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ARMAGEDDON
Written by Jonathan Hensleigh. Directed by Michael Bay. Starring Bruce Willis, Billy Bob Thornton, Ben Affleck, Liv Tyler.
Whether this story is true or not, I have no idea. But since I think it sums up much of what stinks about Hollywood today I'll tell it anyway. Rumor has it that Steven Spielberg was considering directing DEEP IMPACT, a film about big hunks of space rubble smacking into our cozy little planet. But once he heard about ARMAGEDDON (another film about big hunks of space rubble smacking into our cozy little planet), he decided not to do it. So he assigned another director and they made the movie anyway. Let me repeat that - he assigned another director and they made the movie anyway.
Which, my friends, is why Hollywood sucks donkey dick.
Rather than conclude that moviegoers may not really need two big-budget summer action films on the same subject, and rather than put the money they were going to spend on their asteroid movie into one (or two or three) other, more original ideas, they just go right on ahead and make the goddamn thing. Why? Is it because they know in their heart of hearts that their space junk movie is the space junk movie? Because it has important things to say about rocks and shit falling from the sky? Nope. It's all about dick size. No backing down allowed! Someone else is making a rocks-hurtling-from-space flick? So what? We'll get ours out first! Which is exactly what DEEP IMPACT did. So how do the makers of ARMAGEDDON respond? They take the high road, of course. Well, the high road for Hollywood, anyway - they claim that their film is much better than the piece of crud that beat them to release. Now, I haven't seen DEEP IMPACT yet, but if ARMAGEDDON is the better of the two films...
... DEEP IMPACT must really bite.
Bruce Willis leads a
team of miners on an excursion to... oh wait.
That's Robert Duvall. This must be from DEEP IMPACT. Sorry.
I suppose you'd like a plot synopsis. Like you don't know just by looking at the posters exactly what's gonna happen. *sigh* Okay, here goes: In the big action-packed opening teaser, a space shuttle and her crew are destroyed by rocks whizzing through space at high velocity. Shortly thereafter New York City is also tattooed by a bunch of meteorites, which kill people, wreak havoc, and only serve to make a bad pothole problem even worse. NASA and every other professional astronomer in the world is stumped as to what's caused this celestial event... but of course three teenagers with a home telescope know exactly what happened. Seems a 'rogue' comet (the worst kid of comet - no feelings, no consideration, just downright rude) collided with an asteroid, and the meteorites that hit New York and waxed the shuttle are just pebbles. The big bastard - a chunk the size of Texas - is on a collision course for Earth, E.T.A. 18 days (stab of dramatic music).
A plan is hatched to send a team up to the rock, drill down along a fault line, plant a nuke, then blow the sucker in two pieces that'll miss the Earth. Hooray! Good plan! Now all we need are people to do the drilling. Which is where Harry Stamper comes in. Harry's the foremost deep oil driller in the world, and NASA recruits he and his scruffy crew to fly on up to the asteroid and do the dirty work. CUT TO the inevitable training sequences, where the crew struggle to get the equipment working, as well as learn a bunch of astronaut stuff. This is where you can go get some popcorn - believe me, you've seen it all before. Then they're off into space! Not only do they take one space shuttle, they take two! And they're not regular shuttles, they're super-secret, brand new ships that will coincidentally do exactly what is required on this mission. Phew! What a relief! Suffice it to say that the mission isn't a smooth one. First they stop at the MIR space station for refueling (isn't that like going to the Exxon Valdeez to fill up your car?), and since nothing's exploded in a while, they manage to blow it up. They then get to the asteroid, where one shuttle crashes, killing nearly everyone aboard, and the other lands but sustains enough damage to cause uncertainty about whether it'll be able to fly again (yeah, right). Needless to say, there's trouble drilling the hole... the military guys want to detonate the nukes on the surface, killing all our heroes... our heroes aren't fond of that idea and overpower the military guys... the hole finally gets dug... the nuke's remote detonator is broken, meaning someone'll have to stay behind to trigger it... and in an act of selflessness, Harry does the job. Earth saved. Much cheering. The end. Even more cheering.
The huge asteroid
chunk smashes into Earth with the force of...
oh, hang on a sec. No big chunk smashes into the Earth.
This must be from DEEP IMPACT. My bad.
I'll get right to it - I was bored reading this script. I knew what was gonna happen every step of the way, the characters are cardboard cutouts (which may just be an insult to cardboard cutouts), and let's get real - THE FRICKIN' ASTEROID MISSES THE EARTH! Now if this were to happen in real life I'd be really happy to have the asteroid miss the Earth... but this isn't real life. I don't want to spend $8 a ticket to see someone blow up a rock. It's as if we spotted the aliens in INDEPENDENCE DAY before they got here and managed to blow up their mothership while it was still halfway to the moon. IF A MOVIE'S CALLED 'ARMAGEDDON', I WANNA SEE SOME ARMAGEDDON! Criminy, is that so hard to understand? Oh sure, we get to see some meteorites hit New York and a few more splash into Shanghai Harbor, but it's simply not enough. No way, no how, not even close. At least DEEP IMPACT seems to have understood this equation - we like destruction, and we like lots of it. Tidal waves! Earthquakes! Oceans boiling! Volcanoes erupting! Rock stars trying to act! Every natural disaster known to man! If you're gonna make a dipshit movie like this, at least make it right.
I guess it's pretty obvious that I didn't much like the script. The sad thing is, I didn't hate it, it's just... I dunno... so nothing. It seems like once you've got the concept ("A big asteroid thingy hits the Earth... or in this case doesn't... but it comes real close!") the movie's done. I'll bet the effects guys were hired the same day as the screenwriter. I don't mind big event pictures - hell, I love 'em! - but can't we please, please, please try to get the script right? The screenwriters on these films are less important than the people designing the posters.
