Armageddon

***Armageddon*** is a 1998 science-fiction disaster action film starring Bruce Willis, Billy Bob Thornton, Ben Affleck and Liv Tyler. The film was released on July 1, 1998, and was directed by Michael Bay from a screenplay written by Jonathan Hensleigh (who wrote the screenplays for *Die Hard with a Vengeance* and *Jumanji*) and J.J. Abrams.

## Plot

A shuttle's unfortunate demise in outer space alerts NASA to a doomsday asteroid that is on a collision course with Earth. it seems that the only way to knock it off course is to drill into its surface and detonate a nuclear weapon. But as NASA's underfunded yet resourceful team trains the world's best drillers for the job, the world's social order begins to break down as the information reaches the public and hysteria results. As high-ranking officials play politics with the effort, members of the drilling team face deep personal issues that might jeopardize humanity's last chance.

## Good Qualities

1. Disney finally got its chance to create a disaster movie.
2. The orchestral soundtrack is pretty good, especially the iconic song *"I Don't Wanna Miss a Thing"* by Aerosmith.
3. For the most part, the special effects look pretty good, especially by late 90s standards.
4. Billy Bob Thornton as Dan Truman is one of the few saving graces of the movie.
5. Good amount of humor, especially during the crew training scenes.
6. The story is epic and breathtaking for Touchstone standards, like most of the Disney films, and it’s also Touchstone’s highest grossing film to date.
7. There are a bunch of exciting action scenes.
8. Some good acting.
	* Despite his very bad performance as Harry Stamper, Bruce Willis did some decently as well.
9. Harry's death is gut-wrenching and emotional.

## Bad Qualities

1. Michael Bay's direction isn't all that great.
2. Bruce Willis did not do a good job as Harry Stamper.
3. Liv Tyler's character is extremely unlikable.
4. There's a staggering amount of scientific inaccuracies. So much, in fact, that NASA uses the film as part of their management training program to see how many inaccuracies candidates are able to identify.
5. The central idea is drilling an 800-foot hole into an asteroid (well, planetoid) the size of the state of Texas and then splitting the whole thing in half with a 20-megaton nuke. This would be like trying to split a bowling ball in half by pricking a pinhole in the surface and then farting into it.
6. Created as a counter-film to the more cerebral *Deep Impact*, and led to the addition of an out-of-place action sequence in that film.
7. Some unbelievably laughable and offensive dialogue; like when a cab driver says *"Saddam Hussein is bombing us!"* during the scene where New York City is being destroyed by a meteor shower. This line and scene definitely didn’t age well, considering that the original World Trade Center (especially its Twin Towers) was destroyed three years after this film came out on 9/11.
8. **Plot Hole:** Instead of training drillers to become astronauts, wouldn't had been easier to train actual astronauts to drill?

## Trivia

* Cheetawolf uses a section of the theme song for this film in his *Let's Fail: The Quest for Zero Points* video series, where he plays the *Papa's Gameria* series and intentionally screws up the customers' orders as much as he possibly can so he can get zero points. When he does get zero points, that’s when the music of this movie plays.
	+ Here is an example: https://youtu.be/lv5uAcy-XCU&t=1698s