This movie redefined my reviewing scale

Rating: 1/10 (11 January 2001)

I was in a discussion about movies and 'Armageddon' came up. As usual, I went to IMDB (no kiss-ass, I actually use this site). Imagine my horror when I found one of my countrymen, said "Probably the best movie I've seen yet". I had to read it twice. Then I had to read the rest, to see if it was sarcastic.
I've seen a lot of movies. Some good, many bad. Many, many bad movies. But only once in my lifetime I've yet had the feeling after leaving the theatre that "now I have to redefine my whole reviewing scale for movies". 'Armageddon' was that movie. It defies words, but I'll try. It is SO incredibly BAD it's amazing it ever got made. No, strike that; it was obviously made to make money, by people who didn't care about making movies.
It had actors. Some I like, some I don't. That's not the point. All the actors seemed to do parodies of characters they've played in other movies - even Steve Buscemi's character was outright bad, and he's usually one to be trusted to save a less-than-perfect movie. Bruce Willis was simply a parody. I hope he got paid lots. One of my countrymen, Peter Stormare, played (as usual) a russian, and even though it's usually heart warming to see him in small roles in major movies this was just plain embarrassing. I won't go into the whole Affleck-Tyler thingy, that was just bad beyond words.
It had explosions. Every big movie these days has great FX, so it's pretty useless going into details. Let's just call it "expensive action sequences".
It had a script. It must have been written on a box of matches, in a very large typeface. If it was written down at all. Maybe they just made it up as they went along; at least that would explain things.
It had humour. It had some terribly embarrassing one-liners that I assume were supposed to be funny, but that's not what I'm talking about. The entire movie in itself was just a collection of cliche parodies.
It had an ending. Thank GOD it had an ending, although at times it certainly seemed to be too far away.
That said, it at least has one redeeming quality: lots of people have seen it, so when I refer to it ("the new movie so-and-so is very very bad, but still THIS much better than 'Armageddon') people will understand what I'm talking about. And to think 'Plan 9 From Outer Space' was considered bad... It's a masterpiece in comparison.