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Swim-Two-Birds Critiques
Review of Armageddon
(2 hours 20 minutes).   

Armageddon is a Biblical name for the final, catastrophic end of mankind. The movie of the same name is something else, indeed, since poor suffering Hugh Manity struggles through in the end - yet again - to fight another day, to drink more beer and to make even more disastrous disaster movies!   

It's a fun movie - remember the laughs we had with The Dirty Dozen, all those years ago? A similar simian selection  of rough'n'ready wise-cracking roughs (actually roughnecks) that you would loudly scream Copper! about if you saw one coming up to your house to sell you daffodils each turns out to have a heart of pure 24-carat gold, not to mention academic and trade qualifications that defy credence, and language skills that defy understanding. Add to this one part Top Gun and one part Apollo 13, blend for 15 secs on medium, and you get the drift.   

The story starts with massive meteorite showers reordering real estate values in New York and other desirable urban areas. There are spectacular FX of buildings having features removed and being shot through with the naughty spacerocks and - of course, being an American production - motorcars being tossed about like so much Caesar salad in an ebullient (and admittedly delightful) carnage of wanton destruction. Then again, that could just be my big wish for the Big Apple.   

It emerges - with stunning rapidity - that the momma of all spacerocks is coming calling, and that she is likely to make quite an impression on arrival. The movie opens with a beaut visualisation of the impact of the meteorite supposed to have caused the demise of the dinos some 65 million years ago, and we are duly impressed by one particularly slack-jawed boffin declaring that the little incident in prospect involving a Texas-sized rock will result in the total end of personkind - not even bacteria will survive! Gadzooks! (Why the little meteorites arrive before the big one is not explained, but if you allow for greater wind-resistance in space slowing up the bigger rock, the science in the movie will not contradict you.)   

The love interest / sex element of the tale pops up in the form of a very foxy Thomasina, which means a tomboy, daughter of an oil rig owner and roughneck crew boss, and reared on oil platforms, abed and well bedded by the youthful and dentally significant Juvenile Lead of the piece. The outraged Papa, while whingeing about the risk to which the  toothsome JL is exposing his investment, takes after him with a shottie, blasting the bejaysus out of nameless fixtures and fittings on said oil platform in such a supposedly volatile environment with apparently ignition-safe pyrotechnics. All good, lively fun. It sets the scene for what us theatre nibs call  the suspension of disbelief.   

Personally - and I am all for sex in the cinema and anywhere else I can get it - I thought the sex element became a bit raw when we were treated (verbally only, DG) to the prospect of the team of roughnecks teaching the pubescent Female Lead to use tampons. Better she knows how than not, of course, but hey! - this is entertainment, not Gynaecology 101.   

The plot calls for the wronged Papa - wunderkind rockdriller that he is - to assemble his team to pop up to the bothersome meteor and settle its hash by drilling a hole 800 feet (note the precision, and in Imperial measure, to boot!) into its side where a nuke detonation will neatly bisect it, blasting each half apart from the other so that both harmlessly whizz past earth on either side, thereby saving Hollywood the bother of making special effects to illustrate the end of the world. Not that they couldn't, mind.   

Judging by the number of other sci-fi stories which propose exactly the same solution to this proposition - although in Inside the Rock we got a space monster, as well, at no extra charge - I start to worry that, should this situation ever arise in real life, will this solution be accepted as the right one by all and sundry simply because everybody has seen how well it worked in so many movies? Scary thought.   

So in the 15 days left to impact the lads are put into 12 days training for their mission. After many scenes of confrontation and grim-jawed, steeley-eyed dispute - in a few too many scenes of nonsensical hysterical screaming into each others' faces that even Abbot and Costello would have considered extreme - they are ready to go, but the boys have to have a night on the town first, with all of the engaging if a little too predictable high-Larry-t that ensues. Next day, hung over, but game as several White House interns, off they blast - and wouldn't you think that two rockets blasting off side by side might have an effect on each other? - to rendezvous with the Mir space station, where an engagingly dippy Russian Cosmonaut helps fill up their tanks and wipe the windshields before we are treated to yet more delightful pyrotechnics. Obviously, Russia is becoming a movie market for Hollywood to consider playing footsie with.   

The twin spacecraft are named Independence and Freedom - think of the possibilities for symbolism and irony here! (Just don't look for any in the movie!) Although for some reason the Iwa Jima memorial features a couple of times - did I miss something?   

The science of the movie will delight any of the more technical sci-fi buffs in the audience. While we have the by-now industry standard low-frequency thunder as giant meteors cruise past us in the near-perfect vacuum of deep space - where nobody can hear you scream - and also the curiosity of a pair of space shuttles that apparently burn pure oxygen as fuel (?), there are many other anomalies there for the finding. For example, there is the now-you-see-it, now-you-don't gravity both in the space voyage and on the asteroid. The ferrites field where they land is covered with erect conical structures - crystals or stalagmites / stalactites - is there anyone from Material Sciences in UNE in the house? They land 30 miles from where they were supposed to, but still have to drill exactly the same depth as planned? The return trip to slingshot around behind the moon to rendezvous with the rock, drill, blast and get home is to take two days total. Any questions, class?   

And best of all - early in the piece the Hubble space telescope is manoeuvred to take a few pix of the rogue rock - and it FLASHES! (I did wonder about the red-eye, at that!)   

Muck-ups aside, the FX are awesome, indeed. (Voice: Aw, not again!) The sets and action scenes are high-energy dramatic and as exciting as you would want - even if some elements were apparently re-run through the movie. I counted at least half a dozen FX companies listed in the credits - which seemed to run for a good ten minutes by the Shrewsbury clock.   

There was also a long list of editors on the job - a committee, perhaps? - which could account for the sometimes disturbing change of pace and style through the movie. The action scenes were mainly tight and well made, with successful management of tensions and relief; although some of the setting scenes were more than a little self-indulgent and slack. And five writers were listed (I believe two others somehow managed to keep their names out of the credits for reasons that will become obvious to viewers) although I don't recall hearing a memorable line in the whole dam thing.   

Overall, Armageddon is a big, fun, exciting movie, and I have no hesitation - despite my little jibes here - in recommending you to go see it. It is a movie that can laugh at itself, and that will - despite all - make you laugh, but at the same time it runs the bathos and pathos for real. Unlike the good ol' James Bond 007 originals that ran Sean Connery so threateningly that you were realy deliciously perplexed by the end whether it was all serious or not. Grab some mates and some popcorn and have fun!   

Whoever lists the most science bloopers in the movie wins an official Certificate of Exemption from Ever Having to See Armageddon Again from this column.   

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Composed 23 August, 1998 by Hugh O'Connor