My Thoughts on "Armageddon ☄️"
Note:
This was originally written on Tuesday August 15, 2023. This was an excerpt from a description that I wrote for a video that I had downloaded off of YouTube and had re-edited somewhat in iMovie. It was a compilation video showing all of the explosions 💥 in Armageddon ☄️. But, the video was like flipped in order to avoid copyright, so what I did in iMovie was that I took the video, and I flipped back so that the footage would be in the right direction if that makes any sense. I wrote a description for that re-edited video as I do all the videos that I re-edit.
But, the description I wrote for that video was so long and so much like a review, that I decided to save it, and keep it in my Notes app instead of deleting it like I do all the descriptions for the re-edited videos I do. I just kept the parts that talk about my thoughts on the movie, and I removed all the parts referring to the video itself. I made about five other of these during that August timeframe, and I will post them at some point. Most of them are of the Michael Bay Transformers movies, and one of them is the 1998 Godzilla movie by Roland Emmerich.
The reason why I'm posting this one now is simple, it's because of Addie Counts. For those that don't know, and I'm sure it's most of you reading, Addie Counts is a reaction channel on YouTube run by a young woman ♀︎ presumably in her 20s named Addie (pronounced Add-ie, not Aud-ie). I think Counts is her actual last name, but I'm not too sure. She reacts exclusively to movies, movies and TV shows that she claims she's never seen before, which is why all of her videos all say "First time watching!" in the title.
Of course, she isn't the only reaction channel of her type. There are whole bunch of these type of reaction channels that only react to movies and TV shows, and the whole genre has grown in popularity and the community has become oversaturated. More and more people are become reacters because reaction videos are pretty easy videos to make. They're a lot easier to make than scripted content. You just to sit in front a computer 🖥️ or a TV, and just watch a movie or a show, and record yourself watching that movie or show and hope that your reactions are exciting or interesting enough to make for good YouTube content. Yes, Patrick Willhems, I know you still hate the word, "content," but I'm still using it in this context.
Now, a lot of these reaction channels have Patreon accounts, and the full-lengths reactions are on their Patreons, while the versions they upload to YouTube are edited down to again, avoid copyright. But, I actually prefer these more edited down versions. It means that they're showing the most exciting or funniest bits of their reactions, rather than all the boring parts where they just sitting in front the TV or the computer 🖥️ and the camera not saying or doing anything.
It gets around the biggest problem that a lot of older reaction videos from back in the day used to have which is that the person reacted to the whole video, and showed the entire video and their reaction to it thus a lot of the reaction video was just them sitting in silence, not really reacting to anything that's on screen. And then, when they do react, they exaggerate it so much, like they feel like they have exaggerate their reactions to the videos they react to, and they get so animated that it doesn't feel natural. Like, it doesn't feel natural.
While, it is still an issue with some reacters, even the ones I like to watch, I don't feel like it's as big of an issue as it was back then where everyone was faking their reactions or exaggerating them for the sake of entertainment. And the unlike the reaction genre of yesteryear, the reaction videos and reaction channels today mostly focus on reacting to movies, TV shows, and also trailers, rather than other YouTube videos made by other content creators.
That's still prevalent, especially the history reaction community, but the more mainstream reaction community, that one has shifted to mostly movies, TV, and streaming shows. And most of the old school guys and gals ♂︎♀︎ aren't doing those kind of videos anymore. They either quit YouTube altogether, or they've moved onto different kinds of content. A lot of the current popular reaction channels right now are people who popped up more recently, like all of the ones I watch came onto the scene in the 2020s, like in 2020 and 2021, and some in 2022. Addie Counts came onto the scene in 2022 if I'm not mistaken, and if not, then definitely 2023.
Now, just because the current reaction genre and reaction channel is different from the one in the 2010s, doesn't mean that it still doesn't get criticism or hate from time-to-time, it does. And there are things to criticize reaction channels for, like the fact that all of them tend to react to the same few movies. Like, when a new reaction channel pops up, they tend to just react to all of the same movies that other reaction channels have reacted to. It's usually, Jurassic Park, The Matrix, Independence Day, The Terminator, Terminator 2, Predator, Alien, Aliens, Pulp Fiction, The Fifth Element, Men in Black, Forrest Gump, Top Gun, Fight Club, Die Hard, The Mummy (1999), the Star Wars movies (usually just the Original Trilogy, but sometimes the Prequel Trilogy too), Galaxy Quest, the Lord of the Rings movies (just the Lord of the Rings trilogy, not the Hobbit trilogy most of the time), 300, Saving Private Ryan, John Carpenter's The Thing, The Fly (1986), the Dark Knight trilogy, the John Wick movies, and of course Marvel movies, as in MCU movies.
It seems like reacting to the MCU, or at least, the Infinity Saga is like a rite of passage for any new reaction channel because every reaction channel that I know has done it, including Addie Counts. I've seen a lot of them also react to the Harry Potter movies, especially if they're of a more British persuasion 🇬🇧, but not all of them do, so I'll just leave that out of that list. I just get sick and tired of seeing reaction channels react to this same group of movies, and I get genuinely happy when I see a reaction channel, especially a new one, react to a movie that most people haven't actually seen or heard of. Or if they react to a movie that is a bit more mainstream, but doesn't get as much cover as those more popular movies that I just mentioned, such as Dreamcatcher (2003) for example. Or if they react to newer movies that just came out, I appreciate that one too.
