Recently, "Deep Impact" was released, and it was the first of two meteor-hits-Earth movies to be released this year, "Armageddon" being the second. They really are very different movies, though. "Deep Impact" was a human drama about people dealing with the fact that the meteor was gonna hit, and ended with the meteor destroying just about everything around it. In "Armageddon," you have a pure action film with smaller meteors hitting parts of the world every now and then. In both movies, the destructive sequences were amazing. It's hard to pick which one I liked better, being that they were pretty different takes on the same thing. I'll just say that I liked "Armageddon" just as much as I liked "Deep Impact."
The cast is great. Ya got Bruce Willis, Ben Affleck (who I think is way cooler than that arrogant pretty boy friend of his, Matt Damon), Steve Buscemi, Liv Tyler and Billy Bob Thornton. The lesser known people are very good too, especially Michael Duncan who played a HUGE black dude named "Bear." Stereotypes regarding his race and physique were thankfully avoided.
"Armageddon" was directed by Michael Bay, the guy who directed "Bad Boys" (a movie I never saw), and "The Rock" (a movie I didn't particularly enjoy). He truly is a visionary. Any frame of this film can be a photograph in "Life" magazine. Beautiful (and quite patriotic) images were scattered throughout. There were some big flaws, though. The editing was a little off. When the same scene was cut to a different angle, it didn't match well. Also, if it's daytime in the United States, it's gonna be nighttime on the other side of the planet.
Another complaint I had was with Steve Buscemi's character towards the end. He was just a funny, wisecracking guy at first, but it got annoying towards the end (though it WAS called for). Still, he was really funny. Actually, most of the characters were funny. Usually, action films have lame jokes that aren't funny all over the place (such as "Speed" or the other Michael Bay movie I saw, "The Rock"). "Armageddon" was a movie that had some authentically funny moments. Sometimes, REALLY funny.
"Armageddon"
is not gonna win any Oscars this year, unless it's for visual effects. The
story is predictable, a lot of it is Hollywood standard stuff (nuclear weapon
with a countdown clock that needs to be stopped... do I cut the red wire
or the blue wire?), and it's not all that believable, but I got what I paid
for: An exciting ride where I don't have to think too much.