and gigantic sharp rocks! I learned in 7th grade that asteroids cannot have those, let alone a greenish-blue misty cloud surrounding it. Just what the fuck is that supposed to be? Is it a venomous asteroid? Is it gonna cause the planet to get sick if it hits? :O
Of course, one shuttle gets destroyed while the other lands safely. Gotta add in more pointless suspense to an already alarming scenario. But what made me want to bash my head into the audience member's seat in front of me was when we see AJ (Affleck) climb out of the wreckage... and a big whipping open flame is burning on the surface of the asteroid. Fire... burning in space... Let alone blowing wind.
... Sorry, my brain needs a moment. I seem to be going on and on about this movie, it's getting closer to my angry video game rants. But this film is in desperate need of an ass-tearing from me.
NASA wasn't the only organization humiliated with this stupid fucking movie, but our Defense Department was also portrayed as a bunch of brainless morons. Why is it with every one of these disaster movies that there has to be some tough-talking government official who wants to jump the gun and destroy our heroes in unreasonably stupid self-defense? Even the President gets flack from this shit an awful lot, by 1998 it had gotten old.
You even have Harry (Willis) and Colonel Sharp (Fichtner) going at it over the "blow it up now, or later" argument, a gun gets pulled out, and Will Patton mutters probably the smartest question in the entire movie: "What the hell are you doing with a gun in space?" Yes. Please explain the purpose of bringing a firearm with you on a mission that's solely meant to SAVE THE WORLD. Are you preparing to encounter aliens on the rock? Does our mission require strict law enforcement? Let's not also forget about that gigantic laser-sighted minigun they also brought with them, which Steve Buscemi starts going crazy with before getting tackled. Sharp then states that the guy has space dimentia.
Space dimentia... Um. Is there even such a thing? :| Must have something to do with his built-in sunglasses inside his helmet. Come ON! Sunglasses serve no purpose inside a spacesuit! That's what FACESHIELDS are for!
Oh no! ANOTHER piece of rock is heading to Earth! What city is it gonna be now? Paris gets pulverized by a much larger boulder than the ones that leveled Manhattan combined, it completely turns the city into a crater... where the dust cloud from the damage magically dissipates almost instantly! Ya know, for all this talk about asteroids causing our atmosphere to be encased in black soot, Armageddon sure forgets about it an awful lot.
Gah! I also forgot to mention the shameless and predictable love story this movie has. Grace (Tyler) is in love with AJ. Her daddy Harry doesn't approve, and often looks down at and bullies him in the process. It's the simplest of formulas that's been beaten so far to death, there's practically nothing left but pieces of rubble. One of them is going to die! PERIOD! The fact that I came across people who actually had an emotional moment with the ending (my dad being one of them), simply baffled me. Was there a surprise I missed? Grace's entire screen presence after our heroes leave for space simply consists of more close-up spinning camera shots of her crying mug.
The movie's climactic moment offered some of the worst examples of bad science I could have ever imagined. Somehow the asteroid starts "getting angry" as it begins ripping apart and spitting rocks, and... *sighs* fire into space. Now, I know the Earth's gravity can have an enormous effect on a passing asteroid, but it's not gonna turn it into a fucking roman candle! Where the fire is coming from is beyond any comprehension.
So what happens? Why their ability to remote detonate has been hampered, so someone's gonna have to stay behind and blow up the rock manually. AJ draws the shortest straw and goes down to the surface to save the world, with Harry at his side. I was baffled at how fragile those spacesuits of theirs are, as Harry easily tears out one of AJ's hoses and forces him back up into the shuttle. Wow. Weren't these things supposed to be heavily armored? I guess he was preparing for his role in Unbreakable!
So while the shuttle takes off and flies away like a fucking jet airliner after the Russian guy bangs the controls with a wrench like an angry old man (I'm done griping about planes in space....), Harry starts getting thrashed about by all the gases and flying rocks, making the whole ordeal even more intense! Even though they're approaching that catastrophic final second on the clock, the movie never forgets to wait until that last possible moment. It already did it before when we had a military man trying to cut the timer on a military-issued nuke... Don't get me started on that tangent. It'll drag this post even longer than it's already gone.