Another thing that I've noticed and have a problem with is that these reaction channels is that not only start out reacting to the same few movies, but even after they've become more established, they all end up reacting to all of the same movies as each other. Like, if one reaction channel reacts to a certain movie, then you can be pretty confident that they all will at some point. Armageddon ☄️ and Deep Impact started out as a couple of these movies that only a few reaction channels reacted to, but then they kept getting passed around, until eventually, all of the big reaction channels have reacted to them.
Even Addie Counts jumped on the bandwagon of reacting to both Armageddon ☄️ and Deep Impact, almost back-to-back. Same thing happened to a lesser extent with Transformers (2007), Predator 2, and District 9. Now, The Last Boy Scout, a movie that really didn't get any reactions a couple of years ago, is now falling down the same path, with a few reaction channels reacting to it, until it spreads to all, and they all react to it at some point. The biggest reaction channel that has reacted to The Last Boy Scout so far is TBR Schmitt, the king and queen of the current reaction community as far as I'm concerned.
My guess as to why this happens is that because most of these channels have Patreons, and have polls on their Patreons where they allow their fans to vote on the next movie that they'll watch, the fans of these creators end up picking the same movies. Like, a lot of the people watch multiple reaction channels, and they all watch the same ones, so if one of their favorite reaction channel reacts to a certain movie, then they want to see their other favorite reaction channels react to it also. Or sometimes, it's just the creators themselves see that a certain movie is trendy and is getting tons of views, and they decide themselves to watch that movie in order to get those views.
I also don't like it when they all have thumbnails that show them with this expression: 😱. It gets very old, and it looks quite unnatural, and I wish these reaction channels would stop doing it. There's also the issue of whether or not these channels are truthful when they say that this is their first time watching this certain movie or certain show. Almost all of them put the words, "First Time Watching" or "First Time Reaction" in the titles of their videos.
But, come on, these are very popular well known movies that they're reacting to most of the time. They can't have all been living under rocks 🪨 this entire time and have missed all of them. Come on, you can't fool us, we're not that gullible, at least, most of us aren't. I know not everybody watches movies, and watches them as frequently and knows as much about them as me, but still.
I do think some of them are indeed lying, and they have actually watched the movies they're reacting to before. The way you can tell if the person's reaction is super fake, exaggerated, and obviously staged. Like, if their reactions are really over-the-top, then you can tell that they're just playing it up for the cameras, and this isn't actually how they react when they watch movies when they're not being recorded.
Or maybe, this is genuinely how they react to movies even when they aren't on camera, and they are telling the truth that this was their first time watching this certain movie or certain show. It's hard to tell sometimes, but a lot of times, it's easy to tell who are the real ones and who are the fakers. Another way you can tell if a reaction channel is faking it is if the person knows a little bit too much about the movie they're reacting if this is supposedly their first time watching.
And of course, there's the criticism that has levied at reaction videos even during the beginnings of the genre on YouTube, during the early days of the reaction genre in the 2010s, and that's whether or not these videos fall under fair use, and are actually transformative and thus deserve that protection. Like, are these videos really transformative enough to fall under fair use, when it's just a person sitting from a camera, sitting in front of a computer monitor or TV, and watching a movie or show all the way through? Is that enough to fall under fair use and not be hit with copyright strikes or whatever? It is hard to say. Reaction videos, in my opinion, fall into a certain grey area where they are transformative and do fall under fair use protection, but also don't. I see the argument on both sides.
As far as Addie is concerned, I do like her. I like her a lot. She's a very sweet, nice person, at least from what she's shown of herself in these reaction videos. She has a good heart and strong moral compass. She's beautiful, she's cute, and her reactions can genuinely be adorable at times. Speaking of genuine, I do think her reactions are genuine, and that all of the movies and shows she's reacted were ones that she had genuinely never seen before.
She seems like the kind of person who was perhaps a bit sheltered growing up, and wasn't exposed to all the movies that you and I were exposed to. Which is why she comes across as very innocent and naïve in her reactions. I mean, I do think she does sort of play up her innocence and naïvety for the camera, but I do also think it comes from a real place. I do think that this is real gal ♀︎, like I do think that this is how she mostly is in real life. She isn't putting on a fake persona or anything like that. One thing you’ll notice about her when you watch her videos is that she gets really into it.
Like, she gets so invested into the movie she’s watching, that she’ll start talking to the screen, and reacting to what the characters are saying. Like, if a character asks a question in the movie, then she’ll give her own answer. If a character’s evil or doing something bad, she’ll tell them not to do it. And she roots for all the good guys to survive, and she doesn’t want anyone to die. She gets that into it. It’s kind of endearing in a way. She interacts with movies the way kids are supposed to interact with Dora the Explorer, except she does it with everything she watches, at least when she’s on camera.
She does fall into the category of reaction videos on YouTube of the young woman ♀︎ reacting to a movie meant for guys ♂︎, and being shocked by it. The channel, Popcorn in Bed 🍿🛏️ falls into this category too, so does Dasha Reacts, so does ANGELINA (or Angie as she refers to herself as), so does VKunia, so does Mary Cherry, and so does Ashleigh Burton. I mean, with ANGELINA and Ashleigh Burton, it's a little bit more unique because they're reacting to these movies less from a female prospective ♀︎, although the female prospective ♀︎ is inherently there because they're female ♀︎, but it's more so them reacting to as younger people apart of the Millennial generation.
