#40: Armageddon
Hey loves,
I got nothin’ today! Just love ya and hope you’re doing okay and getting vaccinated if you are able!! And apologies if this email got clipped for you. It’s a long one!
❤️
#40: Armageddon
Director: Michael Bay
Country: United States
Year: 1998
Runtime: 153 minutes
Language: English
**As always, this post contains spoilers**
CW: Death, disaster
I learned that Armageddon was part of the Criterion Collection about 20 films ago and every film since then has become a countdown (ironically) to Armageddon. I don’t know and don’t care why this movie is in the Criterion Collection, but I am grateful that it is. So far, I have only seen one of the 40 films in the collection and so to find myself face-to-face with a movie I saw and loved when I was a tween, that fueled my belief that great love and great disaster were twin tenets of adulthood (I have an essay about this up on Catapult next month!) was–to put it mildly–a treat. But while the romantic love thread of this movie is obviously strong, it’s actually a movie about a different kind of great love that many of us have been afforded: the love between a father and a daughter.
Armageddon starts exactly as it should: CGI with narration of how an asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs. And you just KNOW this CGI was bad-fuckin-ass in 1998. Now? You’re doin’ great, sweaty. The narrator says, “It’s happened before. It will happen again. It’s just a question of when.” CAN you get more fatalist?
Sixty-five million years later, some astronauts in space are working on something outside their craft. Spacewalking, if you will… Folksy NASA exec (Billy Bob Thorton) is in the control room watching.
At this point, Josh went to the kitchen briefly and I paused it.
“Why are you pausing it?” He said.
And I–not knowing what I was saying until the words had left my mouth–said, “Because I don’t want you to miss a thing.” I love myself and yet I hate myself.
And honestly thank G I did pause it because he would have missed the spacecraft and everyone on it EXPLODE. The control room sees dots on a radar and thinks it’s an attack of some kind. They get the military extremely involved. Like everyone. The words “Defcon 3” are uttered, for instance.
CUT TO NYC and Eddie Griffin riding a bike with a french bulldog named Lil’ Richard in his basket. Unfortunately, *something* lands directly on top of them. Don’t worry, they survive!
Chaos ensues as a BUNCH of flaming shit lands and explodes all over the city, including the Empire State Building, which topples.
One of the Twin Towers is hit and smoking, which is, of course, in this pre-9/11 context, eerie.
Eventually, they confirm it’s a meteor shower. Also, this movie takes what seems like every possible opportunity to be misogynistic for literally no reason? There’s a space nerd named Karl (John Mahon) with a huge telescope who ID’s the disaster as a meteor shower from an incoming asteroid, calls NASA, and says he wants them to name the asteroid after his wife, Dottie (Grace Zabriskie), because apparently much like this asteroid, “she’s a vicious life-sucking bitch from which there is no escape.” Jesus!
Unfortunately the asteroid will cause damage so severe it would end all life on Earth, including bacteria. It will hit Earth in eighteen days.
On an oil rig in the South China Sea, we find deep sea oil driller Harry Stamper (Bruce Willis) hitting golf balls at a nearby ship while ZZ Top’s La Grange plays.
I know that Aerosmith song is seen as quintessentially This Movie, but I actually think La Grange better encapsulates the rough-and-tumble free-wheelin space-cowboys aesthetic that makes this movie so lovable. Am I a music reviewer now lol
We also meet AJ Frost (in-his-prime-if-you-ask-me BEN AFFLECK). AJ is Harry’s best driller, but there’s some tension between them because the thing is, AJ is dating Harry’s daughter, Grace (Liv Tyler), who lives on the oil rig too because she also works for Harry.
And because Harry is on some patriarchal shit, he hates that they’re dating. AJ is a “roughneck” and not good enough for Grace. But also at some point Harry promised AJ’s dad he’d take care of him so he’s sort of like a father figure? This whole plotline is like a pig in lipstick. I know what I’m seeing, but it’s sort of a mess.
Harry sees Grace in AJ’s bed and chases him around the oil rig with a shotgun, ACTUALLY shooting at him while Grace yells, “you can’t control my life!” Grace threatens to quit after an impassioned speech where we learn that she grew up on oil rigs with Harry but he worked so much he was sort of an absent father. They get along mostly, but she also calls him Harry to his face, if that makes sense.
Back at a huge conference table at NASA, some of the engineers come up with TOTALLY STUPID solutions for the asteroid problem and NASA guy Dan is bummmmmed. Putting wings on it: outrageous. Putting a bomb on the surface: how dare you. But putting a bomb INSIDE it ...well. Now you’re cookin’. But they’ll need the world’s best deep-core driller to do it. Guess whooooooo! It’s the guy who just assaulted with a deadly weapon his best driller/surrogate son for having a consensual relationship with his adult daughter.