We have Truman screaming what we're all screaming in our heads: "Hurry up and push that goddamn button!!", and the camera shifts to Harry's helmet... and all that moisture blowing across it. Must be all that WIND up there in SPACE! :D
Then you have Sharp mumbling that "too much time has gone by, we're going back to do it ourselves." Really? With how unstable that asteroid's become?! Good luck landing on that thing, let alone the exact same spot you were, all while trying to find where the hell the detonator is underneath all that debris. And what good would it do if you've already crossed the zero barrier? Your train of thought does not compute! Then again, you're the guy who brought the gun with you on this mission, genius. :|
So it goes boom.... at the CENTER OF THE ASTEROID. They only drilled 800 feet! How the fuck did it get all the way down there?! And such a blast sent thousands of pieces flying in all directions, the shuttle didn't even get nicked by a single one of 'em. It's also such a long and drawn-out explosion (or it distorts time itself), because both sides of the world are able to see it directly in the sky above. *rolls eyes* Hell, how the hell did the crew see the explosion, being that they were shielding their eyes? Weren't they flying AWAY from the asteroid? Or did the pilot throw the thing in reverse, so they could all get a view?
Call me a nitpicker. I don't fucking care. I'd probably be a little less hateful if the state of our science education in schools today wasn't so abysmal. People actually refer to movies like this when it comes to talking about meteors and asteroids. Some people are actually convinced that NASA's full of a bunch of ninnies who do nothing but garble nonsense, and the REAL smart people are the ones who couldn't make it past the 9th grade. Christ, listen to the conspiracy theorists who still claim today that no one made it to the moon!
Is it that difficult to make an exciting movie that teaches us a thing or two about something? It's entirely possible! Even Deep Impact pulled it off, aside from its overly-melodramatic storytelling. The physics were all there, and they even did actual research. Wanna watch a smart disaster movie based on smart science? Watch Danny Boyle's Sunshine. Sure, the premise is outlandish, but the execution is surprisingly intelligent.
Jesus, Joss Whedon did it with Firefly and Serenity! He even acknowledged the fact that sound cannot travel in space. Did it hinder the action? Not in the slightest. In fact, making the scenarios more realistic makes them that much more exciting.
Armageddon is an overly-loud, irritating, headache-inducing pile of crap. It's a big ball of stupid that does nothing but make its characters run around, going all "HURR-DURR!!!" and spitting retarded jokes aimed at people who are too easily amused. I hate this goddamn movie with such a passion, I've given dirty looks at people who've said they thought it was awesome.
I can understand if you like it because it's stupid dumb fun, that's fine. Hell, most people I know classify it as a full-blown comedy! But to call it "exciting" is just a display of dimwitted ignorance. Or maybe you're younger than 14.
This movie also caused me to hate Steve Tyler for a very long time, because he wrote the song "I Don't Wanna Miss a Thing", which was blared across radio stations for MONTHS.
And the last depressing thing about this movie is the blatant waste of its excellent cast. Just about every one of these actors have been treated with much more respect, it's best to try and forget this movie ever happened. But like a noisy three-year old who won't stop screaming, it's practically impossible. I think I've made my point clear enough about how much I hate it.
I'm done... You may go about your business...
Behind this cut is that other one that was "far too long" for me to group movies 3,4, and 5 in one post. What could I possibly hate more than Batman & Robin?! To think there are three more to go after this! D:
Armageddon - 1998
Stars: Bruce Willis, Ben Affleck, Billy Bob Thornton, Liv Tyler, Owen Wilson, Michael Clarke Duncan, Steve Buscemi, Will Patton, Peter Stormare, William Fichtner, Jason Isaacs, Keith David
Directed by: Michael Bay
Trailer
I mentioned there being another movie that you'd never want to sit in the same room with me while watching. Behold...
Before you say it, let me confirm it: YES, I think Armageddon is worse than Batman & Robin. I fucking said it.
This is hands-down, the worst creation by Michael Bay I have ever sat through, it continues to degrade with each viewing. Every single time I watch this piece of shit, my fury levels intensify more and more.
I have never seen an action movie so chock-full of stupid to where I have to question my own intelligence for sitting through it. I saw it in theaters, and originally thought it was passable guilty pleasure material. I even bought it on DVD when it came out, putting up on that "so bad, it's fun" category... until I watched it again. The more I saw of it, the more I hated.
