In the late ‘90s, Bruce Willis and Michael Bay were both at the peak of their powers. So was producer Jerry Bruckheimer. When it was announced that these three would be teaming up to make a space mission movie, audiences were excited. Aided by various screenwriters, including Jonathan Hensleigh (best known forDie Hard), and an ensemble cast that consisted of Steve Buscemi, Keith David, Owen Wilson, and Ben Affleck, it seemed like nothing would go wrong.
Armageddon
Unfortunately, critics felt thatArmageddonwas the kind of film that demands a total short-circuit of one’s entire mental functions. On Rotten Tomatoes, it has a low 43% score, while on Metacritic, it has a 42% score. Roger Ebert even included it in his list of most hated films.
Despite that, the Academy loved it, nominating it for Best Sound, Best Visual Effects, Best Original Song, and Best Sound Effects Editing. Audiences generally enjoyed it too, resulting in a $553.7 million box office gross. This not only made it the highest-grossing film of 1998 but also the highest-grossing film by Touchstone Pictures.
Interestingly, NASA didn’t like the movie either. To date, the organization has pointed out about 168 scientific mistakes, making this one of the most inaccurate movies ever made.
A Crash Course Is Enough in Armageddon
Still potent stuff over 26 years after its release,Armageddonportrays the genuine fright and bewilderment of a few chosen heroes at the front of the mission to end all missions.
In it,NASA learns that a massive asteroid the size of Texas is about to intrude on Earth’s not-so-cloistered environment.It will hit in 18 days (they couldn’t spot such a big thing sooner?), potentially destroying the planet. The organization’s top brass thus devises a plan to drill a deep hole into the asteroid, into which they will plant and detonate a nuclear bomb to blow it up. To do that, they recruit Harry Stamper (Bruce Willis), a third-generation oil driller who owns his own oil drilling company.
Because it’s the opportunity of a lifetime, Harry jumps in, but Bay and his team don’t hesitate tothrow a major trope at us: Harry insists he will “only do it with my team.”
Comedy soon follows, withmost of Harry’s team making hilarious demands to join the mission. One insists he needs to spend a summer in the White House, specifically in the Lincoln bedroom, another demands that all his parking tickets be wiped off the records, while all of them make the non-negotiable demand of never paying taxes, ever. Well, NASA exec, Dan Truman, doesn’t think any of them will survive anyway, so he agrees to everything.
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Over the next 12 days, the drillers are trained to become astronauts, and after that, they are ready to go. In the film’s commentary track, Ben Affleck admits he found this plot direction to be amusing.
“I 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 f*** up, so that was the end of that talk."
Fora disaster movie to be great,there has to be a general air of difficulty, and various ominous factors should be evident. That’s how events play out here.However threadbare the plot, we continue to care about the events because of the fear that everything might go wrong.
So Far, NASA Has Discovered 168 Errors in Armageddon
According to the Showbiz Cheatsheet,NASA foundArmageddonto be so inaccuratethat it often uses it in its management training program. During these sessions, trainees are often asked to identify as many errors as they can in the movie.So far, a total of 168 errors have been found, making this the most inaccurate space film of all time.
For starters,astronaut training takes at least 2 years, so there is no way Harry’s team would have mastered the basics in just 12 days. Additionally, the largest known potentially hazardous asteroid (PHA) is the (53319) 1999 JM8, which is a mere 7 km (4.3 mi) in diameter, whereas the asteroid inArmageddonis described as being the size of Texas (695,662 km²).
Most importantly,blowing up an asteroid that size wouldn’t fix the problem. For context, the asteroid that killed dinosaurs millions of years ago was about 150 times tinier. If this particular asteroid was blown up, various tiny pieces would still hit Earth.
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So, was NASA ever consulted? According to Bruce Willis, there was some participation.
“Some of the locations are genuine NASA locations. The launchpads are real, but they are made to look a bit prettier in CGI. Some of the training sites they use are genuine. They did have NASA’s help with a lot of this. It’s just the core science of the film that’s wrong.”
Nonetheless, this is just a movie, so the science part of it shouldn’t be dwelt on for too long. On top of that,this is a Michael Bay picture, and the filmmaker is known for prioritizing entertainment over fact.
Years later, Michael Bay is still proud of his film. Even so, he feels he could have changed some things if he had been given more creative control by the studio.
Speaking to the Miami Herald during an interview to promotePain & Gainback in 2013,Bay 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.”
Quite unfortunate.
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In 2021, Michael Bay had even more reasons to smile when NASA successfullylaunched a 1200 lbs SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket for a test mission called DART(Double Asteroid Redirection Test). The rocket was intended to orbit the sun before making contact with Dimorphos, a tiny asteroid posing no threat, and then knock it off its trajectory. Given the similarities between the DART mission and the plotof Armageddon, the director took some time to chip in.
“Our plan was not far off where they send a craft to nudge it, either with a nuke or whatever, they just have to nudge it. “They had a bunch of stuff we mentioned in the movie that were real plans that are on the table.”
Vindicated? Perhaps.As much as NASA hates the movie, there is a chance they might have gotten a few ideas from it.Today,Armageddonremains essential viewing for lovers ofmovies about astronautsand a deliciously thrilling outer-space romp. You could probably shave 10 minutes off the total running time and the second half is undoubtedly superior to the first, but space mission movies aren’t made like this anymore.See it with or without the genre fans; its whirlwind joys are truly universal.
Armageddonis available to rent in the US on Amazon or Apple TV+
