It's not that it's bad - I just don't like being taken for stupid!

Rating: 3/10 (27 August 2007)

There are far too many high quality reviews on this film for me to make any real impact with my humble views. However... I re-watched Armageddon on TV a few nights ago and now, ten years after it was unleashed, I feel I can take a more pragmatic view.
Most of the articulate and intelligent reviews that have already been written cover off the preposterous nature of the science which underpins the woeful script. For example, the varying degrees to which gravity obeys the laws of dramatic tension rather than the laws of physics, the absolute necessity to have some serious Gatlin guns mounted on the drilling vehicles (what were they expecting  annoyed aliens?), the ludicrous notion that NASA would let the moronic men-children anywhere within fifty miles of a shuttle - rather than simply train their own highly disciplined astronauts to operate a drill, the cardboard cut-out Russian cosmonaut whose script direction read "SHOUTING" at the beginning of each line. And... nukes with big green countdown read-outs on them, 12-inch diameter drills that make 36-inch diameter holes, Earth shorn of time-zones and the amazing a ability to put on sun-glasses whilst wearing a space-suit helmet. You get the gist, the list is endless.
All these and many other inconsistencies, inaccuracies and failures of reason are just about forgivable if the movie delivers what it is meant to, which on some levels it does, I suppose. The thing that really gets me though, and this is the bit that I find pretty unforgivable, is that the makers of the movie assume that I (and you) are morons who will let these issues go without questioning. Maybe for some of the Cletuses and Darlenes out there  well, OK. But the vast majority of us average intelligence movie goers will say, "Whoa, hold on buddy. Do you expect me to swallow that premise or this notion?" To which Bay and his ilk say, "Sure, why not, eat your popcorn." That's what really irks me. The fact that they had all this money to spend and they used four dollars of it on technical advice for the script. Sheesh.
"Space dementia"... really, I ask you.