As Armageddon soon celebrates its 22nd anniversary, it feels right to acknowledge one of the only worthwhile DVD reviews ever recorded. If you consider Ben Affleck to be the greatest film critic of this generation, it might help to answer a few questions and start a foundation. Michael Bay drilled his way into the heart of the plot of Armageddon, its characters, and the film’s most memorable moments.
Armageddon is the symbolic name given to this event, based on scriptural passages about the divine extinction of the enemies of God. Armageddon is witnessed in the New Testament in the Revelation of John, and it is the place where American and Russian astronauts fly into space and place an atomic bomb on an asteroid heading for Earth.
Armageddon is a modern myth, but it goes beyond a simple story of an underdog to a hero’s journey. Armageddon gave Willis a much-needed box office hit, and it was a commercial success that shook up what an action movie could be, ushering in a new era of an action film, an era that would cement cinematic style. The boom ignited on Independence Day 1996 and continued until the film was released on July 4, 1996, just a few months after the release of Armageddon. Willis followed Armageddon with Armageddon 2, a sequel to the first film, and a sequel – all the way to Armageddon 3 and Armageddon 4.
Eventually, New York was wiped out by a space object heading for our planet, and Armageddon evolved from box-office success to what audiences expected, which is, alas, a limited order. Still, it’s worth asking yourself if Armageddon 2018 would have been a blockbuster.
Steve Buscemi explained his appeal to the project by viewing it as an ensemble film, and it was an all-encompassing vehicle for established and emerging artists and newcomers. Armageddon confirms the anti-establishment sentiment that permeated, and perhaps helped decide, the last US presidential election that Central American men know better than the establishment elite. It’s a feel-good story about regulars saving the world, which might comfort early viewers for whom an apocalypse is still pretty unfathomable.
When Will Hunting enters a deadly asteroid, Affleck is selected for his role as William Shakespeare, and he is the only one to receive a Razzie. Bruce Willis won the Worst Actor award for Armageddon, along with Michael Fassbender, Michael Keaton and Rose Byrne. The same year the film hit theaters, he picked up an Oscar for Liv, only for the final scene when he and Will are pulled out by the deadly asteroids.
It can be said that Thornton’s career did not reach the heights of box office like Armageddon, where he played NASA project manager Dan Truman, but the film was good enough to make some actors better than the financial success of Armageddon. As you may recall, there is a scene in which Harry’s raggedy sidekick takes a Rorschach test to see if they are more or less compatible with the alien race.
As the asteroid approaches Earth, the surviving crew is hit by a rock storm that kills Gruber and damages the remote trigger of the bomb, meaning that someone has to stay behind to manually detonate it. The most dramatic moment of the doomsday comes after A.J. is left behind on the asteroid and manually detonates the atomic bomb.
The special effects and visual bombast are enough to enchant audiences, and Armageddon becomes a perfect example of the style of filmmaking that has become summer blockbusters. The observations are excellent, eloquent, and funny, the performances by Robert De Niro, Bruce Dern, and Robert Downey Jr are spot on – and the cinematography is superb.
Armageddon is an American sci-fi disaster of 1998, produced and directed by Michael Bay and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, and released by Touchstone Pictures. It’s probably one of the most memorable films in the history of cinema and perhaps the best film ever made.
The film follows a blue – collar-deep – drill core sent by NASA to stop a giant asteroid from hitting Earth. NASA forces them to reveal their plans to the world when a piece of the asteroid wipes out parts of Shanghai.
NASA scientists are drilling a deep shaft into the asteroid and plan to place a nuclear weapon that, when detonated, will split the asteroids in half and safely fly to Earth. Using data from NASA’s Space Research Program (DSP), a Ph.D. student at the University of Leicester has found that splitting an asteroid in two to remove the pieces from Earth would require 800 trillion terajoules of energy. The talent of this magnitude is needed to save Earth from imminent destruction by a stray asteroid.
Don’t worry, in this case, we’re talking about Armageddon, one of the most powerful nuclear weapons in human history. If Criterion does not include Armageddon in its collection, you will be grateful to hear the commentary on the DVD, because I am sure you will not.
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