By the way, I've got this great idea for a film where a meteor hits Hollywood. Oh, maybe it's not an idea... maybe it's a dream.
MY PROGNOSIS? Y'know, I can't even tell anymore. I suppose it'll make a bundle, if it can kick GODZILLA out of a few theatres. Frankly, I don't much give a damn.
AND THE CRITICS SAY...
ASSOCIATED PRESS: "ARMAGEDDON isn't so much an apocalyptic sci-fi epic as it is a buddy flick: Call it "The B-Team" - Stephen J. Cannell meets Irwin Allen meets Isaac Asimov... This is a laugh-out-loud-and-go-along-for-the-ride movie, a picture-show type of experience. It's schlock, sure, but it's fun schlock with good performances and good special effects and a reasonably brisk script. It pushes all the right buttons in two formulas - action-comedy and adventure. It's a lot more for your eight bucks than GODZILLA ever could be - and does a much better job of destroying the Chrysler Building to boot."
ROGER EBERT: "Here it is at last, the first 150-minute trailer. ARMAGEDDON is cut together like its own highlights. Take almost any 30 seconds at random, and you'd have a TV ad. The movie is an assault on the eyes, the ears, the brain, common sense and the human desire to be entertained. No matter what they're charging to get in, it's worth more to get out. The plot covers many of the same bases as the recent DEEP IMPACT, which, compared with ARMAGEDDON, belongs on the American Film Institute list... ARMAGEDDON reportedly used the services of nine writers. Why did it need any? The dialogue is either shouted one-liners or romantic drivel. "It's gonna blow!" is used so many times, I wonder if every single writer used it once, then sat back from his word processor with a contented smile on his face, another day's work done... Characters in this movie actually say: ""I wanted to say... that I'm sorry," "We're not leaving them behind!," "Guys - the clock is ticking!" and "This has turned into a surrealistic nightmare!" Steve Buscemi, a crew member who is diagnosed with "space dementia", (Dave's note: You know you're in trouble when your $140 million movie starts stealing plot details from Ren and Stimpy cartoons - and probably doesn't handle them as well!) looks at the asteroid's surface and adds, "This place is like Dr. Seuss' worst nightmare." Quick - which Seuss book is he thinking of?... ARMAGEDDON is loud, ugly and fragmented... The few "dramatic" scenes consist of the sonorous recitation of ancient cliches. Only near the end, when every second counts, does the movie slow down: Life on Earth is about to end, but the hero delays saving the planet in order to recite cornball farewell platitudes. Staggering into the silence of the theater lobby after the ordeal was over, I found a big poster that was fresh off the presses with the quotes of junket blurbsters. "It will obliterate your senses!" reports David Gillin, who obviously writes autobiographically. "It will suck the air right out of your lungs!" vows Diane Kaminsky. If it does, consider it a mercy killing."
VARIETY: "In theory a drama about the imminent end of the world if an asteroid hurtling toward Earth can't be blown off course by some courageous astronauts, pic plays more like 'Con Air Goes to Outer Space'. Making most of the decisions made by the DEEP IMPACT team look good in retrospect, filmmakers here take delight is assembling a team of ex-cons, wise-asses, musclemen and jokers as the group that will try to save the world, but by their own example raise serious doubts as to whether humanity is worth saving. It took five credited writers, and four more named in the press materials, to concoct this high-concept but otherwise staggeringly unimaginative tale, which parallels DEEP IMPACT quite closely in its basic trajectory, if not in its details, tone and selection of characters. Earlier release, while hokey and directed like a careening train, at least took a thoughtful approach to the idea of impending global mortality; in ARMAGEDDON, doomsday is approached like a giant videogame... Scripters (who, in addition to those credited, included Paul Attanasio, Ann Biderman, Scott Rosenberg and Robert Towne, per press notes) come up with plenty of obstacles for the intrepid drillers to overcome, but director Bay's visual presentation is so frantic and chaotic that one often can't tell which ship or characters are being shown, or where things are in relation to one another. 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 and a half hours."
LA TIMES: "Big and clumsy the way only $140-million projects manage to be, ARMAGEDDON is finally undone by its grandiosity as much as by anything else. Sporadically watchable, it's at its best at those infrequent moments when it doesn't take itself too seriously. But the film's general tendency to overplay its strengths and emphasize its weaknesses is a tough obstacle to overcome... What is hard to figure out is why ARMAGEDDON needed so many writers. Five of them got screen credit, arrayed in a configuration so complex (story by Jonathan Hensleigh and Robert Pool, adaptation by Tony Gilroy and Shane Salerno, screenplay by Jonathan Hensleigh and J.J. Abrams) you practically need a directive from the Writers Guild to understand exactly who did what. Also, and this may be a first, the film's press kit boasts about and even lists by name some of the high-profile uncredited writers (Paul Attanasio, Ann Biderman, Scott Rosenberg, Robert Towne) who worked on the script. All this talent has led to some amusing moments, but overall their use only underlines the manufactured nature of filmmaking on this scale. Despite this horde of writers, the emotional side of ARMAGEDDON remains stubbornly and conspicuously weak, and it's an area the filmmakers have regrettably fallen in love with. Considerable screen time is devoted to the sensitive romance between A.J. and Grace, but their moments together can most charitably be called unconvincing."
WHILE THE PUBLIC SAYS...
ARMAGEDDON grossed $54 million over the five day July 4 weekend, which sounds pretty good until you realize MEN IN BLACK pulled in $79 million over the holiday in 1997, and INDEPENDENCE DAY snagged $85 million in 1996. Maybe they shoulda cast Will Smith...
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