If you watch Armageddon, only watch it once. If you see it more than that, you'll realize how terrible it really is.

Rating: 6/10 (6 July 2000)

Armageddon definitely sets the record for fooling the most people into thinking it's a good movie. When I first saw it, I was blown away. I loved every second of it! It was exciting, it was spectacularly done, the acting was great, the dialogue was funny, I couldn't think of a single thing wrong with it. Obviously, I bought it on video. Then I watched it at home, and saw for the first time what an awful movie it is.
Armageddon manipulates the emotions of the audience like no other disaster movie ever has. The romantic scenes (like those in The Rock) are clumsily and randomly thrown in (this way it will appeal to women, too, and therefore make more money in the box office). The tough guy acting, particularly (and CONSTANTLY) on the part of Bruce Willis as Harry Stamper, the world's best oil driller, was terrible! There were so many scenes in this film that were thrown in for no other reason than to get a meaningless laugh or broaden the target audience that it began to get tiring trying to figure out which ones actually had anything to do with the story itself.
Besides all that, there were also horrible discrepancies in the storyline. Early in the film, Dan Truman (Billy Bob Thornton) describes the effects of the asteroid collision as "basically the worst parts of the Bible." Even the name of the film, "Armageddon," is taken straight from the Bible. Given that, you have to wonder why there are so many times when the characters (mostly Stamper and Truman) ask God for help, ask God for just a little more time, pray that "God be with them." Why are they asking God for help?! They just finished pointing out that it was God that sent the asteroid! Why WOULD He help? You can see how the hypocrisy of religion even manages to wiggle its way into Hollywood films.
The dialogue of the movie also took a lot away from several of the action packed scenes. The phrase "She's gonna blow!" is uttered so many times that by the time the scene's climax is reached it has no effect anymore. The predictability of the ending is also a serious disappointment. Furthermore, the logical errors were a little disturbing. For example, there was moderate WIND on the asteroid, as well as clouds of dust and smoke floating calmly around. That's funny, I thought we were in SPACE traveling at 22,000 mph.
As a whole, Armageddon is an edge of your seat action thriller, but there wasn't a whole lot of effort put into it beyond special effects and sheer financial purging. It's never boring, but the structural, logical, and storyline problems take away a great deal from what could have been a spectacular disaster film.