Jesus fucking Christ did I hate this movie.
Armageddon is Michael Bay's shitfest about a crew of oil workers who get hired by NASA to drill a hole in an asteroid and plant a nuke in it so that it won't crash into the earth. Even though they're a bunch of loudmouthed obnoxious roughnecks and misfits, they are somehow smarter and "better" than the brightest people working in the space program. There's also a wack-ass love story between Ben Affleck and Bruce Willis' daughter Liv Tyler. Steve Buscemi's also in it playing his standard weirdo role. All the heroes are dick-swinging assholes, including Liv Tyler. This is the second time I've seen this movie, and somehow it's even worse the second time around. In Dave Pelzer's book A Child Called 'It' there's a scene where his evil mother sees that he vomited out his hot dog dinner, and forces him to re-eat the bits of hot dog that came out. That's what watching this film a second time is like.
If I had to pinpoint the moment where I knew this film was not going to work for me under any circumstances, it had to be when Bruce Willis and company are smacking golf balls at a Greenpeace boat at the beginning of the film. Granted, I have my own disagreements with Greenpeace, but this introduction to our "hero" was so off putting that there was no way I'd be able to root for this asshole at any point in this movie. This film, and Michael Bay's output in general, is so fucking hateful that it's hard to stomach, with his heroes always representing the ugliest aspects of American culture. From a character standpoint, I hated everyone in this movie. Characters were either obnoxious know-it-alls, crazy for no reason, or jittery "nerds" worthy only of contempt. It's like if Ayn Rand wrote an action film, only shittier.
Bay's much-praised action is admittedly fine here, but when you're watching two and a half hours of people screaming in your face, loud dramatic music cues, and explosions, it becomes tiresome and boring. Bay also seems intent on making sure the audience gets some nice scenes of shit blowing up real good every twenty minutes or so, and we get frequent cut-aways from the action just so we can see either Paris (of course) or some random Asian country getting pummeled by asteroid bits. Superficially this is to make sure the audience is kept aware that this is a serious threat and that the world is in danger. I mean, it's not like the frequent cut-aways to the ticking clock gave us any indication that this was an important mission.
I can't shit on the cast here, who are a great collection of character actors doing what they do best. It's just that no cast, however great, is going to save a Michael Bay movie. I've watched enough of his films by now to know that they aren't for me. I'm not an angry teenage bully who hates smart people and just wants to destroy stuff. I don't believe that people should do whatever they deem is necessary to accomplish whatever mission they're on just because they are awesome and "correct." I don't think the loudest person in the room automatically wins the argument. I don't think Michael Bay will ever make a film that I'd ever want to watch. It's popular to hate him, I get that. I will readily admit that he is an auteur, albeit one that I can't stomach. He's very, very good at what he does. He just happens to do something that makes me want to vomit.
As for ranking, is it really a surprise that I'm putting this fucker right at the bottom? I've heard that Border Radio is pretty atrocious, but I have a hard time believing that anything in the collection is going to piss me off as much as this film did.
The List
Next time: Laurence Olivier's Henry V will hopefully help me wash the puke out of my mouth.
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