When an asteroid the size of Texas threatens Earth, the fate of all falls to a group of oil rig workers. Very silly, very dumb, very cool, very fun. Classic Bay. The screenplay by JJ Abrams and Jonathan Hensleigh is weak sauce. While only two men are officially credited, in reality 9 people in total worked on the screenplay: Tony Gilroy, Shane Salerno, Paul Attanasio, Ann Biderman, Scott Rosenberg, and Robert Towne.
The first draft was by Jonathan Hensleigh, and the cavalcade of other writers were hired for re-writes and touch ups. It would also appear that the idea for Armageddon might have been stolen from Deep Impact as Bruce Joel Rubin, the screenwriter for Deep Impact, claims a production president at Disney took heavy notes during a lunch they shared.
The characters and performances are mid at best. Bruce Willis is fine, and makes for a likable enough lead. Billy Bob Thornton does the best performance and is the most likable character as the head of NASA. The cinematography by John Schwartzman and editing by Mark Goldblatt, Chris Lebenzon, and Glen Scantlebury are dynamic and impressive.
Naturally the best things about this film are the top-tier action and the pacing (it takes around 50 minutes to an hour for our crew to lift-off, but once they arrive in space, the film quickly becomes Murphy’s Law: the movie as they face near-constant setbacks, problems, and challenges). The Aerosmith heavy soundtrack is an all-timer. Armageddon is a big-budget B-movie disaster flick. Turn your brain off, and enjoy the chaos.
3.5 STARS
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