Armageddon (1998 film)

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Armageddon
Theatrical release poster
Directed byMichael Bay
Screenplay by
Adaptation by
Story by
Produced by
Starring
CinematographyJohn Schwartzman
Edited by
Music by
Production
companies
Distributed byBuena Vista Pictures
Release date
  • July 1, 1998 (1998-07-01)
Running time
151 minutes[1]
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$140 million[2]
Box office$553.7 million[2]

Armageddon is a 1998 American science fiction disaster film produced and directed by Michael Bay, produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, and released by Touchstone Pictures. The film follows a group of blue-collar deep-core drillers sent by NASA to stop a gigantic asteroid on a collision course with Earth. It stars Bruce Willis with Ben Affleck, Billy Bob Thornton, Liv Tyler, Owen Wilson, Will Patton, Peter Stormare, William Fichtner, Michael Clarke Duncan, Keith David, and Steve Buscemi.

Despite international box-office success, and becoming the highest-grossing film of 1998 worldwide, the film received generally unfavorable reviews. Astronomers noted that the similar disaster film Deep Impact was more scientifically accurate.[3][4]

Plot

A massive meteor shower destroys the orbiting Space Shuttle Atlantis, before entering the atmosphere and bombarding New York City. NASA discovers that the meteors were pushed out of the asteroid belt by a rogue comet that jarred loose a Texas-sized asteroid that will impact Earth in 18 days, which would cause an extinction level event that will wipe out all life on the planet. NASA scientists plan to drill a deep shaft into the asteroid and plant a nuclear weapon which, when detonated, will split the asteroid into two-halves that will fly safely past Earth. NASA contacts Harry Stamper, considered the best deep sea oil driller in the world, for assistance. Harry departs for Houston with his daughter Grace, where Harry agrees to participate in the mission, explaining that he will need his team: Chick, Rockhound, Max, Oscar, Bear, Noonan, and A.J., Grace's lover, to whom Grace gets engaged shortly before the mission. They also agree to help once their unusual list of demands is met.

As NASA puts Harry and his crew through 12 days of rigorous astronaut training at the Johnson Space Center, Harry and his team re-outfit the mobile drillers, named "Armadillos", which they will use on the asteroid. NASA is forced to reveal their plans to the world when a piece of the asteroid wipes out part of Shanghai. Two advanced Space Shuttles, Freedom and Independence, are launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Once in orbit the shuttles dock with the Russian space station Mir crewed by Lev Andropov to refuel. However, a fuel pipe leaks into electrical components causing a fire to break out during the fuel transfer and the station is evacuated, but in the haste, Lev and AJ are trapped in the fuel pod area. They manage to escape through a vent before and narrowly make it to shuttle Independence before the station explodes. Sixty hours later the shuttles slingshot around the far side of the Moon to land on the rear of the asteroid. As they travel through the asteroid's debris field, Independence's hull is punctured and it crashes, with most of its crew killed. Grace, watching from Mission Control, is distraught by A.J.'s apparent death.

Freedom lands safely, but misses the target area by 26 miles (42 km), meaning the team must now drill through a thicker crust of compressed iron ferrite. When they fall behind schedule and communications threaten to fail, the President orders the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Kimsey to initiate "Secondary Protocol"; to remotely detonate the weapon on the asteroid's surface. Knowing this would be ineffective, NASA executive Dan Truman and his team delay General Kimsey and the military at Mission Control, while Harry persuades the shuttle commander Colonel Sharp to disarm the bomb so they can complete the drilling. After the mission is resumed, the Freedom Armadillo strikes a methane gas pocket and is blown into space, killing Max. With the mission presumed lost, worldwide panic ensues and martial law is declared in many countries, just before another meteorite destroys Paris. A.J., Lev, and Bear, having survived the Independence crash, arrive in Independence's Armadillo in time to complete the drilling.

As the asteroid approaches Earth, the surviving crew is struck by a rock storm, which kills Gruber and damages the bomb's remote trigger, meaning someone must stay behind to detonate it manually. The non-flight crew draw straws and A.J. is selected. As he and Harry exit the airlock, Harry rips off A.J.'s air hose and shoves him back inside, telling him he is the son he never had and would be proud to have him marry Grace. Before preparing to detonate the bomb, Harry contacts Grace to say his last goodbyes. Freedom moves to a safe distance and Harry pushes the button at the last second, successfully detonating the nuclear weapon and splitting the asteroid in two at the cost of his own life. Both halves safely fly past Earth. Freedom lands, and the surviving crew return as heroes. Sometime later A.J. and Grace are married, with portraits of Harry and the other lost crew members present in memoriam.

