I don’t care if it’s a decade old, as cheesy as can be, or as some would say, “shallow”. I loved Armageddon. Maybe I fell for the two heartthrobs, Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck, but hey, that’s what they’re there for right?
The basic story is that the world is going end. There’s a meteor the size of Texas headed for the planet, and its impact will end life as we know it in a matter of 18 days. Of course, there is one way to save the Earth. A group of astronauts will have to launch into space, swing around the moon, land on the meteor, drill a hole 800 feet into the ground, drop off a nuclear bomb, take off, and deploy. If all that is done, the meteor should split in half and perfectly avoid our beautiful planet. (Shhh, try not to think about how unlikely this would be.)
NASA has astronauts that are prepared to do the flying, but the drilling is a different subject. They decide to hire the best driller on the planet, Harry Stamper (Bruce Willis). When Stamper meets the crew he is supposed to be working with in space, he realizes that they won’t be good enough. He tells NASA that he needs his original work crew. These men come in varying shapes and sizes, both body and mind. None of them are truly prepared for space, but in a matter of days, they will have to be, because they are the Earth’s only hope.
The rest of the story is fairly predictable, but who really cares? You come to “love” all of the crew. When someone dies (don’t tell me I spoiled that for you, you knew it had to happen), it’s a real tear-jerker. Sometimes a predictable movie is just what you need, especially if the ending you see coming is exactly the way you think the movie should end. For me, this movie had just enough action, comedy, and romance to appeal to all of my movie-watching senses. Minor deductions could come from the overall cheesiness and predictability, but both don’t detract from the movie too much. I would give it eight stars out of ten.