Ashleigh's entire brand is based around the idea of a Millennial watching older classic movies, and to her credit, she does mostly stick to that she does mostly react to older movies, rather than the latest releases. Sometimes she will, but with her it's mostly older movies from the 70s, 80s, 90s, 2000s, and even a couple from the 2010s. She's even reacted to movies from the 50s and the 60s, and I believe even one from the 40s. It also helps that Ashleigh is not conventionally attractive like some of these other female reacters ♀︎ I mentioned, so it's not just "hot girl ♀︎ reacting to movie." Although, I'm sure Ashleigh is hot to some people. Like, she may not be my type, but I'm sure she's somebody else's 😍. But, she's already taken, she has a boyfriend, so it doesn't really matter anyway.
The other major category of reaction channel is the couple reacting to movies and TV shows. It can either be a married couple 💍 such as You, Me, and the Movies and Holden & Jen Hardman, or could just be a non-married couple like TBR Schmitt, JUST TRUST ASH, Dos Cavazos, Eric & Sarah React, and Nick Reacts. I'm not quite sure if Nikki & Steven Reacts are married 💍 or just boyfriend and girlfriend or just engaged. I assume that they are because they do all their videos together as a couple, and they talk about how they have kids. But, I'm not entirely sure, so I'll keep them in the category of "Don't Know."
Usually, the formula with these type of reaction videos is that it's the guy introducing a movie that they've seen to their wife or girlfriend who hasn't seen it. Sometimes, they'll flip the formula by having the wife or the girlfriend introduce a movie that they've seen to their husband or boyfriend. Usually, it's a chick flick because of course it is. Or sometimes, the husband and wife or boyfriend and girlfriend will react to a movie that neither of them have seen, in which case, it'll be a nice experience for both of them.
But, anyway, the whole reason why I'm even talking about reaction channels is because Addie Counts posted a reaction video to Deep Impact today (Tuesday February 13, 2023). She already reacted to Armageddon ☄️ a few days ago, and all of her viewers and all of her fans told her to react to Deep Impact as well because as you all mostly know, both movies came out the same year, 1998. They're twin movies, they came out the same year, just months apart, and have similar premises.
Twin movies are still a common phenomenon as you will still have two movies come out in one year that have similar titles, similar premises, or even similar characters. 1997 was the year of talking cartoon ant movies 🐜, Antz 🐜 and A Bug's Life 🐜🐛🐞. 1997 was also the year of two volcano movies 🌋, Dante's Peak and Volcano 🌋. It was the year of two Tibet movies, Seven Years in Tibet and Kundun. There were a lot of twin movies in 1997 weren't there? 1997 truly was the year of twin movies.
1998 wasn't just the year of two of two asteroid (or comet) impact movies ☄️, it was also the year of two World War II movies, Saving Private Ryan and The Thin Red Line. 2006 was the year of two 9/11 Flight 93 movies, Flight 93 and United 93. 2007 was the year of two killer crocodile movies 🐊, Primeval and Rogue. 2011 was the year of two friends with benefits movies, Friends with Benefits and No Strings Attached. 2012 was the year of two Osama bin Laden raid movies, Seal Team Six: The Raid on Osama bin Laden and Zero Dark Thirty.
2013 was the year of two White House movies, Olympus Has Fallen and White House Down. 2014 was the year of two Hercules movies, The Legend of Hercules and Hercules (2014). 2017 was the year of the two King Arthur movies, Transformers: The Last Knight (yes, it does count as a King Arthur movie) and King Arthur: Legend of the Sword. 2022 was the year of three Pinocchio movies, Pinocchio (2022), Pinocchio: A True Story, and Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio. And last year, 2023 was the year of two Afghan War movies 🇦🇫, Guy Ritchie's The Covenant and Kandahar. So on and so on.
This phenomenon is so common that people are not even surprised when happens anymore. It's kind of just expected at this point. The reasons for why this happens are various, but a lot of the times, it's usually because one studio will catch wind that another studio is making a certain type of movie, and that studio will try to produce their own movie of that kind too in order to beat the other studio to the punch. That's what happened with Antz 🐜 and A Bug's Life 🐜🐛🐞, and it's likely what happened with Armageddon ☄️ and Deep Impact.
So, when I saw that Addie post her reaction to Deep Impact, I was inspired to finally post my Armageddon ☄️ review because in one of the updates I wrote for that review, I talk a lot about Deep Impact, and how it compares to Armageddon ☄️. I just felt compelled to post my thoughts on both movies and set the record straight since it seems like Addie likes Deep Impact, the title of her video literally is, "DEEP IMPACT broke my heart | First time watching!," while I mostly don't. You can watch her video if you want by clicking this link here. And here's her Armageddon ☄️ reaction video for good measure.
But, before I finally close out this note, I'll list off some of my personal favorite reacters. Addie Counts obviously, I watch her frequently. Dasha Reacts is another one that I like. She's a Russian woman 🇷🇺♀︎ who lives in Canada 🇨🇦. Her channel used to be called Dasha of Russia 🇷🇺, but she changed the name of her channel to just Dasha Reacts. Likely because of the hate and vitriol that Russians 🇷🇺 have been getting ever since the invasion of Ukraine 🇺🇦 happened. She is not a supporter of Putin, and she doesn't like the war in Ukraine 🇺🇦.