Cast

Production

Director Michael Bay and producer Jerry Bruckheimer at Edwards Air Force Base, Spring 1998

In May 1998, Walt Disney Studios chairman Joe Roth expanded the film's budget by $3 million to include additional special effects scenes. This additional footage, incorporated two months prior to the film's release, was specifically added for the television advertising campaign to differentiate the film from Deep Impact which was released a few months before.[5]

According to Bruce Joel Rubin, writer of Deep Impact, a production president at Disney took notes on everything the writer said during lunch about his script and initiated Armageddon as a counter film at Disney.[6]

Nine writers worked on the script, five of whom are credited. In addition to Robert Roy Pool, Jonathan Hensleigh, Tony Gilroy, Shane Salerno and J. J. Abrams, the writers involved included Paul Attanasio, Ann Biderman, Scott Rosenberg and Robert Towne. Originally, it was Hensleigh's script, based on Pool's original, that had been given the green-light by Touchstone. Then-producer, Jerry Bruckheimer, hired the succession of scribes for rewrites and polishes.[7]

Music

Main article: Armageddon: The Album

Release

Marketing

Prior to Armageddon's release, the film was advertised in Super Bowl XXXII at a cost of $2.6 million.[8]

Home media

Despite a mixed critical reception, a DVD edition of Armageddon was released by The Criterion Collection, a specialist film distributor of primarily arthouse films that markets what it considers to be "important classic and contemporary films" and "cinema at its finest". In an essay supporting the selection of Armageddon, film scholar Jeanine Basinger, who taught Michael Bay at Wesleyan University, states that the film is "a work of art by a cutting-edge artist who is a master of movement, light, color, and shape—and also of chaos, razzle-dazzle, and explosion". She sees it as a celebration of working men: "This film makes these ordinary men noble, lifting their efforts up into an epic event." Further, she states that in the first few moments of the film all the main characters are well established, saying, "If that isn't screenwriting, I don't know what is".[9]

The film was also released on VHS and DVD by Touchstone Home Video on November 13, 1998, and would surpass Pretty Woman to become Buena Vista Home Entertainment's best-selling live-action title.[10] The film was released on a standard edition Blu-ray in 2010 with only a few special features.[11][citation needed]

Space Shuttle Columbia disaster

Following the 2003 Columbia disaster, some screen captures from the opening scene where Atlantis is destroyed were passed off as satellite images of the disaster in a hoax.[12] Additionally, the American cable network FX, which had intended to broadcast Armageddon that evening, removed the film from its schedule and aired Aliens in its place.[13]

Reception

Box office

Armageddon was released on July 1, 1998 in 3,127 theaters in the United States and Canada. It ranked first at the box office with an opening weekend gross of $36 million. It grossed $201.6 million in the United States and Canada and $352.1 million in other territories for a worldwide total of $553.7 million.[2] It was the highest-grossing film of 1998 worldwide and the second-highest-grossing film of that year in the United States, finishing just behind Saving Private Ryan.

Critical response

Armageddon received mostly negative reviews from film critics, many of whom took issue with "the furious pace of its editing".[14] On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a 38% "Rotten" approval rating based on 121 reviews, with an average rating of 5.2/10. The critical consensus states, "Lovely to look at but about as intelligent as the asteroid that serves as the movie's antagonist, Armageddon slickly sums up the cinematic legacies of producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director Michael Bay."[15] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A-" on an A+ to F scale.[16]

The film is on the list of Roger Ebert's most hated films.[17] In his original review, Ebert stated, "The movie is an assault on the eyes, the ears, the brain, common sense and the human desire to be entertained". On Siskel and Ebert, Ebert gave it a Thumbs Down. However, his co-host Gene Siskel gave it a Thumbs Up. Ebert went on to name Armageddon as the worst film of 1998 (though he was originally considering Spice World).[18] Todd McCarthy of Variety also gave the film a negative review, noting Michael Bay's rapid cutting style: "Much of the confusion, as well as the lack of dramatic rhythm or character development, results directly from Bay's cutting style, which resembles a machine gun stuck in the firing position for 21⁄2 hours."[19] In April 2013, in a Miami Herald interview to promote Pain & Gain, Bay was quoted as having said:

