Armageddon

Armageddon

Here is finally, the first 150-minute trailer ever. They have actually cut “Armageddon” in such a way that it looks like an highlights’ package for itself. Pick any 30 seconds at random, and you’d have a TV ad. This film attacks your eyes, your ears, your brain, common sense and perhaps also the desire to be entertained. Whatever they’re charging to get in is worth more than it’s worth to get out.

The plot covers much of the same ground as this summer’s other comet-collision movie “Deep Impact,” which compared with “Armageddon” belongs on the American Film Institute list. The movie tells much the same story at fast-forward speed; Bruce Willis plays an oil driller who is recruited to lead two teams on an emergency shuttle mission to an asteroid “the size of Texas,” which is about to crash into Earth and obliterate all life “even viruses!” Their job: Drill an 800-foot hole and stuff a bomb into it, blowing up the rock before it kills us.

But what if you do blow up an asteroid the size of Texas? What if there’s a piece left the size of Dallas? Doesn’t that still inflict serious damage on Earth? What if there’s a piece left the size of Austin? Come on: Even something as big as that Wal-Mart outside Abilene would pretty much finish us off, counting the parking lot.

Texas wouldn’t generate much gravity as a celestial object. But when the astronauts reach this one (which has conveniently developed its own weather system), they walk around as if they were back in Houston. There aren’t even any good weightless jokes until somebody says, “This is supposed to be us floating across here!” and then we see what looks like Evel Knievel jumping his moon buggy over a crater.

The movie begins with Charlton Heston telling us about the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs. Then we get the masterful title card, “65 Million Years Later.” The next scenes show an amateur astronomer spotting the object. We see top-level meetings at the Pentagon and in the White House. We meet Billy Bob Thornton, head of Mission Control in Houston, which operates like a sports bar with a big screen but no booze. Then we meet ordinary people whose lives will be Changed Forever by the events to come. It’s all off the shelf; there’s hardly an original idea in this movie.

Reportedly there was not enough testosterone on earth to run NASA during the filming of “Armageddon” so oil riggers were brought in for hard work and harder play, along with their womenfolk (one of whom is Willis’ daughter). Even given such lofty competition as “Die Hard With a Vengeance,” this movie sets new standards for macho stunts; one of my favorites is when Willis, flying through space, uses his body as a human shield to save himself from being incinerated by meteors and then saves himself from being splattered by using his arm as a windshield wiper.

Of course it would be offensive for me to suggest that “Armageddon” is not an artistic achievement. Let me therefore praise its accomplishment as a completely nonartistic entertainment. I believe it has achieved its goal: Nobody will ever accused this movie of being too confusing. I know young males who will go to see anything that blows up real good, and they won’t require even this film’s pathetic subplot involving Ben Affleck and Liv Tyler before handing over their ticket money.

And yet here we also have Bruce Willis playing The Man Who Swiped His Daughter’s Virginity oops! Gave His Daughter Her First Big O uh-oh! Sent His Kid Into Space With Liv Tyler So That They Could Have Wild Zero-G Sex oh yeah! And yet this movie still doesn’t work. How could that be? Oh, I know: It’s too short.

Earthquake films usually have little scenes of everyday life. The most moronic segment in “Armageddon” involves two Japanese tourists in a New York taxi cab. After meteors turn an entire street into a flaming wasteland, the woman complains, “I want to go shopping!” I hope in Japan that line is redubbed as “Nothing can save us but Gamera!” Meanwhile, we wade through a romantic subplot involving Liv Tyler and Ben Affleck.

Liv plays Bruce Willis’ daughter. Ben is Willis’ best driller (now, now). Bruce finds Liv in Ben’s bunk on an oil platform and chases Ben all over the rig, trying to shoot him. (You would think the crew would be preoccupied by the semi-destruction of Manhattan, but it’s never mentioned again.) Helicopters arrive to take Willis to the mainland so he can head up the mission to save mankind, etc., and he insists on using only crews from his own rig–especially Affleck, who is “like a son.” Which means Liv and Ben have a heart-rending parting scene.

What is it about cinematographers and Liv Tyler? She is a beautiful young woman, but she’s always being photographed while flat on her back with her brassiere riding up around her chin and lots of wrinkles in her neck from trying to see what some guy is doing. (In this case, Affleck is tickling her navel with animal crackers.) Tyler obviously benefited from Take Your Daughter to Work Day. Not only does she get out onto the oil rig, but she attends training sessions with dad and boyfriend, hangs out in Mission Control and walks onto landing strips right next to guys wearing foil suits.

The actors in the movie actually say “I was going to say I’m sorry,” “We’re not leaving ’em behind!,” “Guys – the clock is ticking!” and “This has turned into a surrealistic nightmare!” Steve Buscemi, a crew member diagnosed with “space dementia,” looks at the surface of the asteroid and says, “This place is like Dr. Seuss’ worst nightmare.” Quick which Seuss book is he thinking of? There are several Red Digital Readout scenes, in which bombs tick down to zero.

Do bomb designers do that for the benefit of interested onlookers who might have happened to be standing next to a bomb? There’s even a replay of the classic scene where they’re trying to disconnect the timer, and they have to decide whether to cut the red wire or the blue wire. The movie has forgotten that this is not a terrorist bomb, but a standard-issue U.S. military bomb, being defused by a military guy who is on board specifically because he knows about this bomb. A guy like that, first thing he should know is, red or blue?

Loud ugly fragmented loud action sequences cut together out of hundreds of short cuts so we can’t see what’s happening or how or why important special-effects shots (such as the asteroid) have murkiness of detail and movie cuts away before we get a good look few “dramatic” scenes consisting of sonorously recited ancient clichés only near end when every second counts does movie slow down: Life on Earth about to end but hero delays saving planet in order to recite cornball farewell platitudes.

Stumbling dazedly into the silence of the theater lobby after it was finally over, I found a freshly printed poster with junket blurbsters’ quotes on it. “It will obliterate your senses!” promises David Gillin, who obviously writes autobiographically. “It will suck the air right out of your lungs!” vows Diane Kaminsky.

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