An Air Force helicopter lands on Harry’s oil rig and tells him he’s been requested by the president at NASA. Grace flies with him to Houston.
Dan gives them the rundown of the impending doom AND the reasons why this is all top secret: because people will freak the fuck out if they find out the world may end in a couple of weeks. Fair!
The plan is super simple: land on the asteroid, drill a hole, drop some nukes, leave, and remote detonate it. The asteroid will split in two pieces and fly right by earth.
They show Harry the drill which was originally intended for use on Mars and it turns out it was his design. But Harry thinks it looks like shit. They also have a team of astronauts they want him to train as drillers. He has big problems with this. BIG PROBLEMS. “They’re piss-poor drillers,” he yells.
Of course the next best solution is to turn drillers into astronauts. Harry asks a very important question, which is, “No spacewalking, no crazy astronaut stuff?” He agrees to help if he can use his own men to assist.
As a cover of The Beatles’ “Come Together” plays, he assembles his team. A team assemblage montage is one of my FAVORITE moves ever. It feels like doll collecting or something. His team includes:
Bear (Michael Clarke Duncan). Motorcycle muscle guy.
Rockhound (Steve Buscemi). “We call him Rockhound because he’s horny.”
Oscar Choice (Owen Wilson). Cowboy.
Charles “Chick” Chapple (Will Patton). Gambler.
Max Lennert (Ken Campbell). Nice, but tattooed.
Gruber (Grayson McCouch). I think he’s in the mob.
Harry now has to reconsider AJ, his best driller. He won’t apologize to AJ, but he does invite him to join the crew. They assemble at NASA headquarters.
Army General Kimsey (Keith David) is NOT happy with this team given their extensive criminal records. In fact, he calls them “a bunch of [r-words] I wouldn’t trust with a potato gun” except he didn’t say r-words. The 90s! NASA’s counterpoint: they’re good at their job.
The team has a list of demands if they’re going to do this job: staying at The White House for the summer, not paying taxes again, finding out who shot Kennedy, etc. This begs a very fun question of what would YOU do if you had leverage like this with the US government?
The men undergo medical/psychological tests (some of them performed by Udo Kier, who you may remember as the man who once fucked someone’s gallbladder). This montage is just a cornucopia of low-hanging fruit jokes, let me tell ya. Of course they all “failed” all of the tests and someone also tested positive for ketamine.
I know what you’re thinking...they’re not astronaut material. They are...not safe or qualified in any way. But again, can we afford NOT to send them? They are approved for space travel.
NASA puts Col. Willie Sharp (William Fichtner) in charge of training. He says the killer line, “I’m here to make sure you don’t freak out on the asteroid.” They have 15 days to train hahahah
They do some training. Underwater training for weightlessness. G-Force training in planes. They also get trained on how their spacesuits work by a ~*~woman~*~ astronaut named Watts (Jessica Steen) and you’re not going to believe this but they don’t go 25 seconds without commenting on how hot she is.
Six days before takeoff.
The plan is they’ll split up and take two shuttles called Freedom and Independence. They’ll then stop at the Russian space station to refuel. Then they’ll slingshot around the moon right at the time the asteroid is passing by, sneak up behind it at 22,500 mph, land on it, drill, drop the nuke, and leave. They have to detonate it at the EXACT right moment because if not, the pieces will still hit earth and destroy it.
That night, AJ and Grace have a date inside one of the rocket boosters. This scene was very reminiscent of the Pearl Harbor date off the side of the Queen Mary. Grace also has short red nails like Evelyn did in that movie so this is all very triggerinnggg.
Harry sees them making out and watches like eight seconds too long before he walks away. After he leaves, AJ proposes to Grace and she says yes.
Harry hears about it and is a piss pants about it. His guys try to talk some sense into him. Some of their arguments: She’s hot. She’s a woman. She’s exploring her sexuality. All great points, guys. Harry, a roughneck’s, argument: I’m not gonna let her marry a roughneck!
They practice drilling underwater in a giant pool. It’s not really worth talking about, but it doesn’t go GREAT and Harry has to yell at AJ. AJ is very tired of disappointing Harry, it sounds like.
They get some time off from training and as that Aerosmith song plays, AJ and Grace lay in a yard and he talks about why animal crackers are cookies, not crackers and I’m not going to spoil it, but he tucks an animal cracker into her underwear.
A few other guys go to a strip club where they’re arrested for a fight. Things are going honestly so good.
That night, a giant asteroid hits SE Asia as NASA looks on helplessly.