...We had to do the whole movie in 16 weeks. It was a massive undertaking. That was not fair to the movie. I would redo the entire third act if I could. But the studio literally took the movie away from us. It was terrible. My visual effects supervisor had a nervous breakdown, so I had to be in charge of that. I called James Cameron and asked "What do you do when you're doing all the effects yourself?" But the movie did fine.[20]

Some time after the article was published, Bay changed his stance, claiming that his apology only related to the editing of the film, not the whole film,[21] and accused the writer of the article for taking his words out of context. The author of the article, Miami Herald writer Rene Rodriguez, claimed: "NBC asked me for a response, and I played them the tape. I didn't misquote anyone. All the sites that picked up the story did."[22]

Scientific accuracy

See also: Asteroid deflection

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Bay admitted that the film's central premise "that NASA could actually do something in a situation like this" was unrealistic. Additionally, the largest known Potentially Hazardous Asteroid (PHA) is (53319) 1999 JM8, which is only 7 kilometres (4.3 mi) in diameter,[23] while the comet in the movie is described as being "the size of Texas". Near the end of the credits, there is a disclaimer stating, "The National Aeronautics and Space Administration's cooperation and assistance does not reflect an endorsement of the contents of the film or the treatment of the characters depicted therein."[24]

The infeasibility of the H-bomb approach was published by four postgraduate physics students in 2011[25] and then reported by The Daily Telegraph in 2012:

A mathematical analysis of the situation found that for Willis's approach to be effective, he would need to be in possession of an H-bomb a billion times stronger than the Soviet Union's "Big Ivan", the biggest ever detonated on Earth. Using estimates of the asteroid's size, density, speed and distance from Earth based on information in the film, the postgraduate students from Leicester University found that to split the asteroid in two, with both pieces clearing Earth, would require 800 trillion terajoules of energy. In contrast, the total energy output of "Big Ivan", which was tested by the Soviet Union in 1961, was only 418,000 terajoules.[26][27]

In the commentary track, Ben Affleck says he "asked Michael why it was easier to train oil drillers to become astronauts than it was to train astronauts to become oil drillers, and he told me to shut the fuck up, so that was the end of that talk."[28]

Accolades

The film received four Academy Award nominations at the 71st Academy Awards, for Best Sound (Kevin O'Connell, Greg P. Russell and Keith A. Wester), Best Visual Effects, Best Sound Effects Editing, and Best Original Song ("I Don't Want to Miss a Thing" performed by Aerosmith).[29] The film received the Saturn Awards for Best Direction and Best Science Fiction Film (where it tied with Dark City). It was also nominated for seven Razzie Awards[30] including: Worst Actor (Bruce Willis), Worst Picture, Worst Director, Worst Screenplay, Worst Supporting Actress (Liv Tyler), Worst Screen Couple (Tyler and Ben Affleck) and Worst Original Song. Only one Razzie was awarded: Bruce Willis received the Worst Actor award for Armageddon, in addition to his appearances in Mercury Rising and The Siege, both released in the same year as this film.