But, even Russians 🇷🇺 who are against Putin and against the war, still get hate online. I like her videos because she's actually pretty smart, and she catches on a lot quicker to certain things than some of her American contemporaries 🇺🇸 do. Also, it's cool to see react to things from a perspective of a Russian woman 🇷🇺♀︎, and to see what she thinks of American depictions of Russians 🇺🇸🇷🇺 in film. See her critique or complement how Russians 🇷🇺 are presented, and critiquing or complementing the way these Hollywood actors speak Russian or pronounce Russian words. Or critiquing or complementing when Hollywood actors put on Russian accents, if they're good at speaking with a Russian accent or not.
I like You, Me, and the Movies, the other power couple of the reaction community. Mr. and Mrs. Movies are one helluva of an awesome couple. They're a bit older than some of the other reaction channels like they're more Gen X or early Millennial. And on top of that, they're parents with three daughters. So, they come at this from a more mature perspective, and they are not as naïve as some of their younger counterparts. I mean, they're old enough to know what a Mars bar is, so they're definitely apart of an older generation. I like TBR Schmitt, the king and queen of the reaction community, the ones who really popularized the idea of reacting to movies and TV shows on YouTube. I like Ashleigh Burton, she's pretty cool for all the reasons I mentioned before.
I like JUST TRUST ASH, they're another awesome couple too. Ash and Hannah are a really cute couple, and they're a very real couple too. Like, they argue and banter with each other on camera in the videos. But, it's like in a healthy and non-toxic way, like you still believe that these two love each other at the end of the day 🥰. They just disagree and bicker the way that a lot of couples do because of their differences as people, and they're like annoyed or grossed out by their idiosyncrasies, and the inherent differences between a man ♂︎ and a woman ♀︎. Plus, they're British 🇬🇧, and it's always fun seeing a British couple 🇬🇧 argue and banter with each other. British couples 🇬🇧 are just built different than American couples 🇺🇸.
I like Popcorn in Bed 🍿🛏️, a Canadian reaction channel 🇨🇦. She's kind of a bit too timid, innocent, and naïve for me, but I still like her, especially when she brings her sister on board. ANGELINA AKA Angie is pretty hit or miss for me, but I still watch her videos from time-to-time. The reason why she's hit or miss for me is her personality, and they she conducts herself. She comes across dumb sometimes, or she just kinds plays dumb, and I don't really like that. I don't like people who act dumb when they clearly are not.
I like Nikki & Steven Reacts, they're pretty cool. They're a cute couple as well. They seem pretty down-to-earth, and that's what I like about them. Not as chill or as down-to-earth as Mr. and Mrs. Movies, but they're still pretty chill. I almost want those two couples to collab on a video and react to a movie together, all four of them. Reaction channels do collaborate and appear in each other's videos from time-to-time. I want Addie to collab with Popcorn in Bed 🍿🛏️ or Dasha Reacts.
Finally, I like White Noise Reacts. They put their own spin on the reaction concept because instead of it being a single person reacting to a movie or show, or a couple reacting, it’s a group of friends reacting. Like, there are two guys and two gals ♂︎♀︎, on the White Noise Reacts team, and two of them are white and two of them are Asian. Perfectly balanced as far as race and gender makeup goes. They are all on the younger side, like they’re all Gen Z.
The main guy on the channel, James is only a couple of years younger than me, like he’s 22 or 23, and I’m currently 24. However, they don't all do the reactions together as a group. They do frequently, but they also do reactions where it's just two guys ♂︎, James and Nobu reacting to stuff, and then ones where it's just the two gals ♀︎, Stella and Hayley reacting to stuff. Sometimes, Stella and Hayley will react to movies that James and Nobu have already reacted to. Sometimes, they'll mix it up, and have James do a reaction with one of the girls ♀︎, Stella or Hayley. They do a decent job of keeping a variety.
They’re all very smart people, and they catch on quick, and they are a bit knowledgeable of some of the things they react to. That’s another thing too, I don’t like it when reacters don’t research the movie or show they react to. Like, they’re ignorant about certain things, and they constantly ask questions, when often times, they’re watching these movies and shows on the computer 🖥️. If you want to learn more about the movie or show in question, it’s only a few clicks and key strokes away. It’s not that hard, especially for the younger reacters.
You should be doing this stuff, we are the most tech savvy generation currently. I know it kind of ruins the whole idea of watching a movie blind or going into a movie blind. That's the reason why Ashleigh stopped looking up stuff about the movies she reacts, and instead goes in completely blind. Still, I feel people should research the thing they're reacting to before they watch it, so they know a little something about it so they don't look like idiots. Not every reaction needs to be a blind reaction.
That's what I like about Nick & Cory. They do look things up when they're watching a movie and they have questions. Like, they'll go on their phones 📱, and find the answer to whatever question they asked about the movie they're watching. So, no, their reactions aren't completely blind, but they more informed and I prefer informed reactions rather than blind reactions (most of the time). Some people can sell blind reactions, and make them good, but most people can't. BTW, Nick & Cory is another great reaction channel.
They're part of a subgenre or subgroup of reaction channels that I term, "guys ♂︎ reacting to chick flicks." It's not as prevalent as "girls ♀︎ reacting to movies targeted towards men ♂︎," or "couples reacting to movies together," but Nick & Cory have definitely cornered that particular niche of "guys ♂︎ reacting to chick flicks." Them and Aaron & Jo. I don't watch them as often as these other ones, but they're always entertaining when I do watch them. It's the on-screen chemistry between Nick and Cory themselves that really sells it. They're great together, they're a great comedy duo, and you can tell that they're really good friends in real life. And you know what? They actually produce more content consistently than the guy whose channel their channel spun off from, Brandon Walsh.
