Armageddon (1998 film)
Template:Short description Template:Use American English Template:Use mdy dates Template:Infobox film Armageddon is a 1998 American science fiction disaster film produced and directed by Michael Bay, produced by Jerry Bruckheimer. The film follows a group of blue-collar deep-core drillers sent by NASA to destroy a gigantic asteroid, which is the size of Texas, on a collision course with Earth. It stars an ensemble cast including Bruce Willis with Billy Bob Thornton, Liv Tyler, Ben Affleck, Will Patton, Peter Stormare, Keith David, Owen Wilson, William Fichtner and Steve Buscemi.
The film was released on July 1, 1998 by Buena Vista Pictures through its Touchstone Pictures label. It received mixed reviews from critics. Armageddon was a commercial success, grossing $553.7 million worldwide against a $140 million budget and becoming the highest-grossing film of 1998, and the highest-grossing film to be released by Touchstone Pictures.
Plot
[edit]A massive meteor shower destroys the orbiting Space Shuttle Atlantis before entering the atmosphere and bombarding Boston, Philadelphia, Moncton, Halifax, Newfoundland and New York City, the latter being extensively damaged. The meteors were pushed out of the asteroid belt by a collision from a rogue comet—which also dislodged a massive asteroid the size of Texas—and NASA learns it will impact Earth in 18 days, potentially wiping out all life on Earth. NASA devises a plan to drill a deep hole into the asteroid, into which they will insert and detonate a nuclear bomb to destroy it.
They recruit Harry Stamper, a third-generation oil driller and owner of an oil drilling company. Harry agrees to help but on the condition that he bring in his own team to do the drilling. He picks his best employees for the job: Chick Chapel, his best friend and right-hand man; geologists Rockhound and Oscar Choice; and drillers Bear Curlene, Freddie Noonan, Max Lennert, and A. J. Frost (who has been dating Harry's daughter Grace despite Harry's objections). Over twelve days, they are trained to become astronauts with astronaut Willie Sharp, who will pilot Freedom—one of the two super shuttles to fly to the asteroid, the other being the Independence. Before leaving, Chick apologizes to his ex-wife for wronging her and sees his son—who is unaware of his parentage—and Grace accepts A.J.'s marriage proposal, much to Harry's reluctant dismay; she later has her father promise to return home safe and with her fiancé.
Following the destruction of Shanghai by another meteor strike, word of the asteroid becomes public to the world. Both shuttles take off without incident and dock with the Russian space station Mir to take on fuel, but a leaky pipeline ignites the fuel pod on fire. A.J. and Roscosmos Cosmonaut Lev Andropov narrowly manage to board Independence before the space station is destroyed.
Approaching the asteroid, Independence is damaged by debris and crashes, killing all on board except Lev, Bear, and A.J. They embark in the shuttle's Armadillo to find the Freedom crew, which landed 26 miles from its intended landing site. When the drilling goes slower than predicted, Sharp reports to Mission Control that it is unlikely they will reach the depth necessary to destroy the asteroid before "Zero Barrier", the point after which detonating the rock will not save Earth. The President of the United States decides to remotely detonate the bomb from Earth immediately, not understanding this will cause total mission failure. Sharp and Harry have a vicious argument, but agree to defuse the bomb and work together after Harry promises Sharp that he will accomplish the mission. They make progress on drilling, but a missed gas pocket causes the Armadillo and Max to be blown into space. Just as Harry, NASA, and the world believe the mission to be a failure, while another meteor destroys Paris, A.J. and the others arrive in the second Armadillo.
A.J. succeeds in drilling the hole to the required depth, but a rock storm kills Gruber and damages the bomb’s remote detonator, forcing someone to stay behind and manually detonate it. They draw straws; A.J. is given the responsibility. Harry takes him down to the asteroid's surface, only to disconnect A.J.'s air hose and force him into the shuttle's air lock, before telling A.J. that he is the son Harry never had, and he would be proud to have him marry Grace. Using the Armadillo, Harry tearfully gives Grace his blessing to marry A.J., and Grace says she is proud to be his daughter.
