Armageddon (1998 film)

Plot

A massive meteor shower destroys the orbiting Space Shuttle Atlantis before entering the atmosphere and bombarding Boston, Philadelphia, Moncton, Halifax, Newfoundland and New York City, the latter being extensively damaged. The meteors were pushed out of the asteroid belt by a collision from a rogue comet the size of Texas and NASA learns it will impact Earth in 18 days, wiping out all life on Earth.

NASA devises a plan to drill a deep hole into the asteroid, into which they will insert and detonate a nuclear bomb to destroy it. They recruit Harry Stamper, a third-generation oil driller and owner of an oil drilling company, who agrees to help but on the condition that he bring in his own team to do the drilling. He picks his best employees for the job: Chick Chapple, his best friend and right-hand man; geologists Rockhound and Oscar Choice; and drillers Bear Curlene, Max Lennert, Freddie Noonan, and A. J. Frost (who has been dating Harry's daughter Grace despite Harry's objections). Over twelve days, they are trained to become astronauts with astronaut Willie Sharp, who will pilot Freedom—one of the two super shuttles to fly to the asteroid, the other being the Independence. Before leaving, Chick apologizes to his ex-wife for wronging her and sees his son—who is unaware of his parentage—and Grace accepts A.J.'s marriage proposal, much to Harry's reluctant dismay; she later has her father promise to return home safe and with her fiancé.

Following the destruction of Shanghai by another meteor strike, word of the asteroid becomes public to the world. Both shuttles take off without incident and dock with a Russian space station to take on fuel, but a broken pipeline sets the fuel pod ablaze. A.J. and Roscosmos cosmonaut Lev Andropov narrowly manage to board Independence before the space station is obliterated.

Approaching the asteroid, Independence is damaged by debris and crashes, killing all on board except Lev, Bear, and A.J. They embark in the shuttle's mobile driller “Armadillo” to find the Freedom crew, which landed 26 miles from its intended landing/drilling site. When the drilling goes slower than predicted, Sharp reports to Mission Control that it is unlikely they will reach the depth necessary to destroy the asteroid before "Zero Barrier", the point after which detonating the rock will not save Earth. The president of the United States decides to remotely detonate the bomb from Earth immediately, not understanding this will cause total mission failure. Sharp and Harry have a vicious argument, but agree to defuse the bomb and work together after Harry promises Sharp that he will accomplish the mission. They make up on lost drilling time, but a missed gas pocket causes their Armadillo and Max to be blown into space. Just as Harry, NASA, and the world believe the mission to be a failure, another meteor destroys Paris, A.J. and the others arrive in the second Armadillo.

A.J. successfully finishes the drilling, but a rock storm kills Gruber and damages the bomb’s remote detonator, forcing someone to stay behind and manually detonate it. They draw straws; A.J. is given the responsibility. Harry takes him down to the asteroid's surface, only to disconnect A.J.'s air hose and force him back into the shuttle's air lock, before telling A.J. that he is the son Harry never had, and he would be proud to have him marry Grace. Using the Armadillo, Harry tearfully gives Grace his blessing to marry A.J., and Grace says she is proud to be his daughter.

After various difficulties, Freedom takes off, and just before Zero Barrier, Harry manages to detonate the bomb and saves the planet, sacrificing his life in the process. The astronauts land on Earth safely. A.J. and Grace are reunited, and Chick reconciles with his ex-wife and estranged son. During the credits, A.J. and Grace are married, with the portraits of Harry and the three others Oscar, Max & Noonan lost on the mission present in memoriam.