For starters, let me say how much Bay hates his editor. He tortures him on a regular basis by telling him to make hundreds of quick camera cuts that span over the course of only five minutes. Armageddon can make for a deadly drinking game. Get several bottles of whiskey (yes, you'll need several), get your friends, and take shots for every cut that's shorter than two seconds. Before the movie's even twenty minutes in, you will either be out cold, or dead from alcohol poisoning.
He is so fucking irritating with his camera work, how many times do I need to see spinning shots of the actors looking all distraught? The first one with Truman (Thornton) has an expression on his face, like he's thinking "My God... why am I here?"
How about that moment after the opening titles where that astronaut and his shuttle get shredded by a meteor shower? I giggled at the moment where the guy's faceshield flies off, and his terrified screams are sent echoing into space! I love how NASA is able to recreate all the exact same footage and camera angles from what we just saw when Thorton commands his staff to activate the instant replay machine. I especially loved that overacting extra with the headset, screaming one of the most cliched lines out there: "We've lost all contact!!" No, you didn't lose contact, dipshit. Didn't you SEE what happened on the crazy big screen TV? YOUR ASTRONAUTS ARE DEAD!
Man, even the New Yorkers knew they were dead, being that you see someone with a newspaper with the words "SHUTTLE EXPLODES" on the front page. Wow, breaking news that hits the paper the very same day something happens?
This movie plays like it's being filmed through the eyes of a hyperactive six-year-old with an intense case of ADHD. It just needs lots of explosions. Lots of big things flying into the air from said explosions. Lots of quick cuts of those explosions, so we can't tell what's going on. Lots of people getting killed or crushed in bloodless fashion, just to make sure that PG-13 rating holds true. Oh, and NO SCIENCE applied, at all.
Let's tap into the basics. At the very beginning, we get to watch Manhattan get torn to pieces (AGAIN?!) by that same meteor shower no one saw coming. I liked how the tip of the Chystler building comes careening down into the streets without grazing a single building around it, let alone leaving no dust or rubble. Have these people even SEEN a building get demolished? It immediately creates a clouded mess! Of course that's AFTER a shameful poke at another summer movie, as we see Eddie Griffin's pet pug attack a man's inflatable Godzilla. Oh Michael, you're so clever! :D
But yeah, kinda startling, since NASA's had the ability to predict such stuff in advance for quite some time, but now they're all like "OMG! WHERE'D ALL THAT COME FROM!" It's even more insulting when Manhattan's destruction instantly becomes the past, for we never see any characters outside of NASA's headquarters giving more than two shits about it. Something like that would make immediate news within seconds.
But wait a second. The cause of all this is a rogue asteroid. Uh-oh. We all listened to Charlton Heston's commentary at the film's start. A big rock like that would create the impact of ten thousand nuclear weapons going off at once! Umm... no. Try more like ten thousand times the size of the world's nuclear arsenal, and maybe you'd get a little closer. They even have this big giant digital clock, counting down to the very minute of impact, just to remind us how close to the end of the movie we are. I'm fascinated how they detected the rock 18 days before it's supposed to collide with us. What, were all the observers on vacation? How the fuck did they miss something so huge, especially since NASA's capable of detecting similar objects YEARS away from coming near us?
I like how it's the "size of Texas", yet they only need to drill 800 feet to plant a single nuclear bomb and break it in half... *head-desk* Yes, I know they mentioned there being a fault-line, but seriously?! That thing would have to be about 700 miles in diameter, don't sit there and tell me a blast on the outer skin will do that, let alone split the pieces apart so perfectly that they'll both miss the Earth. You need a fuckton more force than one piddly little nuke! What they're doing is the equivalent of scratching a zit!
Astronaut training's also a cinch, being it took a bunch of tough-guy rednecks from an oil rig less than two weeks to prep for it. Hilarity ensues! :D We're gonna see all these brainless dolts talking all tough, back-talking to their superiors, and demanding that the US government give into a bunch of silly demands, like never having to pay taxes, ever. Okay, while that bit was kinda amusing, the movie plays it off like it's all "cool" for a bunch of inexperienced roughnecks tell a bunch of people off who are clearly a thousand times smarter than they are. Who needs smart men to save the world, when we have MANLY MEN? :D
Because apparently oil drillers are smarter than science engineers, right? Smarter than people who've had extensive space training, spanning years... right? The same guys who put a man on the moon, and designed probes and satellites to retrieve detailed data from planets millions of miles a way? Fuck you. I know when my intelligence is being mocked, and I don't think it's funny. Wouldn't have it been easier to simply train their astronauts how to drill? Yes. Not even oil rig veterans would know how to drill through SOLID STEEL ROCK.