Brandon Walsh barely posts anything on his main channel these days, and instead is all in on his tertiary channel, Walsh World, which has nothing but ranking videos where he has mom and his sisters (and sometimes his grandma) rank different guys ♂︎ based on looks, based on academic prowess, based on celebrity status, or based on the decades. Like, his most recent video on Walsh World was a video where he had all the women ♀︎ in his immediate family, his mom, his grandma, and his two younger sisters rank men based on 100 years of male beauty standards, like all the male beauty standards throughout the 20th century.
Meanwhile, Nick and Cory post videos almost on a regular basis, like weekly or biweekly, something like that. It is kind of funny that Brandon's friends kind of beat him at the YouTube grind game as far as producing videos on a consistent basis. Again, I'm talking Brandon's main channel, where he hasn't posted anything in months. He posts way more regularly on his Walsh World channel than his main channel called Brandon Walsh or his secondary channel, Brandon Walsh 2. He should've called his secondary channel, 2 Walsh 2 Brandon, you know, like 2 Fast 2 Furious. That would've been kind of funny. Maybe people would've toned into his channel more.
Speaking of things that are funny, what's funny too is that people know Nick and Cory more for their own YouTube channel, Nick & Cory, than they do their association with Brandon. Like, no body thinks of Nick and Cory as just "Brandon Walsh's friends," they think of them as two funny guys who react to romcoms and horror movies all day. A Russian-American guy 🇺🇸🇷🇺 (the son of Russian immigrants 🇷🇺) and an American Jewish guy 🇺🇸✡️ (I don't know anything about Cory's background beyond that) watching romcoms and horror movies and laughing at them 😆 together. That's the winning formula that Nick and Cory developed for their channel.
That's the other thing too about Nick & Cory, they react exclusively to romcoms and horror movies, more so romcoms than horror movies. They did start out reacting to other kinds of videos like dating videos or like TikTok videos that were about relationships, or even reading Reedit posts about sex and relationships. Then even reacted to reality TV shows like Too Hot to Handle, or Sexy Beasts, or FBoy Island, or The Ultimatum: Marry or Move on, or Love is Blind, or MILF Manor, or Love Island USA 🇺🇸, or The Hype House, or The D'Amelio Show, or Awesomeness TV's Next Influencer. But these days, they exclusively to movies, and they react exclusively to romcom movies and horror movies. Again, more romcoms than horror movies. They did sort of start reacting to Disney animated movies and Pixar movies as well, but they stopped doing it, and they have since deleted all of their Disney and Pixar movie reactions from the channel. Presumably because of copyright issues.
Even the type of romcoms they typically react to is more specific and specialized. They react to teen romcoms, romcoms that focus on teen romance ❤️, or even just teen comedies in general. Like, the most recent movie that they've reacted to at the time of me writing this is Bottoms, an Amazon Prime movie that's about a couple of lesbian high schoolers ⚢ who start a fight club at school as a ploy to get girls ♀︎ and lose their virginity.
From what I've seen in the reaction that Nick and Cory did, it seems like the movie is basically a Fight Club parody, like it's Fight Club but with lesbians ⚢ and in a high school. So, it's like the Gen Z take on Fight Club, or to be more specific, the queer Gen Z take on Fight Club 🏳️🌈. Bottoms is a comedy, if you couldn't tell from me describing it as a parody. I've seen a lot of people describe it as a satire, but what exactly it's satirizing, I'm not entirely sure. I guess it's satirizing high school movie tropes and teen romance movie ❤️ tropes based on what I've seen from Nick and Cory's reaction.
Another one they reacted to recently is Saltburn, another Amazon Prime teen romance movie ❤️. I mean, I guess it's not technically a teen movie since it's set in college (Oxford to be exact), so it's more of a young adult movie. Except that Saltburn is not a comedy in any way shape or form. It's a more serious drama, or at least that's what it's supposed to be. It's also a queer romance movie 🏳️🌈, except it's about gay guys ⚣ instead of lesbians ⚢ like Bottoms was.
Just to be clear, neither of these two movies, Bottoms and Saltburn, are kid's movies. They're for adults kind of, or older teens like 17, 18, and 19. You're pretty much a legal adult at ages 18 and 19, at least here in the United States 🇺🇸. Both of them feature swearing like F bombs, S words, and also sexual content. Especially, Saltburn, everything I've heard about Saltburn makes seem like it's a hard R movie with lots of graphic sex scenes. But, even if Bottoms doesn't any overt sexual content, it does feature a lot of sexual discussions and sexual language, like it's literally about lesbians ⚢ trying to get laid.
It also features a lot of violence, especially towards the end, if you're a parent or guardian who's against showing your kids violence in movies. Like, they literally kill people at the end. A guy ♂︎ (a football jock 🏈) gets stabbed the chest with a metal rod 🩸. So, don't go into them thinking that they're kid's movies, or that they're appropriate for kids, they aren't. They're both R rated movies from what I understand. I haven't seen either of these two movies because they don't interest me. Those movies really aren't my thing. But, it is fun watching Nick and Cory watch and react to them.
But anyway, the people on White Noise Reacts do actually know about the things that they’re reacting to before going into it, and they’re open and honest about it. Like, if they react to a movie that’s based on a book 📖, one of them will have read the book 📖 in question, and let the others know if the movie is accurate or faithful to the book 📖 or not. That sort of thing. This is what happened when all four of them reacted to Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, and Stella had read the Lemony Snicket’s books beforehand, and knew things about the books 📖.
