Armageddon

What a pile of tosh this was. Excellent! I love bad movies. Well, most of them.

Only a very forgiving person can really enjoy this movie. You have to forgive the dodgy physics, which are almost as dodgy as those in 'The Core.'¹ You have to forgive the dodgy acting, which is almost as dodgy as that in 'The Core.' And you have to forgive it for having Ben Affleck in it, which is just dodgy².

Plot: There isn't one. It may have gotten lost during production, perhaps written on a restaurant napkin. Or it may have seen Ben's Unholy Acting TalentTM and run away to hide.

Stand-in plot: Giant rock spotted, heading for Earth. NASA has loads of strategies for dealing with this sort of problem, the trouble is they all require at least a year's advance warning. And they've got fourteen days. Brief pause for a change of trousers and someone comes up with the solution: Nuclear weapons!!

Now, this movie illustrated the whole thing about movie studios copying each other's plots to an insane degree. Their reason is that movie scrips come in, get looked at and shelved and then made years later, so the Red Planet / Mission to Mars thing happened because someone decided that the year 2000 was going to be all about Mars, so the Mars stories were dusted off and made into full scripts. This can mean that two scripts are written which are both based on the same original pitch made to the studio.

Armageddon was the first time I can remember audiences turning around to the studios and saying: B*****ks. You're clearly ripping off each other's ideas³.

There's a lot of Hollywood hidden code in this movie. For example:

Plot device: Retro-jets that hold the crew and the vehicle down on the asteroid and 'simulate' gravity
Translation: We couldn't afford to use wire-work and the subsequent air-brushing to remove the wires.

Plot device: Someone's got to stay on the asteroid to blow it up.
Translation: Quick! Distract the audience from the fact that a nuclear bomb can't generate that much delta-v inside the rock!

Plot device: Paris get nuked (huzzah!)
Translation: Well, we're not going to destroy an American city, are we?

Score: You're having a laugh, aren't you?

OQ: 'Colonel William Sharp, United States Air Force ma'am. Requesting permission to shake the hand of the daughter of the bravest man I've ever met.'

OOQ: Huuurqh!! <--------the sound of me retching.

¹ Never EVER watch 'The Core' because it will be four hours of your life you'll never get back. Two hours wasted watching the movie, and two hours wasted ranting about how crap it is.
² I've heard it said that Ben's lack of acting ability is made up by his good looks, which is why he's popular with the ladies. Well, I'm sorry, but my gib isn't cut that way, so I don't know what you're on about.
³ For legal reasons, I'm required to state that this is In My Honest Opinion (IMHO) and does not reflect anyone's opinion.