Seriously, Armageddon portrays NASA as a bunch of dimwitted idiots. As someone who's had a deep respectful admiration of NASA since he was a kid, I will tell you to go to fucking Hell.
The two shuttles dock with a Russian space station so they could refuel and continue their journey. Of course, something's gonna go wrong with the fuel transfer, causing the entire thing to explode. Wow, for a multi-billion dollar space station, it was pretty foolish of NASA to ignore installing fail-safe devices. But hey! Now they have a Swedis---- er Russian guy on board with them! Now we can have a foreign character there to make all sorts of American jokes! :D Shameless stereotyping! Can't have a Michael Bay movie without it!
I also wasn't aware space had wind resistance, for the shuttles whooshed and zipped around like fucking fighter jets as they approached the hulking asteroid. I'm willing to accept that with a movie like Star Wars, for those are strictly fantasy settings and worlds. They're using space shuttles, so they're technically trying to be realistic here. :P
But wait! The asteroid is full of chasms, mountains, and gigantic sharp rocks! I learned in 7th grade that asteroids cannot have those, let alone a greenish-blue misty cloud surrounding it. Just what the fuck is that supposed to be? Is it a venomous asteroid? Is it gonna cause the planet to get sick if it hits? :O
Of course, one shuttle gets destroyed while the other lands safely. Gotta add in more pointless suspense to an already alarming scenario. But what made me want to bash my head into the audience member's seat in front of me was when we see AJ (Affleck) climb out of the wreckage... and a big whipping open flame is burning on the surface of the asteroid. Fire... burning in space... Let alone blowing wind.
... Sorry, my brain needs a moment. I seem to be going on and on about this movie, it's getting closer to my angry video game rants. But this film is in desperate need of an ass-tearing from me.
NASA wasn't the only organization humiliated with this stupid fucking movie, but our Defense Department was also portrayed as a bunch of brainless morons. Why is it with every one of these disaster movies that there has to be some tough-talking government official who wants to jump the gun and destroy our heroes in unreasonably stupid self-defense? Even the President gets flack from this shit an awful lot, by 1998 it had gotten old.
You even have Harry (Willis) and Colonel Sharp (Fichtner) going at it over the "blow it up now, or later" argument, a gun gets pulled out, and Will Patton mutters probably the smartest question in the entire movie: "What the hell are you doing with a gun in space?" Yes. Please explain the purpose of bringing a firearm with you on a mission that's solely meant to SAVE THE WORLD. Are you preparing to encounter aliens on the rock? Does our mission require strict law enforcement? Let's not also forget about that gigantic laser-sighted minigun they also brought with them, which Steve Buscemi starts going crazy with before getting tackled. Sharp then states that the guy has space dimentia.
Space dimentia... Um. Is there even such a thing? :| Must have something to do with his built-in sunglasses inside his helmet. Come ON! Sunglasses serve no purpose inside a spacesuit! That's what FACESHIELDS are for!
Oh no! ANOTHER piece of rock is heading to Earth! What city is it gonna be now? Paris gets pulverized by a much larger boulder than the ones that leveled Manhattan combined, it completely turns the city into a crater... where the dust cloud from the damage magically dissipates almost instantly! Ya know, for all this talk about asteroids causing our atmosphere to be encased in black soot, Armageddon sure forgets about it an awful lot.
Gah! I also forgot to mention the shameless and predictable love story this movie has. Grace (Tyler) is in love with AJ. Her daddy Harry doesn't approve, and often looks down at and bullies him in the process. It's the simplest of formulas that's been beaten so far to death, there's practically nothing left but pieces of rubble. One of them is going to die! PERIOD! The fact that I came across people who actually had an emotional moment with the ending (my dad being one of them), simply baffled me. Was there a surprise I missed? Grace's entire screen presence after our heroes leave for space simply consists of more close-up spinning camera shots of her crying mug.