So, she was able inform the others about which things were the same or different in the movie. Unfortunately, James announced in December that they’re closing the channel and they will no longer be making any new videos for it. He didn’t say exactly why they’re shutting the channel down, and they’re stopping making videos. But, from what he did say, and from what it seems like, it just seems like they’re all getting tired of it, and they don’t want to make reaction videos anymore.
That, or their personal lives are getting in the way, and they just have the time to sit down and record reaction videos for the channel. So, they’d all rather just shut the channel down, and end it all on a high note. Respect to them, but it is a bummer that we won’t be seeing anymore reaction videos from them because they were one of the better reaction channels. We still never got the chance to see them react to Army of the Dead 🧟♂️🎰 or Predator 2. Or The Pacific, they never reacted to The Pacific, even though they reacted to Band of Brothers, or at least, James and Nobu did. And I think The Pacific is a way more interesting show than Band of Brothers. Most because it's about the Pacific War (as the title would suggest), and not about the War in Europe like Band of Brothers was.
I'm tired of the War in Europe being the only part of World War II that's depicted. Even the latest World War II show from the creators of Band of Brothers and The Pacific, Masters of the Air is a show centered around the War in Europe. The show takes place in Europe, and the enemy combatants are Germans. Well since it's an aviation series (it's called Masters of the Air for a reason), the enemy planes are German planes. The American bombers 🇺🇸 are going up against German bombers and German fighter planes. The third and possibly final show in their World War II saga, and they take it to Europe again 😒. The Pacific War was a huge part of it too. It was what got us into World War II in the first place. We wouldn't be in Europe fighting the Nazis at all if it weren't for the Japanese 🇯🇵 attacking Pearl Harbor. So, the Pacific War should covered more in movies, but it's not.
Everyone just want to see Americans 🇺🇸 and British 🇬🇧 or any other Allied soldier punch, shoot, stab, or blow up Nazis. People just like seeing Nazis get killed. People like seeing the Allies defeat Hitler and triumph over evil, which Hitler obviously was. The Imperial Japanese 🇯🇵 were pretty evil too, but seeing them get killed just doesn't quite hit the same as seeing a Nazi German get killed. Maybe because there's a racial component to it? There was a lot of racism towards the Japanese 🇯🇵 during World War II, and that sort of anti-Japanese racism 🚫🇯🇵 is kind of off-putting to modern audiences for obvious reasons.
I'm not saying that's only reason why people don't like seeing Imperial Japanese troops 🇯🇵 get killed in movies as much as they do Nazi German troops, but I'm sure it's a contributing factor. That's why most movies set in World War II, regardless of whether they're actually historical movies or not, always have the Germans be the bad guys instead of the Japanese 🇯🇵. Plus, a lot of these filmmakers are white, and have roots in Europe, so it's more relatable to them.
It hits home in a way that the Pacific War doesn't because it was happening where they or their family came from, as opposed to happening on the other side of the world, in a place that they have no familial or cultural connection to. Regardless of the reason why the Pacific War doesn't get covered in film that much, besides the Pearl Harbor attack or the Battle of Midway, it was nice to see the people who made Band of Brothers—the more popular and successful of the two shows—dedicate an entire show to that theater of World War II. Arguably the most important and most consequential of the two major theaters of the war since it got us into the war in the first place, and it gave us the atomic bomb ☢️, a weapon that would shape world politics for the second half of the 20th century, and even now in the 21st century.
It would have been cool to see what James and Nobu thought of The Pacific, and how they thought it compared to Band of Brothers. But, we'll never get to see them do it because they're closing the channel down, and ceasing all operations. Such a shame 😔. Anyway, with all that reaction video talk out of the way, let’s get on with the review. Oh, and all the updates to my review that I feature in here have the dates on them so you know when I wrote them.
–
Update (Wednesday May 29, 2024):
One last thing: in the Deep Impact section, I mention Digital Domain. I mentioned how the effects in Armageddon ☄️ despite them being done by Digital Domain instead of Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) like the effects in Deep Impact were. The exact words, I said were, "The effects in Armageddon ☄️ still hold up tremendously well, despite them being done by Digital Domain, a company considered less prestigious than ILM at the time." I didn’t mean to throw shade on Digital Domain, or assume that they did bad work. They’ve done a lot of good work including in this movie, Armageddon ☄️. I don't know what was going through my head when I wrote that. I don't know why I worded it like that.
I guess I could've worded it better. Maybe it's because the company was co-founded by James Cameron, he was one of the three founders of the company, and I kind of have a grudge against James Cameron. I dislike him as a director and as a person, especially younger James Cameron. Younger James Cameron was a huge asshole. Just like how younger Steve Jobs was an asshole. I know that he's sort of mellowed out in the decades since the 80s and 90s, but there are still things about Cameron that I find objectionable.
Even on his most recent movie, Avatar: The Way of Water 💦, he was putting his actors' lives at risk when they were filming those underwater scenes 💦, which make up the majority of that movie. Kate Winslet almost drowned on a few occasions, especially when they were filming a certain scene that involved her having be submerged while these white balls were in the water 💦 or something. It didn't really look like it was that fun of a experience to shoot that scene or that movie. But, the production on The Abyss was still a lot worse, and a lot more hellish. BTW, the effects in The Abyss were done by ILM.
