Bayham Disaster Movie

Rating: 4/10 (8 June 2009)

Like most of Michael Bay's film they are a lot of problems with this film, being too long, bombastic, overly edited, has poor acting and dialogue and very right wing. Armageddon is one Bay's poorer films.
The premise is simple, an asteroid the size of Texas is about to crash into Earth in 18 days. They has been a meteoroid shower destroys a NASA space shuttle and causes destruction in New York City. NASA and the American does not revile the fact that the asteroid was going to crash into the Earth. NASA also believe that a nuclear strike would not destroy the asteroid, so decide that they need a team to go onto the rock and drill a Nuclear bomb into it and destroy it that way. No NASA team is trained to do it, so NASA controller Dan Truman (Billy Bob Thornton) tries to recruit Harry Stumper (Bruce Willis), an oil driller who has a reputation for drilling in tough environment. He agrees to help but only if he could use his own team.
The plot is complete rubbish. It's easy to poke holes into it, such as surely wouldn't NASA notice an asteroid the size of Texas much earlier? Why not just train a team of astronauts to do the drilling (Ben Affleck pointed that one out)? Why such an complex and expensive plan? Why not just get America and Russia to fire every missile they could at the rock? The film also breaks the laws of physics at many points. Such examples are how could a Space Shuttle land on a asteroid and how could an asteroid have Earth like gravity?
Armageddon follows the two maxims of disaster movies; first America is great and second, what ever can go wrong will go wrong. This happens all the time in the film, such as the Russian space station blowing up, a space shuttle getting destroyed, one of the drilling missions flowing off into space, the other space shuttle nearly can't take off and it goes up to the last second before the bomb blows up. Also it shows its America that saves the world, that the Russians and even the Chinese are backwards, gives the shuttles the names Freedom and Independence.
The biggest surprise to me is that J.J. Abrams co-wrote the script and he is a man who brought the world Alias, Mission Impossible III and the new Star Trek film. The film is too long, and drags very quickly. The film is also trying to be funny and most of the time the jokes fall flat.
As a director who is most of the time derided anyway, Michael Bay does a really poor job here. He cuts too much so you can't see what's happening and they are many continuity errors. Such examples are when A.J. (Ben Affleck) is shot and changes which leg is shot and when the French Bulldog attacks Godzilla, from toy models to a giant balloon: a poor editing job there.
The acting is hit and miss. Bruce Willis tries his best, but it's not his best work. Liv Tyler was hit and miss. Ben Affleck is poor as always. Steve Buscemi, Owen Wilson and Michael Clarke Duncan offer comedic relief, at least they have gone on to do better things. The strongest actors were Billy Bob Thornton who is excellent actor and Will Patton, whom character Chick does at least seem to have some depth to him.
There are some positives. They are excellent special effects and action sequence, especially when New York suffers the meteoroid shower. The score is good, but can be overbearing at times.
At least most of the people involved have done better things afterwards. Michael Bay did the Island and Transformers. Bruce Willis: Sin City, Live Free or Die Hard. Liv Tyler: Lord of the Rings, the Incredible Hulk. Michael Clarke Duncan: Sin City, The Green Mile, etc...
It best not to see this film unless you really turn your brain off.