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| Will Patton, Bruce Willis, Michael Clarke Duncan, Ben Affleck, and Owen Wilson |
Dan -
I may get a lot of criticism for this next comment, but I’ll say it anyway: I love Michael Bay movies! I’m not sure if it is his unabashed glorification of all things American, his cool low-angle rotating shots of the heroes, or the fact that he knows how make stuff blow up real good. They are enormously entertaining (except for Bad Boys II which just sucked) and, surprisingly, they stir a sense of emotion in me from time to time. Even a movie like this one.
If I have one complaint about Michael Bay movies, it is that there is never any sense of real time or space in most of his movies. The Transformers movies are the worst offenders (There’s a giant airfield behind the Smithsonian with lots of mothballed aircraft? Seriously?), but this movie is right on their heels. And maybe that is the fault of the people who edit his movies, but he still must share some of the blame. There will be unexplained costume changes by the characters, or the sun will suddenly have set from one scene to the next without any justification of time passing. Just my own personal observances, but hey, these are movies and the beauty of this art form is that a person can create whatever reality they want (like simultaneously launching 2 space shuttles within a mile of each other, and then landing those space shuttles on a moving asteroid).
Enough negativity. This movie is for entertainment and nothing else. You as the viewer must be willing to suspend your disbelief and just enjoy the ride, so don’t think too hard about this movie unless you just want to mock it. That being said, I like this movie. It is pure escapist fun. The plot is simple enough: A giant asteroid is headed for Earth and unless it is stopped it will impact and kill the entire planet. NASA seeks the expertise of Bruce Willis’ oil-drilling roughneck crew in order to implant a nuclear bomb in the middle of the asteroid.
I think that many filmmakers, including Bay, take great joy in thinking up ways to destroy the planet. I secretly wonder if Michael Bay and Roland Emmerich (of Independence Day and 2012 fame) were best friends as children since their movies seem to be the most detrimental to Earth. In this movie we see Paris obliterated and New York damaged severely by an array of asteroids (including a shot of the World Trade Center on fire with a hole in it, which almost gave me chills when I saw it).
I give this movie 4 out of 5 stars. It’s strictly a fun movie that you should not be concerned about taking seriously.
Nerd Note: Have you ever noticed just how many movies with similar plots are released, and often in the same year? I submit the following for example: Deep Impact and Armageddon in 1998, Antz and A Bug’s Life also in 1998, Capote and Infamous in 2005, Tombstone and Wyatt Earp in 1994, Mission to Mars and Red Planet in 2000, Dante’s Peak and Volcano in 1997, and Killers and Knight and Day in 2010 to name a few. One would think movie studios checked around before green-lighting some of their projects. I’m just sayin’...
Mark -
Surprisingly this was actually the first time that I have seen this film, and I really don’t feel like I missed out on waiting this long to see it. I really thought that I would enjoy this film since I really like many of the actors in the film, but this film is a classic example of how a bad script can’t be saved by good actors. I understand that this film is supposed to be enjoyed mostly for its special effects and the actors themselves, but the action-comedy approach to this film ends up creating huge problems for the plot, leaving this movie to be nothing but a head shaking joke.
The plot of this film centers around the idea that a meteor the size of Texas is headed towards Earth, and if it isn’t stopped then it will destroy everything and everyone. In order to save the world, it is decided that a group of misfit oil drillers will fly out into space, land on the meteor, and drill into the core of the meteor. Once the drillers have reached a certain depth, a nuclear weapon will be placed in the hole and detonated; theoretically splitting the meteor in such a way that no debris will hit the Earth.
So here’s my major problem with this film: Much to my displeasure every little event in this film becomes life or death. I sat watching this film thinking that I was watching the film 2012 all over again, and that anyone who survives just barely survives, yet the reasoning they use to obtain survival is absolutely ridiculous. For a film with so many characters that are supposed to be very intelligent, these so called intellects came up with some of the stupidest possible solutions or ideas when confronted with problems. Although it is quite obvious from the beginning that time is going to play a major factor in the plot, this film shows absolutely no sense of real time being used, and in my opinion shows one of the dumbest uses of effectively using time to accomplish the desired outcome.
Somehow this film helped relaunch the career of Bruce Willis, and helped to launch the careers of Michael Clarke Duncan and Owen Wilson which I am very grateful for. How they accomplished this I’m uncertain, but I guess any exposure is sometimes better than none. The funny parts of this movie were definitely the most enjoyable for me, but it still couldn’t really due much to save this film. 2 *’s out of 5
My Random Thought For Armageddon: I understand that Michael Bay probably isn’t going for realism in his films, but I unfortunately found Bay’s Transformer films to be just as, if not more realistic than this film.
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