I'm of the mindset that you can make great art without being an asshole, or without putting people's lives at risk, or just making a toxic work environment. I've seen all these film aficionados praise directors who are notoriously horrible to work with because they have violent tempers, they verbally abuse their actors and crew, they recklessly put the actors and stunt workers in danger unnecessarily, and even worse case, they abuse their power and sexually harass or assault the actresses or female crew members ♀︎, and they just generally create a toxic work environment.
Obviously, Stanley Kubrick was one of those directors that was like that, where he was very difficult to work with, and put his actors and crew through hell just for the sake of a good shot, especially because he wanted take after take. I mean, I understand the argument is that Kubrick was a perfectionist, and that's why he conducted himself the way he did on his sets, but I personally don't think it's justified. David O. Russell is another one, only he's even worse than Kubrick was.
He makes Kubrick look like an angel 😇 by comparison. David O. Russell is such an asshole, and such a pain to work with that it kind of ruined his career. Like, that man ♂︎ is such a dickhead that no body wants to work with him. Francis Ford Coppola sort of counts in this especially because of the way he acted during the production of Apocalypse Now, but his awful behavior during that shoot was mostly to the fact that he was under so much stress and had lost his mind. I'm not saying that excuses how he acted and conducted himself, but that is sort of what his behavior on that production has been attributed to. As far as I know, he hasn't really acted that way on other movies he's worked on.
And James Cameron is also one of these type of directors who's an asshole, but justifies it, or people justify his bad behavior because he makes good work, or at the very least, he makes work that makes money 💵, which what studios really care about at the end of the day 🤑. That's not a secret. Cameron is actually a lot like Kubrick, especially in his youth, where he's a perfectionist and he wanted multiple takes, just to get a shot just right, and sometimes drove his actors and crew insane by doing so. That's the reason why actress, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio was so pissed 😤, and refused to work with Cameron again after The Abyss, and why to this day she refuses to talk about her experiences working on The Abyss.
But, I don't think things have to be done that way. I think you can make great art without treating everyone like crap, putting their lives in danger, or just generally acting like an ass. It's been done plenty of times in and outside Hollywood by many filmmakers. Stephen Sommers I would say is a director who creates a positive work environment and is generally nice to be around. Zack Snyder is another one, and so is Guillermo del Toro. Michael Doughtery is another one, so is Adam Wingard. Pretty much all the MonsterVerse directors fall in this category of directors who are nice and create positive work environments for their actors and crew. There are other ones, but these are the ones that come to mind.
When everyone on a movie is having a good time, and is getting along, and there's no drama, no misconduct, and everyone's enjoying what they're making, it comes across on screen. A lot of the movies I like have that sort of quality to them. Some of these so-called "prestige movies" have an aurora of misery to them, where you get the sense no one really had a great time making them. But anyway, that's sort of the reason why I have a bone to pick with James Cameron, and why I don't consider to be one of my favorite directors.
And maybe my negative opinions on Cameron influenced how I wrote about Digital Domain, a company that he helped found. Cameron helped create this company, so maybe I felt that I had to kind of trash on that company. But, Stan Winston, the legendary effects artists who founded the effects company, Stan Winston Studio, also co-founded Digital Domain (which I didn't know until recently), and I like Stan Winston and his work, so I guess it balances out.
—
So, I like that this tagline references that scene. Now, obviously, this isn’t the real poster, and that wasn’t the real tagline. Somebody just edited the poster to say different things. The real tagline of the movie was “For love. For honor. For mankind.” Surprised they didn’t add “For God and country” while they were at it. This poster even says, “A Michael ‘The Rock’ Bay film,” referencing the fact that Michael Bay directed The Rock before this. I wish that this was the actual poster, and the actual tagline, it would’ve shown that this movie doesn’t take itself completely seriously—which it doesn’t—and it’s a fun summer blockbuster.)
These are my thoughts on the 1998 sci-fi disaster film, Armageddon ☄️, directed by Michael Bay, and starring Bruce Willis, Ben Affleck, Liv Tyler, Billy Bob Thornton, Steve Buscemi, Michael Clarke Duncan, Will Patton, Owen Wilson, William Fichtner, Jason Isaacs, and Peter Stormare. This is one of two asteroid impact movies ☄️ released in the year, 1998, the other one being Deep Impact; yes, I know that Deep Impact had a comet, not an asteroid ☄️, but still. Of the two, this one was more successful and popular one, grossing over $553 million 💵 at the worldwide box office against a budget of $140 million 💵. It was the highest grossing movie of the year by a long shot. It beat out movies like Saving Private Ryan and Godzilla (1998).
There’s even a scene in this movie where a street vendor is selling Godzilla merchandise in Manhattan before he gets blown up by a meteorite ☄️. That clearly was a not-so-subtle dig at Godzilla (1998), since these movies were released months apart from each other, and Michael Bay really wanted to show his dominance as the one with the bigger blockbuster. Speaking of Michael Bay, this arguably is the movie that truly put Michael Bay on the map as a sought after action director. This movie is likely the reason why Steven Spielberg wanted him to direct the 2007 Transformers movie. Which is funny that mention that because there’s a line referencing this movie in that movie, when a character says, “This is easily a hundred times cooler than Armageddon ☄️.”