Somehow, the media gets wind that there’s a big mission coming up and they’re v suspicious. NASA does the right thing and continues to lie.
T-minus 12 hours to launch Y’ALL.
Grace and Harry have a heart-to-heart under an old launch pad. She makes him promise he’ll come back. He promises. She also says, “If it’s not too much trouble, could you bring my fiance back with you?”
The men suit up. AJ sings “Leaving On A Jet Plane” to Grace. The rest of the men join in because they’re fun. Like, maybe too fun for space?
Before the men take off, the president makes a public address letting the world know what’s actually happening.
Harry and AJ are on different spaceships and have a typical, mildly fraught goodbye where AJ says he’ll try not to disappoint him.
BLAST OFF!
They launch these two shuttles at the SAME TIME hahah it looks absolutely BANANAS omg
They’re headed to the Russian space station where there is one Russian cosmonaut named Lev (Peter Stormare) who’s been up there alone for 18 months. I think Lev might be drunk? Which in this world would not disqualify him from being an astronaut seeing as one of our new heroes is maybe high on horse tranquilizer.
There are some issues with “thermal variation”/a leak as they’re refueling. How do screenwriters even think of issues for movies like this? If someone was holding a gun to my head and was like, “What is something that could go wrong in a spaceship aside from it just exploding?” it would be RIP to me.
There’s a fire and someone says, “This thing’s gonna blow!” which I honestly don’t think I’ve ever actually heard IRL in a movie?
To contain the fire, they sealed off the “fuel pod” where the fire is, but AJ and Lev are trapped in there. They are able to get out and make it to their shuttle as the entire space station explodes.
Next up: slingshotting around the moon so they can land on this asshat asteroid.
This slingshot situation is INtense. They pull ten G which looks like my nightmare.
They creep up behind the asteroid and we see it up close for the first time.
It looks like Mount Doom, but don’t tell Josh I said that because it probably doesn’t look anything like Mount Doom. They have to navigate a lot of debris as they attempt to catch up to it and land. The shuttle Independence is hit with the debris and the pilots call mayday. The NASA pilots are sucked out of the broken front windows while the three drillers are somewhat more safe in the sealed-off back of the ship. They crash land on the asteroid.
Freedom, though they’ve overshot their landing field and their shuttle is damaged by debris (including one of the dead pilots from Independence…whoopsy daisy), is able to land safely with the whole crew (Harry, Hound, Max) alive, far away from Independence’s crash land.
NASA can’t get ahold of anyone, so they assume everyone is dead. Grace, posted up at NASA headquarters, weeps into a leather couch, presuming AJ is dead. Amidst the flaming wreckage, AJ appears. He finds Oscar dead, but Bear and Lev alive.
The Freedom crew gets to work drilling, but the drill head breaks within 10 feet.
Meanwhile, AJ works to get out of the shuttle with their mobile driller, called an Armadillo, which is sort of like a rover with a drill attached. Also attached, for some fucking reason, is a giant machine gun which he uses to shoot through the side of the shuttle and get out.
Unfortunately, the asteroid has started to spin which gets in the way of communication with Houston. NASA has seven minutes left to communicate with the crew before they lose connection completely and 12 minutes left to detonate the bomb. If they don’t detonate soon, they may lose the ability to detonate it ever. If they detonate it now, they’ll kill all the men. HMMMMMMM.
Also unfortunately, there’s a lot of drilling problems. Blown transmission, another broken drill head. I don’t know about you guys, but they’re really making a case for making Harry Stamper an astronaut on this because who else could have dealt with these issues??
The president orders the military into NASA headquarters to enact “secondary protocol” which means: blow it up now, even though the bomb is still on the surface and not inside the asteroid which we’ve already determined would be pointless.
Despite Dan’s best efforts and Grace’s wailing, orders are orders. The nuke on the surface of the asteroid starts counting down. Col. Sharp, one of the NASA pilots, tells them secondary protocol has been enacted and orders an evacuation from the asteroid. Remember Independence (AJ’s ship) is still out there on its own somewhere! Harry is losing his shitttt, while back in Houston Dan is also losing his shit, asking his men to work on overriding the bomb.
Col. Sharp, holding a gun to Harry and Harry, holding a giant metal clamp, duke it out.
Harry pleads to the colonel to deactivate the bomb and let him complete the drill. He eventually agrees and with 2.45 seconds to spare, the team manually (ya know clipping wires), deactivates the bomb.
Harry gets in touch with NASA and says “Houston, you have a problem. We have a hole to dig up here.” Doesn’t really make sense, but I’ll let him have it.
