Calling Bruce Willis: An Actual Asteroid Approaches Earth!
Today a giant asteroid is heading towards Earth — and sadly it won’t hit, which will deny us any entertainment value. And sadly this event mirrors the plot of the terrible 1998 film Armageddon which pretty much represents every terrible cliche that I hate about producer Jerry Bruckheimer. Bruckheimer was the polar opposite of the golden age of indie films that dawned but too quickly disappeared in the 90s — Jerry knew how to make a picture that looked great, kept your heart beating yet said absolutely nothing of any lasting value.
“It’s an asteroid the size of Texas sir!”
And what kills me is that I made it a point to not waste good money to see Armageddon in a proper movie theater, yet despite my best intentions I seemed to have watched every damn minute of that film several times thanks to heavy air play on cable television a few years ago. What makes me sad about the film is that there is good talent that hides here and there through out the film — you’ve got Charlton Heston as a narrator and lovable Steve Buscemi playing — Steve Buscemi. And if you listen hard enough you can hear some of J. J. Abrams script trying to get a break in-between the sweeping over the top soundtrack, schmaltzy cinematography and things that gotta blow up.
And did I mention the second rate dopey romance angle within the story too?
In a sad sence Armageddon was true to its title in another way: The film topped Steven Spielberg’s masterpiece Saving Private Ryan for the top box office spot that year. Hollywood was never known for having great taste, but for the past few years it feels like action pictures have become a wasteland of fast editing cuts over deeper thoughts. In fact what’s also heartbreaking to me is that the NASA space shuttle which was so prominently displayed in the film has withered on the vine due to budget cuts and negligance. So if we actually had to send Bruce Willis into orbit today to take down an asteroid — the harsh reality is that he’d be going up in Russian spaceship.
I hope to hell that Steve Buscemi got an amazing payday out this flick — god knows he paid his dues…
In some ways Armageddon might have been a much more interesting film if the asteroid had just destroyed Earth all out; although I guess we were lucky that Jerry didn’t get to do a sequel…
And to close things out here’s some second rate songwriting from Aerosmith…