After some various difficulties, Freedom takes off, and just before Zero Barrier, Harry manages to detonate the bomb and saves the planet, sacrificing his life in the process. The astronauts land on Earth safely. A.J. and Grace are reunited, and Chick reconciles with his ex-wife and estranged son. During the credits, A.J. and Grace are married, with the portraits of Harry and the others lost on the mission present in memoriam.
Cast
[edit]Production
[edit]Development
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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.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> 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 Pictures. Bruckheimer hired the succession of writers for rewrites and polishes.<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Bruce Willis was cast in the film as part of a three-picture deal he cut with the studio to compensate them for the dissolution of 1997's Broadway Brawler.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref name="deadline">Template:Cite web</ref> He received a significant pay cut for the picture as part of the deal.<ref name="gross">Template:Cite book</ref> Sean Connery was originally considered for the role of Stamper, but Michael Bay decided to cast a younger actor in the role after meeting oil drillers.<ref name="commentary"/> Bradley Cooper auditioned for the role of A.J. Scott, which eventually went to Ben Affleck.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Filming
[edit]Principal photography for Armageddon began on August 27, 1997 and ended on January 29, 1998.<ref>Template:Cite news Template:Open access</ref> Filming occurred at Culver Studios in Culver City, California.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> In May 1998, Walt Disney Studios chairman Joe Roth expanded the film's budget by $3 million to include additional special effects scenes by Dream Quest Images showing an asteroid impacting Paris. This additional footage, incorporated two months prior to the film's release, was specifically added for the television advertising campaign to visually differentiate the film from Deep Impact which was released a few months before.Template:Sfn At a budget of $140 million, it was Buena Vista's most expensive film at the time.<ref name="Wow!">Template:Cite news Template:Open access</ref>
After filming was complete, according to Home Improvement actor Richard Karn, he stumbled upon the main asteroid set and suggested to Tim Allen that they needed to film on it. According to Karn, Allen asked then ABC executive Bob Iger who then asked Michael Bay for permission. Bay required waiting 6 months after the film was released. The asteroid set was used as a credit roll gag scene to imitate a cave in Wilson's basement.<ref>Template:Cite AV media</ref>
Music
[edit]Release
[edit]Marketing
[edit]Prior to ArmageddonTemplate:'s release, the film was advertised in Super Bowl XXXII at a cost of $2.6 million.Template:Sfn
Home media
[edit]Despite a mixed critical reception, 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"—released the 'directors cut' of the film to DVD and Laserdisc. 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".<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
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.<ref>Template:Cite report</ref> Armageddon then premiered on both VHS and DVD formats on February 1, 1999, in the UK. It was the country's best-selling DVD release, selling over 100,000 copies. However, this record would be surpassed by The Matrix later that year.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> The film was released on a standard edition Blu-ray in 2010 with only a few special features.<ref>Template:Citation</ref> In late November 2024, it was announced that the film will be released on 4K Blu-ray.<ref name="JoBlo">Template:Cite news</ref>
Television airing
[edit]By April 2002, ABC airings of Armageddon had already received modifications due to the September 11 attacks that occurred seven months prior. The scene where the World Trade Center was hit by meteors and caught on fire was censored because of its similarity to the attacks.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
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.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> 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.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
Reception
[edit]Box office
[edit]Armageddon was released on Template:Nowrap, 1998 in Template:Nowrap in the United States and Canada. It ranked first at the box office ahead of Dr. Dolittle with an opening weekend gross of Template:Nowrap, combined with Template:Nowrap from its first five days.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Upon opening, the film had the third-highest Fourth of July opening weekend at the time, behind Men in Black and Independence Day.<ref>Template:Cite news Template:Open access</ref> It went on to beat Ransom to achieve the highest opening weekend for a live-action Disney film.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> That record would only last for four months before being surpassed by The Waterboy that November.<ref>Template:Cite news Template:Open access</ref> The film was surpassed by Lethal Weapon 4 in its second weekend, although it collected a total of $23.5 million.<ref>Template:Cite news Template:Open access</ref> In late July 1998, it surpassed its rival Deep Impact to become the highest-grossing domestic release of the year.<ref>Template:Cite news Template:Open access</ref> The film grossed Template:Nowrap in the United States and Canada and Template:Nowrap in other territories for a worldwide total of Template:Nowrap.<ref name="bomojo">Template:Cite web</ref> 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.
