ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

This isn't exactly science fiction, it's more like science fiction, but it's still loads of fun, especially when you compare it to "Deep Impact" (which could have been called "Deep Coma" ).

But hey, if they'd done the TV series "Buck Rogers in the 25th Century" with this much energy and imagination, it would have run for years and years!

The thing I liked the most about this movie was the way the approaching asteroid was depicted as having such a complex shape it was like a tangled forest made of stone and iron ore.



The thing I liked the least was the way the space shuttles zipped around like X-Wing fighters. That's fine for "Star Wars" (which Lucas has always defined as a space fantasy, not science fiction), but this popcorn adventure could have toned down the cosmic hot rodding without losing the audience's attention, I'm pretty sure.

But they stretched the "thrusters pushing down" idea to the wheeled vehicles, and that bit of nonsense had me slapping my forehead right there in the theater. Naturally it became necessary to turn them off at one point so Ben Affleck could live out his boyhood fantasy of driving like Beau Duke on an asteroid.

Crazy as the suit-thrusters-pushing-down idea sounds, however, it makes as much sense as the old "magnetic boots" from days of old. I never bought that wacky idea — and Stanley Kubrick's velcro slippers in "2001" were even worse! Can you imagine the noise those things would make while you were yanking your feet off the floor with every step just to keep from having a wonderful time floating around the cabin?
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Bud Brewster]

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Here's two ways of looking at this action-packed, logic-lacking movie. The first way is how Hollywood wanted us to see it, and the second way is what we thought about it as we left the theater.


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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Bud Brewster]

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I watched a portion of Deep Impact recently and was reminded that this story should have been WAY more exciting than it was, with a lot less melodrama and lot more of the excitement that Armageddon had.

However, Armageddon overdid the excitement (and the special effects), so it was the sad flip-side of the coin.

With that in mind I can honestly say that I don't think today's jaded audiences would appreciate the kind of remake of When Worlds Collide which we "Space Children" from the 1950s would love to see. Sadly, we're living amidst a generation of young people whose brains have been condition to require rapid video input . . . at the expense of the challenging intellectual stimulation us older folks enjoy.

This is a thought which saddens me.

Gosh, I might just cry a little . . .

Or maybe I'll just have a few beers and move on.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[The Spike]

It's Bayhem time again.

An asteroid the size of Texas is heading towards Earth, the consequence if it hits is a global killer, the end of mankind. In spite of the billions invested in the space programme, NASA has no answers other than the notion that the asteroid will need to be nuked, from the inside. Enter Harry Stamper and his rough and rugged crew of deep core drillers. Can NASA get these men up on the asteroid and do the job? The fate of mankind rests with a bunch of odd balls!

Perhaps because I have a particular kink for the disaster picture, I find it hard to understand the hate for Armageddon. I am after all a man who gleefully defends The Towering Inferno et al with staunch defiance. Armageddon does exactly what was expected from it, ridiculous high octane entertainment with laughs, peril and obligatory chest thumping bravado. All of course cloaked in director Michael Bay's gleeful insistence on blowing things up with devilish panache. Sure there are some twee moments, sure there is some less than great acting on show, but you know what? It's a disaster picture for Michael Bay's crying out loud sake! Check the brain at the door, turn the sound and colour systems up, enjoy the effects on offer and singalong to Aeromith's smashing, "I Don't Want To Miss A Thing".

Armageddon, does exactly what it says on the cover, don't take it so serious folks. 8/10
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The quality of mercy is not strnen.

[Bud Brewster]

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IMDB has 87 trivia items for this movie. Even those this is not a great movie, it certainly generated some interesting trivia items Here’s a few of the best ones, in the blue text.
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~ N.A.S.A. shows this film during their management training program. New managers are given the task of trying to spot as many errors as possible. At least one hundred sixty-eight have been found.

Note from me: N.A.S.A. must be a fun place to work if they do things like this. I'd love to attend one of those showings to see if I could spot an error nobody else hadn't mentioned yet.

~ Regarding the film's premise, Ben Affleck asked Director Michael Bay, "Wouldn't it be easier for N.A.S.A. to train astronauts how to drill rather than training drillers to be astronauts?" Bay told Affleck to shut up. Besides, the reasoning behind sending drillers, rather than training astronauts, is explained in the movie.

Note from me: In all fairness to Mr. Bay, the mission did include both astronauts and drillers, so Affleck's criticism was not really fair.

~ The shuttle launches were filmed for real. Disney (Touchstone Pictures) was allowed to put cameras (about sixteen of them) all over the place. The camera on the launch pad was shaken so hard (25G) that all the screws fell out of the lens, and it had to be returned to Panavision in a box of pieces (which they put back together).

Note from me: I can just imagine the note that came with the box of pieces.

Dear Panavision,

Your camera seems to have a defect. Please fix it.

Sincerely,
Michael Bay

~ When asked why he did this film, Steve Buscemi replied, "I wanted a bigger house".

Note from me: I'll bet a lot of actors accept questionable roles for reasons like this one.

~ The film crew was also allowed to shoot sequences at the top of a real launch pad, with an actual space shuttle docked to it. The only condition was that they not step into the shuttle itself. Ben Affleck admitted to stepping inside the orbiter for a brief moment, before N.A.S.A. technicians ordered him out of the spacecraft.