Cast

• Bruce Willis as Harry S. Stamper
• Billy Bob Thornton as Dan Truman
• Ben Affleck as A.J. Frost
• Liv Tyler as Grace Stamper
• William Fichtner as Colonel Willie Sharp
• Will Patton as Chick Chapple
• Steve Buscemi as Rockhound
• Owen Wilson as Oscar Choice
• Michael Clarke Duncan as Bear Curlene
• Ken Campbell as Max Lennert
• Clark Brolly as Freddie Noonan
• Jessica Steen as Co-Pilot Jennifer Watts
• Peter Stormare as Lev Andropov
• Keith David as General Kimsey
• Chris Ellis as Flight Director Clark
• Jason Isaacs as Ronald Quincy
• Marshall Teague as Colonel Davis
• Anthony Guidera as Co-Pilot Tucker
• Grayson McCouch as Gruber
• Greg Collins as Halsey
• John Mahon as Karl
• Grace Zabriskie as Dottie
• Eddie Griffin as Bike Messenger
• Jim Ishida as Client #3
• Stanley Anderson as President
• James Harper as Admiral Kelso
• Ellen Cleghorne as Helga the Nurse
• Udo Kier as Psychologist
• John Aylward as Dr. Banks
• Mark Curry as Stu the Cabbie
• Seiko Matsuda as Asian Tourist-Female
• Harry Humphries as Chuck Jr.
• Judith Hoag as Denise
• Steven Ford as Nuke Tech
• Christian Clemenson as Droning Guy
• Michael "Bear" Taliferro as Roughneck #2
• Kathleen Matthews as Newscaster #2
• J.C. Hayward as Newscaster #3
• Andrew Glassman as Newscaster #4
• Shawnee Smith as Redhead
• Dwight Hicks as FBI Agent #1
• Layla Roberts as Molly Mounds
• Bodhi Elfman as Math Guy
• Peter White as Secretary of Defense
• Frederick Weller as NASA Tech
• Narration by Charlton Heston

Production

Development

According to Bruce Joel Rubin, writer of Deep Impact, a production president at Disney took notes on everything the writer said during lunch about his script and initiated Armageddon as a counter film at Disney. Nine writers worked on the script, five of whom are credited. In addition to Robert Roy Pool, Jonathan Hensleigh, Tony Gilroy, Shane Salerno and J. J. Abrams, the writers involved included Paul Attanasio, Ann Biderman, Scott Rosenberg and Robert Towne. Originally, it was Hensleigh's script, based on Pool's original, that had been given the green-light by Touchstone Pictures. Jerry Bruckheimer hired the succession of writers for rewrites and polishes.

Bruce Willis was cast in the film as part of a three-picture deal he cut with the studio to compensate them for the dissolution of 1997's Broadway Brawler.{{cite web | access-date =2021-09-27 | access-date =September 27, 2021 | author-link =Peter Bart | access-date=2021-09-27}} Sean Connery was originally considered for the role of Stamper, but Michael Bay decided to cast a younger actor in the role after meeting oil drillers. Bradley Cooper auditioned for the role of A.J. Frost, which eventually went to Ben Affleck.

Filming

Principal photography for Armageddon began on August 27, 1997 and ended on January 29, 1998. Filming occurred at Culver Studios in Culver City, California. In May 1998, Walt Disney Studios chairman Joe Roth expanded the film's budget by $3 million to include additional special effects scenes by Dream Quest Images showing an asteroid impacting Paris. This additional footage, incorporated two months prior to the film's release, was specifically added for the television advertising campaign to visually differentiate the film from Deep Impact which was released a few months before. At a budget of $140 million, it was Buena Vista's most expensive film at the time.

After filming was complete, according to Home Improvement actor Richard Karn, he stumbled upon the main asteroid set and suggested to Tim Allen that they needed to film on it. According to Karn, Allen asked then ABC executive Bob Iger who then asked Michael Bay for permission. Bay required waiting 6 months after the film was released. The asteroid set was used as a credit roll gag scene to imitate a cave in Wilson's basement.

Music

Main article: Armageddon: The Album

Release

Marketing

Prior to Armageddons release, the film was advertised in Super Bowl XXXII at a cost of $2.6 million. Several billboards sparked a city-wide panic with its all-too-real ad campaign. The studio also partnered with McDonald's for the tie-in promotion.