AJ, Bear, and Lev, the Russian guy, are still totally lost on this asteroid. But then they...drive off a cliff and then just keep floating. They try to turn off the thrusters and Lev decides he’s gotta get on the outside of the ship to fix them and though he is absolutely werked by debris, they land safely.
Harry and co. are still working on the drill. At one point, Rockhound (Steve Buscemi) gets ahold of a machine gun and shoots at them and they determine he’s suffering from “space dementia” which I can’t even touch. They duct tape him to a chair in the shuttle.
With Max at the helm of the Armadillo drill, they hit a methane gas pocket. Max is blasted into space and dies. RIP Max.
The media reports that the drilling was unsuccessful and chaos erupts across the globe. Another meteor strikes Paris, totally annihilating it.
The Armadillo containing Bear, AJ, and Lev finally arrives at the drill site. AJ says, “Hey Harry! Ya miss me?” to which Harry says, “I’ve got five words for ya: Damn glad to see ya boy!” It’s funny cuz it’s six words. I have a new hypothesis which is a person’s folksy quotient is directly related to how often and unnecessarily they use the word “damn.”
They complete the drill but “it’s not over until we get the bomb down that hole.” They have 38 minutes until it will be too late.
They drop AJ into the hole to complete the drill for some reason. They hit a hydrogen pocket this time which blows this man into space. But don’t worry, he’s attached to a rope that another guy catches.
A rock storm hits as they’re finishing up and Gruber is flown into the air and lands on a spiky piece of asteroid and dies. TBH I had to look up who Gruber was, I’M SORRY. RIP Gruber.
The remote detonator was damaged in the rock storm. I hate to break it to you, but that means someone has to stay behind and manually detonate it. With ten minutes left, they decide to draw straws.
AJ is selected. “We all gotta die, right? At least I get to do it saving the world,” he says. Amen, brother.
Harry escorts him down to the detonation site via a little elevator, leaving the rest of the crew on the ship.
AJ says, “Just tell Grace I’ll always be with her.”
As they step out of the elevator, Harry unplugs AJ’s air supply, shoves him back into the elevator, and sends it back up into the ship.
Through the glass and AJ’s protests, he says to AJ, “Take care of my little girl now. That’s your job. I always thought of you as a son. I’d be damn proud to have you marry Grace.”
AJ screams, “I love you! I love you!”
Harry’s last words to AJ are “My son.”
Harry is able to video chat with Grace who is still at NASA headquarters.
He tells her he’s sorry but he’ll have to break his promise of coming home. She weeps and says she’s just like him and everything good about her is from him. He tells her, “I want you to know that AJ saved us.” They say I love you and he hangs up while Grace cries.
With two minutes to spare, Freedom is having trouble getting off the ground. Watts, who may remember as the hot piece of ass who happens to be an astronaut, is doing her best to get it going, but of course Lev comes up with a wrench, whacks something, and they’re able to blast off.
While preparing to detonate the bomb, Harry’s blown all over the goddamn place by some sort of gas. With eight seconds left, he detonates the bomb.
As the asteroid explodes, we see flashbacks of Grace as a young girl.
Earth is saved! Dan and Grace embrace. People across the globe cheer. Can you imagine that high??
Freedom lands and the remaining NASA pilots, AJ, Rockhound, Bear, Lev, Oscar, and Chick slide out on that inflatable slide. Grace and AJ embrace and kiss in slow motion.
At their wedding, they have displayed pictures of the four dead men, including Harry. “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing” plays.
When I tell y’all I WEPT. Hooo boy.
We can agree the conceit of this movie is absolutely bonk: drillers-turned-astronauts land on an asteroid to implant and detonate a nuclear bomb to save the planet from total destruction. But it had to be. Sometimes it has to be. Someone you love getting really sick. A natural disaster. A global pandemic. They are big, so big that everything else in their presence is dwarfed and now visible: mainly love. Of course, we can dip our feet into this awareness of what’s important ocean any time we want, but it’s the Big Scaries that bring the waves up to meet our toes.
Bad science. No shot lasting longer than ~3 seconds. Stunningly predictable writing. An imperfect, absent dad stands on a flaming asteroid in space, moments before his death, and he and his resentful daughter tell each other the truth for the first time.
I’m truly not trying to preach a Chicken Soup-y “tell people you love them while you still can” gospel. I’m just asking why does the trope even exist and why is an apocalypse movie the most perfect expression of it? Also, shout out to my dad who is reading this and would absolutely detonate a bomb in space 1) to get to go to space because he’s a space NERD but also 2) to save my life. ❤️
Next up is Henry V starting Laurence Olivier and I gotta be real with y’all. I’m so sleepy already. Come dream with me?
XOXO,
Steph