In South Korea, Armageddon surpassed Godzilla to have the country's highest opening, making Template:Nowrap.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> It recorded the second-highest opening in Taiwan with Template:Nowrap, behind The Lost World: Jurassic Park.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> The film would spend a total of thirteen weeks in Japan's number one spot until it was surpassed by A Bug's Life.<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref>
Critical response
[edit]Armageddon received mixed reviews from film critics, many of whom took issue with "the furious pace of its editing".Template:Sfn On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a 43% approval rating based on 176 reviews, with an average rating of 5.3/10. 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."<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Metacritic gave the film a weighted average score of 42 out of 100, based on 23 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A−" on an A+ to F scale.<ref name="CinemaScore">Template:Cite web</ref>
A rough assemblage of footage from the film was shown in the marketplace at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival in May. The footage reportedly generated unintentional laughs from journalists who viewed it.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
The film is on the list of Roger Ebert's most hated films.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> In his original review, Ebert gave the film 1 star and stated, "The movie is an assault on the eyes, the ears, the brain, common sense and the human desire to be entertained". On At the Movies, Ebert gave it a Thumbs Down. However, his co-host Gene Siskel gave it a Thumbs Up, commenting on the noise and intensity of the film, but also stating that he found the film to be amusing. Ebert went on to name Armageddon as the worst film of 1998 (though he was originally considering Spice World).<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Janet Maslin of The New York Times said, "A real movie about courage in space is Apollo 13, in which fear and sacrifice have meaning. This jingoistic, overblown spectacle is about whistling in the dark."<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> 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 2Template:1/2 hours."Template:Sfn
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.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
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,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> 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."<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Scientific accuracy
[edit]Template:See also 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 Template:Convert in diameter,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> while the asteroid 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."<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Astronomers would subsequently note that Deep Impact was more scientifically accurate.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
The infeasibility of the H-bomb approach was published by four physics postdocs in 2011<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> and then reported by The Daily Telegraph in 2012:
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."<ref name="commentary">Template:Cite web</ref>
Neil deGrasse Tyson said on the October 2, 2023 episode of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert that, until the release of the 2022 film Moonfall, Armageddon was the movie which violated more laws of physics per minute than any other movie ever.<ref>Template:Cite AV media</ref>
Accolades
[edit]Other media
[edit]Merchandising
[edit]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.Template: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.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Theme park attraction
[edit]Armageddon – Les Effets Speciaux was an attraction based on Armageddon at Walt Disney Studios Park located at Disneyland Paris.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> The attraction simulated the scene in the movie in which the Russian Space Station is destroyed.<ref name="photosmagiques1">Template:Cite web</ref> Michael Clarke Duncan ("Bear" in the film) was featured in the pre-show.<ref name="photosmagiques1"/>
See also
[edit]- Deep Impact - another impact event-based film released in 1998
- Impact event
- Impact crater
- Asteroid deflection strategies
- List of disaster films
- List of films featuring space stations
- Hollywood Science
Notes
[edit]References
[edit]Bibliography
[edit]External links
[edit]- Pages with broken file links
- 1998 films
- 1990s disaster films
- 1998 science fiction films
- 1990s American films
- 1990s English-language films
- 1990s science fiction action films
- American disaster films
- American science fiction films
- American science fiction action films
- American space adventure films
- Comets in film
- English-language science fiction action films
- Fiction about near-Earth asteroids
- Films about astronauts
- Films about impact events
- Films about NASA
- Films about nuclear war and weapons
- Films about space hazards
- Films directed by Michael Bay
- Films produced by Gale Anne Hurd
- Films produced by Jerry Bruckheimer
- Films produced by Michael Bay
- Films scored by Trevor Rabin
- Films set in Florida
- Films set in Houston
- Films set in Istanbul
- Films set in New York City
- Films set in Paris
- Films set in Shanghai
- Films set in the White House
- Films set in Uttar Pradesh
- Films shot at Culver Studios
- Films with screenplays by J. J. Abrams
- Films with screenplays by Jonathan Hensleigh
- Films with screenplays by Robert Roy Pool
- Films with screenplays by Tony Gilroy
- Golden Raspberry Award–winning films
- Jerry Bruckheimer Films films
- Satellite Award–winning films
- Saturn Award–winning films
- Touchstone Pictures films