Award Category Winner/Nominee Result Ref.
Academy Awards Best Sound Effects Editing George Watters II Nominated [31]
Best Visual Effects Richard R. Hoover, Patrick McClung and John Frazier Nominated
Best Original Song ("I Don't Want to Miss a Thing") Diane Warren Nominated
Best Sound Kevin O'Connell, Greg P. Russell and Keith A. Wester Nominated
Awards of the Japanese Academy Outstanding Foreign Language Film Armageddon Nominated
ASCAP Film and Television Music Awards Most Performed Songs from a Motion Picture Diane Warren Won [32]
Blockbuster Entertainment Awards Favorite Actor - Sci-Fi Bruce Willis Won
Favorite Actress - Sci-Fi Liv Tyler Nominated
Favorite Supporting Actor - Sci-Fi Ben Affleck Won
Billy Bob Thornton Nominated
Favorite Soundtrack Trevor Rabin and Harry Gregson-Williams Nominated
BMI Film & TV Awards Best Music Trevor Rabin Won
Cinema Audio Society Awards Outstanding Achievement in Sound Mixing for a Feature Film Kevin O'Connell, Greg P. Russell and Keith A. Wester Nominated [33]
1999 Grammy Awards Best Song Written Specifically for a Motion Picture or for Television Diane Warren Nominated
19th Golden Raspberry Awards Worst Actor Bruce Willis Won
Worst Director Michael Bay Nominated
Worst Original Song ("I Don't Want to Miss a Thing") Diane Warren Nominated
Worst Picture Jerry Bruckheimer, Gale Anne Hurd, Michael Bay Nominated
Worst Screen Couple Ben Affleck and Liv Tyler Nominated
Worst Screenplay Jonathan Hensleigh and J. J. Abrams Nominated
Worst Supporting Actress Liv Tyler Nominated
Golden Reel Awards Best Sound Editing Kevin O'Connell, Greg P. Russell and Keith A. Wester Nominated
Best Sound Editing - Music Bob Badami, Will Kaplan, Shannon Erbe, Mark Jan Wlodarkiewicz Nominated
1998 Golden Satellite Awards Best Original Song Aerosmith Won
Best Visual Effects Richard R. Hoover, Pat McClung and John Frazier Nominated
Golden Trailer Awards Best Trailer Nominated
1999 MTV Movie Awards Best Action Sequence Armageddon Won
Best Performance - Male Ben Affleck Nominated
Best Performance - Female Liv Tyler Nominated
Best Movie Armageddon Nominated
Best Movie Song Aerosmith Won
Best On-Screen Duo Ben Affleck and Liv Tyler Nominated
Saturn Awards Best Actor Bruce Willis Nominated
Best Costumes Michael Kaplan, Magali Guidasci Nominated
Best Director Michael Bay Won
Best Music Trevor Rabin Nominated
Best Science Fiction Film Armageddon Won (Tied with Dark City)
Best Special Effects Richard R. Hoover, Pat McClung and John Frazier Nominated
Best Supporting Actor Ben Affleck Nominated
Stinkers Bad Movie Awards Worst Performance by an Actor in a Lead Role Bruce Willis Won [34]
Worst Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role Liv Tyler Nominated
Worst Screenplay for a Film Grossing More Than $100 Million (Using Hollywood Math) Jonathan Hensleigh and J. J. Abrams Nominated
Worst On-Screen Couple Ben Affleck & Liv Tyler Won
Most Annoying Fake Accent Bruce Willis Nominated
Teen Choice Awards Choice Movie Actor Ben Affleck Nominated

Other media

Merchandising

Revell and Monogram released two model kits inspired by the film's spacecraft and the Armadillos, in 1998. The first one, "Space Shuttle with Armadillo drilling unit", included an X-71, a small, rough Armadillo and a pedestal. The second one, "Russian Space Center", included the Mir, with the docking adapter seen in the film, and another pedestal.[citation needed]

In 2011, Fantastic Plastic released another X-71 kit, the "X-71 Super Shuttle", the goal of which was to be more accurate than the Revell/Monogram kit.[35]

Theme park attraction

Armageddon – Les Effets Speciaux was an attraction based on Armageddon at Walt Disney Studios Park located at Disneyland Paris.[36] The attraction simulated the scene in the movie in which the Russian Space Station is destroyed.[37] Michael Clarke Duncan ("Bear" in the film) was featured in the pre-show.[37]

