IMDb plot summary: After discovering that an asteroid the size of Texas is going to impact Earth in less than a month, N.A.S.A. recruits a misfit team of deep core drillers to save the planet.
Directed by Michael Bay. Starring Bruce Willis, Billy Bob Thornton, Ben Affleck, and Liv Tyler.
This is just... a mess of a movie, and I say that as a moderate fan of disaster porn movie. But Armageddon fails on virtually every level, from the characters being loathsome to the acting being stilted to the story arc being bent all of out shape to the disaster moments being just loud and ugly rather than anything that feels truly menacing to the fact that I swear there are at LEAST 20 instances of the cliched phrase, "It's gonna blow!" to the question of WHY IS IT SO LONG.
I enjoy disaster movies. I have a fondness for 2012 and The Day After Tomorrow. But those movies had a clear forward story, and the disaster moments contributed to that story rather than interrupting it for no apparent reason other than, "Hey, I bet THIS thing can blow up, too! Let's do something with that!" Those movies also felt actually cinematic. As cheesy as they may be, the moments when the weather goes all awry in TDAT or watching the waters rise in 2012 evoke a grandiose sense of true global catastrophe. That's never there in Armageddon. Things blow up, meteors fall, but with as much cinematic intent as a cheap video game. Add to that mix that everyone on earth appears to be that winning combination of selfish and stupid, and I was rooting for the asteroid.
0.5 stars.
How it entered my Flickchart:
Armageddon < Definitely, Maybe
Armageddon < The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
Armageddon < Cinderella III: A Twist in Time
Armageddon < The World Is Not Enough
Armageddon > Ella Enchanted
Armageddon > Soultaker
Armageddon > The Prince & Me
Armageddon < The Westing Game
Armageddon < Gridiron Gang
Armageddon < A Cinderella Story
Armageddon < Toby Tyler, or Ten Weeks With a Circus
Armageddon < Herbie: Fully Loaded
Final spot: #2410 out of 2549.
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