Armageddon is a Michael Bay science-fiction film starring Bruce Willis, Billy Bob Thornton, Ben Affleck and Liv Tyler. It was produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and released in 1998 by Touchstone Pictures. Carrying the tag line, “For Love. For Honor. For Humankind,” it tells the story of a group of core drillers and geologists sent by NASA to the outer space to deflate an asteroid heading towards Earth.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) discovers that an asteroid, approximately the size of Texas, is rapidly hurtling towards Earth. Unfortunately, their plans of destroying it before it hits Earth in 18 days are all ineffectual. Finally, the U.S. military steps in and suggests using nuclear warhead to blow the asteroid into pieces. But the only way to do it is to use the warhead inside the asteroid itself. Known oil driller Harry Stamper (Bruce Willis) is the only man who can do it, and together with other local drillers and geologists, they head towards the asteroid for their outer space excavation.
Although the film was a box office hit, it received negative reviews from movie critics. It was generally criticized its scientific inaccuracies, particularly for its poor adherence to law of physics, such as the asteroid having gravity, and having noise in the outer space. This even led to NASA using the film in their training programs, with prospective managers being asked to find as many scientific flaws in the movie as they can. They have found at least 168 inaccuracies in the film. Armageddon scored 41 % on Rotten Tomatoes and 42% on Metacritic. Known movie critic Roger Ebert also included this film in his list of most hated films. As Ebert stated in his original review, “The movie is an assault on the eyes, the ears, the brain, common sense and the human desire to be entertained.”
But despite of the general critical disapproval on the film, Armageddon still received Saturn Awards for Best Direction and Best Science Fiction Film and was nominated for four Academy Awards (
Best Sound, Best Special Effects, Best Effects Editing, and
Best Original Song).
-Katherine Garcia, BuddyTV Staff Columnist
(Image Courtesy of Touchstone Pictures)