Note from me: "Mr. Affleck, why are you in our shuttle?"

"Uh . . . I was looking for the rest room."

~ Bruce Willis came to the film after he decided a comedy he was filming called "Broadway Brawler" could not be salvaged, and sought a way to exit the project. Disney's then-head Joe Roth worked out a deal where Willis would star in Armageddon and two future films for the studio, and in exchange, Disney would absorb the failed project's costs as an advance against his initial salary. The two films Willis later made under this deal were The Sixth Sense (1999) and Unbreakable (2000).

Note from me: So, Willis got two great roles because be bailed out of a cinematic turkey. Sweet deal, eh?

~ According to the Criterion Collection commentary, many of the errors found in the film were acknowledged by the director, and known even during filming and production and were left in deliberately (such as fire in space). Michael Bay said, "It's a movie and not many people know about it", so they were kept in for entertainment value.

Note from me: It's that old Hollywood assumption that "most folks won't notice the science flaws". Instead of rising to the challenge of getting the science right, they just shrug their shoulders and say, "Ah, who cares?"

~ The convenient existence of a fault plane passing right through the asteroid is not unrealistic. Several asteroids are now believed to be "contact binaries", each apparently consisting of two separate lumps of rock that are just sitting on each other.

Note from me: Well, well. In this case they got the science right! Bravo!

~ Critics jumped on the line from Truman where he told the President that the asteroid was "the size of Texas" and said it was ridiculous. However, those critics were embarrassed when fans of the film in the Washington, D.C. area pointed out that the National Air and Space Museum contained an exhibit about the history of asteroids which included a visual from one that hit the Earth millions of years ago, and was roughly the size of the modern state of Texas.

Note from me: Lemme guess: the ones who didn't believe the asteroid could be that big were all proud Texans. "Ain't nuthin' is as big as Texas . . . except Texas!"

~ Michael Bay said in a magazine interview that the solution in the movie for dealing with the asteroid was very clever, but not realistic, but that one idea for countering the threat was in line with actual N.A.S.A. research (anti-gravity systems). He also said that a problem with a film like this, was that it would make Americans erroneously think that if a situation like the movie actually occurred, then there was anything that could be done about it.

Note from me: I'm not sure the 'anti-gravity systems" referred to above pertain the those wacky jets on the shoulders of the space suits which held the astronauts down in the asteroid. I doubt it. I don't think that would work well enough to make an astronaut able to walk around like we see in the movie.

~ Bruce Willis was given a second trailer that housed a full working gym, at an estimated cost of one hundred seventy-five thousand dollars. It was reportedly never used.

Note from me: "Come on, Bruce! You've lost your hair, and now you wanna get all fat and flabby?"

~ Unbeknownst to most Americans at the time, the U.S. Air Force did have a partnership with N.A.S.A. in the 1980s to produce and launch a special version of the Space Shuttle stack, similar to the "classified" experimental shuttles depicted in the film.

The U.S. Air Force built a completely independent shuttle launch complex at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, intended for missions during which the shuttles would place military and intelligence agencies' spy satellites into polar orbits around Earth.

The government also funded and developed special, lightweight "Filament-Wound" Solid Rocket Boosters for these proposed missions, being lighter in weight, thus more powerful than the standard shuttle stack's SRBs, able to place heavier payloads into more distant orbits. The "military shuttle" program was cancelled soon after the Challenger disaster in 1986.

Note from me: A sad example of how our manned space program has dwindled in scope over the years.

~ The film is included on the film critic Roger Ebert's "Most Hated" list.

Note from me: Not really surprising, I guess. The problem with Armageddon isn't that its "all bad", the problem is that some of it is good, and some it is bad enough to make discerning sci-fi fans resent the flaws in a such a promising film.

It's sort of like the way a big hairy mole on the face of a beautiful woman is even more disturbing than one on the face of an ugly gal!
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Gord Green]

I really don't think this was that bad a movie. It WAS after all just sci-fi bubblegum no more realistic than LOST IN SPACE or the 50's SPACE PATROL and CAPTAIN VIDEO.
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There comes a time, thief, when gold loses its lustre, and the gems cease to sparkle, and the throne room becomes a prison; and all that is left is a father's love for his child.

[Bud Brewster]

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Well, you're right of course, Gord — I just wish they hadn't made those appealing versions of the shuttle race around like X-Wing fighters. When that happens in Star Wars we can assume that the propulsion system is more than simple action/reaction engines with maneuvering thrusters.

Those race-car maneuvers in Armageddon would have been more exciting if we'd seen the pilot forced to steer the spacecraft with thrusters, making the maneuvers more difficult — and therefore more suspenseful.

Just a thought.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Captain Starlight]

This really isn't a bad movie. It's just not a good one. The emphasis is on flashy FX with crazy characters who impress today's younger audiences. That's typical of today's Hollywood. The story is fast-past, without regard for science. Maybe in 20 years Hollywood will make movies for a new generation.

[Pow]

And in the isn't it a small world after all category we have the space shuttle co-pilot, Jennifer Watts, portrayed by the cute actress Jessica Steen.

Jessica was a cast member on the terrific SF TV show Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future where she played Jennifer "Pilot" Chase who flew the teams Jump-Ship.

Wonder if the casting people caught her in Captain Power flying the ship on that series and thought she'd make a believable space shuttle pilot in Armageddon?