The movie's climactic moment offered some of the worst examples of bad science I could have ever imagined. Somehow the asteroid starts "getting angry" as it begins ripping apart and spitting rocks, and... *sighs* fire into space. Now, I know the Earth's gravity can have an enormous effect on a passing asteroid, but it's not gonna turn it into a fucking roman candle! Where the fire is coming from is beyond any comprehension.
So what happens? Why their ability to remote detonate has been hampered, so someone's gonna have to stay behind and blow up the rock manually. AJ draws the shortest straw and goes down to the surface to save the world, with Harry at his side. I was baffled at how fragile those spacesuits of theirs are, as Harry easily tears out one of AJ's hoses and forces him back up into the shuttle. Wow. Weren't these things supposed to be heavily armored? I guess he was preparing for his role in Unbreakable!
So while the shuttle takes off and flies away like a fucking jet airliner after the Russian guy bangs the controls with a wrench like an angry old man (I'm done griping about planes in space....), Harry starts getting thrashed about by all the gases and flying rocks, making the whole ordeal even more intense! Even though they're approaching that catastrophic final second on the clock, the movie never forgets to wait until that last possible moment. It already did it before when we had a military man trying to cut the timer on a military-issued nuke... Don't get me started on that tangent. It'll drag this post even longer than it's already gone.
We have Truman screaming what we're all screaming in our heads: "Hurry up and push that goddamn button!!", and the camera shifts to Harry's helmet... and all that moisture blowing across it. Must be all that WIND up there in SPACE! :D
Then you have Sharp mumbling that "too much time has gone by, we're going back to do it ourselves." Really? With how unstable that asteroid's become?! Good luck landing on that thing, let alone the exact same spot you were, all while trying to find where the hell the detonator is underneath all that debris. And what good would it do if you've already crossed the zero barrier? Your train of thought does not compute! Then again, you're the guy who brought the gun with you on this mission, genius. :|
So it goes boom.... at the CENTER OF THE ASTEROID. They only drilled 800 feet! How the fuck did it get all the way down there?! And such a blast sent thousands of pieces flying in all directions, the shuttle didn't even get nicked by a single one of 'em. It's also such a long and drawn-out explosion (or it distorts time itself), because both sides of the world are able to see it directly in the sky above. *rolls eyes* Hell, how the hell did the crew see the explosion, being that they were shielding their eyes? Weren't they flying AWAY from the asteroid? Or did the pilot throw the thing in reverse, so they could all get a view?
Call me a nitpicker. I don't fucking care. I'd probably be a little less hateful if the state of our science education in schools today wasn't so abysmal. People actually refer to movies like this when it comes to talking about meteors and asteroids. Some people are actually convinced that NASA's full of a bunch of ninnies who do nothing but garble nonsense, and the REAL smart people are the ones who couldn't make it past the 9th grade. Christ, listen to the conspiracy theorists who still claim today that no one made it to the moon!
Is it that difficult to make an exciting movie that teaches us a thing or two about something? It's entirely possible! Even Deep Impact pulled it off, aside from its overly-melodramatic storytelling. The physics were all there, and they even did actual research. Wanna watch a smart disaster movie based on smart science? Watch Danny Boyle's Sunshine. Sure, the premise is outlandish, but the execution is surprisingly intelligent.
Jesus, Joss Whedon did it with Firefly and Serenity! He even acknowledged the fact that sound cannot travel in space. Did it hinder the action? Not in the slightest. In fact, making the scenarios more realistic makes them that much more exciting.
Armageddon is an overly-loud, irritating, headache-inducing pile of crap. It's a big ball of stupid that does nothing but make its characters run around, going all "HURR-DURR!!!" and spitting retarded jokes aimed at people who are too easily amused. I hate this goddamn movie with such a passion, I've given dirty looks at people who've said they thought it was awesome.
I can understand if you like it because it's stupid dumb fun, that's fine. Hell, most people I know classify it as a full-blown comedy! But to call it "exciting" is just a display of dimwitted ignorance. Or maybe you're younger than 14.
This movie also caused me to hate Steve Tyler for a very long time, because he wrote the song "I Don't Wanna Miss a Thing", which was blared across radio stations for MONTHS.
And the last depressing thing about this movie is the blatant waste of its excellent cast. Just about every one of these actors have been treated with much more respect, it's best to try and forget this movie ever happened. But like a noisy three-year old who won't stop screaming, it's practically impossible. I think I've made my point clear enough about how much I hate it.
I'm done... You may go about your business...