Home media

Despite a mixed critical reception, The Criterion Collection—a specialist film distributor of primarily arthouse films that markets what it considers to be "important classic and contemporary films" and "cinema at its finest"—released the 'directors cut' of the film to DVD and LaserDisc. In an essay supporting the selection of Armageddon, film scholar Jeanine Basinger, who taught Michael Bay at Wesleyan University, states that the film is "a work of art by a cutting-edge artist who is a master of movement, light, color, and shape—and also of chaos, razzle-dazzle, and explosion". She sees it as a celebration of working men: "This film makes these ordinary men noble, lifting their efforts up into an epic event." Further, she states that in the first few moments of the film all the main characters are well established, saying, "If that isn't screenwriting, I don't know what is".

The film was also released on VHS and DVD by Buena Vista Home Entertainment on November 13, 1998, and would surpass Pretty Woman to become Buena Vista Home Entertainment's best-selling live-action title. Armageddon then premiered on both VHS and DVD formats on February 1, 1999, in the UK. It was the country's best-selling DVD release, selling over 100,000 copies. However, this record would be surpassed by The Matrix later that year. The film was released on a standard edition Blu-ray in 2010 with only a few special features. In late November 2024, it was announced that the film would be released on 4K Blu-ray.

Television airing

By April 2002, ABC airings of Armageddon had already received modifications due to the September 11 attacks that occurred seven months prior. The scene where the World Trade Center was hit by meteors and caught on fire was censored because of its similarity to the attacks.

Following the 2003 Columbia disaster, some screen captures from the opening scene where Atlantis is destroyed were passed off as satellite images of the disaster in a hoax. Additionally, the American cable network FX, which had intended to broadcast Armageddon that evening, removed the film from its schedule and aired Aliens in its place.

Reception

Box office

Armageddon was released on July 1, 1998 in 3,127 theaters in the United States and Canada. It ranked first at the box office ahead of Dr. Dolittle with an opening weekend gross of $36 million, combined with $54.2 million from its first five days. Upon opening, the film had the third-highest Fourth of July opening weekend at the time, behind Men in Black and Independence Day. It went on to beat Ransom to achieve the highest opening weekend for a live-action Disney film. That record would only last for four months before being surpassed by The Waterboy that November. The film was surpassed by Lethal Weapon 4 in its second weekend, although it collected a total of $23.5 million.{{cite news |last=Bellisle |first=Martha |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-times-and-democrat-lethal-weapon-4/133515055/ |title='Lethal Weapon 4' outshoots 'Armageddon' at box office |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231016003614/https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-times-and-democrat-lethal-weapon-4/133515055/ |date=July 16, 1998 |access-date=October 16, 2023 |archive-date=October 16, 2023 |page=17 |work=Associated Press Writer |publisher=The Times and Democrat |via=Newspapers.com |url-status=live}} In late July 1998, it surpassed its rival Deep Impact to become the highest-grossing domestic release of the year. The film grossed $201.6 million in the United States and Canada and $352.1 million in other territories for a worldwide total of $553.7 million. It was the highest-grossing film of 1998 worldwide and the second-highest-grossing film of that year in the United States, finishing just behind Saving Private Ryan.

In South Korea, Armageddon surpassed Godzilla to have the country's highest opening, making $2.7 million. It recorded the second-highest opening in Taiwan with $1 million, behind The Lost World: Jurassic Park. The film would spend a total of thirteen weeks in Japan's number one spot until it was surpassed by A Bug's Life.

Critical response

Armageddon received mixed reviews from film critics, many of whom took issue with "the furious pace of its editing". On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a 43% approval rating based on 176 reviews, with an average rating of 5.3/10. The critical consensus states, "Lovely to look at but about as intelligent as the asteroid that serves as the movie's antagonist, Armageddon slickly sums up the cinematic legacies of producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director Michael Bay." Metacritic gave the film a weighted average score of 42 out of 100, based on 23 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A−" on an A+ to F scale.

A rough assemblage of footage from the film was shown in the marketplace at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival in May. The footage reportedly generated unintentional laughs from journalists who viewed it.

