While critics (and other dilettantes) wax negative about last
summer’s action smash Armageddon, they only prove that, because of age, love
of dialogue driven stage plays, or aversion to "A-Ride" action thrills, they
just don’t get it. Armageddon slam dunks in every department; empathy evoking
characters, gut turning special effect action sequences, and moments of humorous relief,
some wry, some clever, and some belly rolling. This ain’t Shakespeare, granted —
but it’s a hell of a good story that left us laughing, crying, and talking. We saw it
three times.
Marketing mavens may have pegged
this film for testosterone driven pre-adults with some spillover to teen women who will be
attracted to the Liv Tyler romance. However, this movie has broader appeal. One showing we
viewed at a local multiplex featured an older woman (50+) who laughed heartily (at times
lustily) at the belly rolling good humor, while on the other side a woman, perhaps
slightly older, wept often. At the end, she was sobbing and dabbing her tears well into
the credits. Armageddon offers much more than just action as we witness the eternal
theme of a father who disapproves of his young daughter’s fiancé mostly because he
is too much like the father. A more powerful reconciliation of this inherently electric
situation than the one offered here is difficult to imagine.
The movie opens with disastrous
meteors bombarding a space shuttle mission and then blasting much of downtown Manhattan.
(There is even a gag poking fun at last summer’s earlier Manhattan mauler, Godzilla.)
The shower of destruction was loosed by an approaching asteroid. This bare bones
description hardly does justice to powerful scenes of sizzling and explosive action and
confrontational exposition, all of which introduce many of the NASA and Air Force
characters, including Dan Truman (Billy Bob Thornton), a physically handicapped but
morally and emotionally canny NASA’s executive director. The only hope to deflect the
"global killer" asteroid is to drill into its core and plant a nuclear device.
Cut to Harry Stamper (Bruce
Willis), the planet’s premier deep core oil driller, who launches golf balls off his
drilling rig at a Greenpeace protest tug. Harry is wanted by Truman to fix the
misengineered drilling rig and train a group of real Astronauts to complete the mission.
Harry will do it only if he is allowed to take his crew of eccentric roughneck drillers,
derisively labeled by the military brass as the "wrong stuff".
Harry and his guys represent a
paradoxical mixture of human virtue and vice, a sort of dirty dozen ensemble including:
Chick (Will Patton) – loyalty to Harry versus divorce and gambling, A.J. (Ben
Affleck) – intuitive hunches versus stubborn defensiveness and reckless abandon,
Rockhound (Steve Buscemi) – erratic genius versus low-life young women. Their
strengths and weaknesses, molded by Harry and the demands of their predicament, make them
a symbol of just how great we can be, even with our seemingly incompatible and impossible
hodge-podge of conflicting characteristics. They bicker, even fight like hooligans in the
face of annihilation, yet still emerge with the right stuff to do the job.
As a leader of this gaggle of
misfits, Harry almost proudly admits to a certain level of immaturity. However, thanks to
the screenwriters, credited and not, Harry’s character arc is completed when he
emotionally reconciles with his daughter and her husband to be. His truly heroic act is
not in staying to blow-up the asteroid, but in forcing A.J. to return home to Grace, thus
showing him the love and respect he denied before. Often, the words "I love you"
indicate weak writing, but from the mouths of two macho men, who have been at odds for the
length of the story, they have tremendous punch.
Another powerfully explored
sub-theme develops between Chick and his ex-wife who hasn’t allowed her son to know
that Chick is his father. Will Patton’s facial expression in the moment of seeing his
son, perhaps for the last time, creates a melting emotional recognition and a testament to
powerful acting and directing where expression carries the meaning.
All of this is delivered in the
midst of mind twisting action scenes. The nuclear explosion of the "groaning",
seemingly alive asteroid elicited sighs of amazement, and the meteor shower demolition of
New York City and later Paris puts a clear perspective on just how small we humans and our
creations really are. Rockhound (the eccentric genius) and Russian cosmonaut (Peter
Stormare) suffering from isolation "oddness" provide much needed comic relief,
but never at the expense of the action progression, allowing us to laugh and relieve some
of the almost overwhelming tension before we blast off again on the edges of our seats.
Armageddon derives great
strength from the underlying emotional cord woven around our sense of unity as a species.
The President’s Address invites global prayer and attention to courage that carries
hope of our survival. The cinematic poetry of the montages which depict people running to
their TV’s, swarming around radios, and praying in simple surroundings as well as at
holy shrines, shows that we, the human race, can perhaps reach beyond cultures, languages,
and religions and put our hearts and minds together into a force of unity that steers
Armageddon from its course. Maybe in that spirit, we will in reality conjure up the
"wrong" people who embody our immaturities and petty interests, and yet who are
able to do the right thing when needed.
Like the other great blockbuster
of recent fame, Titanic, this film reaches its real dramatic power because it
embroils us in deeper issues of heart and spirit. Though Harry makes the ultimate
sacrifice, it is not just to save the earth and humankind but also to save his future
son-in-law and bless the young man’s marriage to Harry’s daughter. In fact, the
movie closes with a series of wedding snapshots, some quite funny. In the end, this is a
deeply moving love story between a father and a daughter, between a father-in-law and a
son-in-law, and between generations which blesses the continuation of life and shows in
emotional terms why life is worth saving.
Armageddon is not only a
great summer action smash, but a film with heart, good humor, and a global message of
optimism and courage that lights a spark of heroism and truest humanity in all of us.
Thanks to Jerry Bruckheimer, Gale Anne Hurd, and Michael Bay (Producers and Director) and
all the best to Disney and Touchstone for giving us this great film.
Armageddon Revisited
In April 1999, we visited Robert
McKee’s short screenwriting course offered through Learning Annex. Anyone with time
and money interested in a comprehensive theory of cinematic story would do well to take
Bob’s full seminar or buy and read his book STORY.
During a lull, Bob started taking
off on one of his infamous diatribes, this time against Armageddon. He resorted to
all the typical criticisms of the intelligentsia, calling the movie clichéd, dependent on
spectacle alone, over-the-top, blah, blah, blah.
In a surprising twist, a woman
stood up and with timorous voice defended the film because the story and reconciliation
between the father and daughter moved her so much. There were a few exclamations of
agreement as the woman defended her position. On the way out, many others murmured their
appreciation for Armageddon.
With them, we were reaffirmed in
our conviction that this movie worked so well because it had a deeper core than most
critics gave it credit for.