See also

References

  • Lichtenfeld, Eric (2007). Action Speaks Louder. Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press. ISBN 978-0-8195-6801-4. OCLC 636164671.
  1. ^ "ARMAGEDDON (12)". British Board of Film Classification. July 7, 1998. Archived from the original on September 4, 2015. Retrieved May 5, 2015.
  2. ^ a b c "Armageddon (1998)". Box Office Mojo. October 11, 1998. Archived from the original on July 14, 2019. Retrieved February 18, 2020.
  3. ^ "Disaster Movies". Box Office Mojo. Archived from the original on June 12, 2004. Retrieved March 23, 2008.
  4. ^ Plait, Phil (February 17, 2000). "Hollywood Does the Universe Wrong". Space.com. Archived from the original on August 18, 2000. Retrieved January 26, 2009.
  5. ^ Lichtenfeld, p. 221.
  6. ^ "Tales from the Script: Hollywood Screenwriters Share Their Stories – – Nonfiction Book & Film Project About Screenwriting". Talesfromthescript.com. Archived from the original on October 8, 2018. Retrieved April 29, 2011.
  7. ^ Petrikin, Chris (June 8, 1998). "'Armageddon' credits set". Variety.com. Archived from the original on December 1, 2017. Retrieved December 9, 2017.
  8. ^ Lichtenfeld, p. 224.
  9. ^ The Criterion Collection: Armageddon by Michael Bay Archived February 18, 2008, at the Wayback Machine. Criterion.com. Retrieved on 2012-05-14.
  10. ^ 1999 Annual Report (Report). The Walt Disney Company. 2000.
  11. ^ Armageddon Blu-ray, archived from the original on June 4, 2019, retrieved June 4, 2019
  12. ^ "Photos of the Shuttle Columbia Disaster?". BreakTheChain.org. Archived from the original on January 21, 2012.
  13. ^ Sue Chan (February 3, 2003). "TV Pulls Shuttle Sensitive Material". CBS News. Archived from the original on February 18, 2003. Retrieved April 16, 2020.
  14. ^ Lichtenfeld, Eric (2007). Action Speaks Louder: Violence, Spectacle, and the American Action Movie. Wesleyan University Press. p. 220. ISBN 978-0-8195-6801-4. Archived from the original on April 16, 2017. Retrieved April 16, 2016.
  15. ^ "Armageddon". rottentomatoes.com. July 1, 1998. Archived from the original on March 4, 2020. Retrieved February 18, 2020.
  16. ^ "CinemaScore". cinemascore.com. Archived from the original on January 2, 2018. Retrieved July 9, 2021.
  17. ^ Ebert, Roger (August 11, 2005). "Ebert's Most Hated". Chicago Sun-Times. Archived from the original on July 10, 2017. Retrieved January 14, 2011.
  18. ^ Roger Ebert – Armageddon Archived June 9, 2021, at the Wayback Machine. Rogerebert.suntimes.com. Retrieved on 2012-05-14.
  19. ^ Lichtenfeld, p. 220.
  20. ^ Rodriguez, Rene. [https://web.archive.org/web/20130501131328/http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/04/20/3353317/pain-gain-revisits-a-horrific.html Archived May 1, 2013, at the Wayback Machine "'Pain & Gain' revisits a horrific Miami crime"] The Miami Herald (April 21, 2013).
  21. ^ "Miami Herald: Michael Bay: No apology for Armageddon (April 24, 2013)". Archived from the original on February 2, 2014. Retrieved January 20, 2014.
  22. ^ "Michael Bay Hits Back at Reporter in 'Armageddon' Apology Flap" Archived October 21, 2013, at the Wayback Machine. Deadline Hollywood (April 2013).
  23. ^ "3200 Phaethon". Archived from the original on November 29, 2017. Retrieved January 17, 2019.
  24. ^ TOUCHSTONE PICTURES ARMAGEDDON Archived September 8, 2012, at the Wayback Machine. movie-page.com.
  25. ^ Back A, Brown G, Hall B, Turner S (2011). "Could Bruce Willis Save the World?". Physics Special Topics. 10 (1). University of Leicester. Archived from the original on February 26, 2013.
  26. ^ Hall, Ben; Brown, Gregory; Back, Ashley; Turner, Stuart (October 1, 2012). "It's Official: Try-Hard Bruce Willis Could Not Save the World". Astronomy & Geophysics. 53 (5): 5.5. doi:10.1111/j.1468-4004.2012.53504_6.x. ISSN 1366-8781.
  27. ^ Collins, Nick (August 7, 2012). "Bruce Willis would have needed a bigger bomb to stop asteroid, scientists say". The Daily Telegraph. London. Archived from the original on August 8, 2012.
  28. ^ jeremykirk13 (February 2, 2012). "61 Things We Learned from the 'Armageddon' Commentary". Film School Rejects. Archived from the original on February 9, 2018. Retrieved June 17, 2016.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  29. ^ "The 71st Academy Awards (1999) Nominees and Winners". oscars.org. Archived from the original on October 15, 2013. Retrieved November 19, 2011.
  30. ^ "1998 Golden Raspberry Award Nominees and Winners". Archived from the original on March 28, 2006. Retrieved April 30, 2006.
  31. ^ [1][dead link]
  32. ^ "ASCAP Honors Top Film & TV Music Composers at 27th Annual Awards Celebration". Ascap.com. June 28, 2012. Archived from the original on October 29, 2020. Retrieved June 6, 2014.
  33. ^ Awards for Armageddon at IMDb Edit this at Wikidata
  34. ^ "The Worst of 1998 Winners". August 13, 1999. Archived from the original on October 13, 1999. Retrieved September 8, 2019.
  35. ^ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on January 29, 2018. Retrieved January 28, 2018.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  36. ^ "Armageddon – Backlot – Disneyland® Resort Paris". International.parks.disneylandparis.com. Archived from the original on April 1, 2013. Retrieved April 29, 2011.
  37. ^ a b "Armageddon – Les Effets Speciaux | Photos Magiques – Disneyland Paris photos". Photos Magiques. Archived from the original on October 3, 2011. Retrieved April 29, 2011.

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