Janet Maslin of The New York Times said, "A real movie about courage in space is Apollo 13, in which fear and sacrifice have meaning. This jingoistic, overblown spectacle is about whistling in the dark." Dennis King of Tulsa World gave the film a two out of four rating, describing it as "overproduced, overblown, overhyped and just plain exhausting. And as storytelling goes, it's about as satisfying as staring at a video game screen while someone else controls the joystick."

The film is on the list of Roger Ebert's most hated films. In his original review, Ebert gave the film 1 star and stated, "The movie is an assault on the eyes, the ears, the brain, common sense and the human desire to be entertained". On At the Movies, Ebert gave it a Thumbs Down. However, his co-host Gene Siskel gave it a Thumbs Up, commenting on the noise and intensity of the film, but also stating that he found the film to be amusing. Ebert went on to name Armageddon as the worst film of 1998 (though he was originally considering Spice World). Todd McCarthy of Variety also gave the film a negative review, noting Michael Bay's rapid cutting style: "Much of the confusion, as well as the lack of dramatic rhythm or character development, results directly from Bay's cutting style, which resembles a machine gun stuck in the firing position for 2 hours." In April 2013, in a Miami Herald interview to promote Pain & Gain, Bay was quoted as having said:…We had to do the whole movie in 16 weeks. It was a massive undertaking. That was not fair to the movie. I would redo the entire third act if I could. But the studio literally took the movie away from us. It was terrible. My visual effects supervisor had a nervous breakdown, so I had to be in charge of that. I called James Cameron and asked "What do you do when you're doing all the effects yourself?" But the movie did fine.Some time after the article was published, Bay changed his stance, claiming that his apology only related to the editing of the film, not the whole film, and accused the writer of the article for taking his words out of context. The author of the article, Miami Herald writer Rene Rodriguez, claimed: "NBC asked me for a response, and I played them the tape. I didn't misquote anyone. All the sites that picked up the story did."

Scientific accuracy

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Bay admitted that the film's central premise "that NASA could actually do something in a situation like this" was unrealistic. Additionally, the largest known potentially hazardous asteroid (PHA) is (53319) 1999 JM8, which is only 7 km in diameter, while the asteroid in the movie is described as being "the size of Texas". Near the end of the credits, there is a disclaimer stating, "The National Aeronautics and Space Administration's cooperation and assistance does not reflect an endorsement of the contents of the film or the treatment of the characters depicted therein." Astronomers would subsequently note that Deep Impact was more scientifically accurate.

The infeasibility of the H-bomb approach was published by four physics postdocs in 2011 and then reported by The Daily Telegraph in 2012:

In the commentary track, Ben Affleck says he "asked Michael why it was easier to train oil drillers to become astronauts than it was to train astronauts to become oil drillers, and he told me to shut the fuck up, so that was the end of that talk."

Neil deGrasse Tyson said on the October 2, 2023 episode of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert that, until the release of the 2022 film Moonfall, Armageddon was the movie which violated more laws of physics per minute than any other movie ever.

Accolades

Other media

Merchandising

Revell and Monogram released two model kits inspired by the film's spacecraft and the Armadillos, in 1998. The first one, "Space Shuttle with Armadillo drilling unit", included an X-71, a small, rough Armadillo and a pedestal. The second one, "Russian Space Center", included the Mir, with the docking adapter seen in the film, and another pedestal.

In 2011, Fantastic Plastic released another X-71 kit, the "X-71 Super Shuttle", the goal of which was to be more accurate than the Revell/Monogram kit.

Theme park attraction

Armageddon – Les Effets Speciaux was an attraction based on Armageddon at Walt Disney Studios Park located at Disneyland Paris. It opened in time for the park's premiere on March 16, 2002, being a debut attraction. The attraction simulated the scene in the movie in which the Russian Space Station is destroyed. Michael Clarke Duncan ("Bear" in the film) was featured in the pre-show.

Notes

References

Bibliography

References

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