It’s remembered a lot more than Deep Impact is, and it’s not entirely hard to see why. Armageddon ☄️, despite any flaws it may or may not have, still looks like a big budget summer blockbuster, like it actually looks like a theatrical movie. Deep Impact on the other hand, despite being executively produced by Steven Spielberg himself, looks like a Hallmark Channel or Lifetime movie, and it kind feels like one too since it’s more a drama film with people standing or sitting around in rooms and talking, standing outside and talking, or walking and talking, rather than an action film like Armageddon ☄️ is. That’s also probably the reason why Deep Impact is more appealing to women ♀︎ than Armageddon ☄️ is. Armageddon ☄️ is definitely way more appealing to men ♂︎.
The only scene that most people actually remember from Deep Impact is the tidal wave scene 🌊, where the entire Eastern Seaboard gets flooded by a giant wave 🌊 caused by the impact of the smaller comet, Beiderman; there’s two comets in the movie, a smaller one called Beiderman, and larger one called Wolf after the initial mission to destroy the comet failed, and split the comet in two. They also remember that Morgan Freeman was the president in that movie, which made an entire generation think that he should be president for real.
And I was definitely a part of that. I loved this movie as a kid 😍. I pretty much watched it all the time, even before I realized that it was directed by the same guy ♂︎ as the Transformers movies. It made want to be astronaut when I grew up for a time before I started shifting more towards writing and filmmaking as a career path. And you know what? I still love this movie even to this day 😍. It’s just as entertaining to me then as it is now. A lot of that has to do with the characters, they’re just so entertaining to watch. It’s fun to see them get into funny situations 😄 while they train to go on this mission to destroy the asteroid ☄️. And when they’re actually on the mission, it’s fun to see them work out problems and try to figure out the best way to plant the nuke ☢️ inside of the asteroid ☄️ before it reaches Zero Barrier.
Yes, I know this movie has been criticized for its scientific inaccuracy, like “How can oil drillers be trained to be astronauts?” or “Why does these meteorites ☄️ keep hitting famous cities and famous landmarks?” or "Why are there explosions 💥 in space at all?” It’s clear that the point is just to have some cool asteroid destruction ☄️, big explosions 💥 (something that Michael Bay is most associated with), and to have some fun characters banter with each other. Michael Bay clearly wanted to anchor the movie ⚓️ by centering it on blue-collar individuals, people the audience could more easily relate to, and he couldn’t really do that if the movie focused on actual astronauts from NASA. So, don’t think about it, and just have fun with it. This is definitely a “turn your brain 🧠 off” kind of movie.
And while this movie is often just written off as big dumb action movie with some juvenile humor, there are some emotional parts too. Like, the scene where Harry Stamper says “goodbye” to his daughter before he makes the ultimate sacrifice and blows up the asteroid ☄️ while the others escape in the Shuttle. It’s enough to make grown men ♂︎ cry 😭.
And the soundtrack is just amazing. Most of the Michael Bay movies I’ve seen have pretty good soundtracks, except for Transformers: Age of Extinction, that movie’s soundtrack was dookie 💩, except for that Imagine Dragons song, “Battle Cry.” They still play “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing” by Aerosmith on the radio even to this day, it’s definitely a classic. But, the other songs on the soundtrack are pretty good too, like “Mister Big Time” by Bon Jovi, “Leaving On a Jet Plane” by Chantal Kreviazuk, “La Grange” by ZZ Top, and the other three Aerosmith songs, “Sweet Emotion,” “What Kind of Love Are You On,” and “Come Together,” which is a cover of the Beatles song of the same name, and in my opinion, is superior to the original version by the Beatles.
—
Note (Tuesday August 15, 2023):
(This is the theatrical poster for Deep Impact. It shows Elijah Wood’s character, Leo Beiderman hugging Leelee Sobieski’s character, Sarah Hotchner. The two become boyfriend and girlfriend throughout the film, and then get married 💍 towards the end of the film because they’re both convinced the world’s going to end, and they don’t much time left on Earth 🌎 together. Plus, Sarah’s parents both die in the tidal wave 🌊 caused by the Beiderman comet, and they leave her baby brother with her, and her, her baby brother, and Leo are only ones left standing.
I mean she’s going to have to take care of her brother, and raise him from childhood to adulthood. That’s a heavy burden and huge responsibility for a teenage girl ♀︎ that’s only like 14 years old or 15 years old in the film. I don’t think the actress was actually 14 or 15 at the time. She might have, but I’m not entirely sure. Her parents just plopped that weight on her shoulders, without really considering how she would actually make it work. I know desperate times call for desperate measures, and the parents wanted to make sure that their youngest child survived too, but still.
I guess, they figured that Sarah has Leo, her newlywed husband, to help provide for her and the baby. But, you’re just putting all kinds of responsibility on this teenage boy ♂︎ who hasn’t even graduated high school yet. I mean, it’s pretty much like being teen parents, except the child isn’t theirs, it’s the girl ♀︎’s little brother. All I can say is I hope Sarah has grandparents that can take her and her brother in, or at least aunts and uncles. If not, then I hope Leo’s parents step in, and help him and Sarah out.
They’re still alive, they just went inside of one of those caves that the US government 🇺🇸 dug to shelter people from the impact of the two comets. But, only the Beiderman comet hit, and the larger Wolf comet was destroyed, so they don’t need the caves anymore. All the people that got selected to be in those caves can come out and go back to their normal lives. Except if they lived on the East Coast, then their lives are pretty much destroyed. Leo and his family lived on the East Coast, so I guess their lives are destroyed then. Unless they decide to permanently relocate in Colorado.)
I know I already kind of said this, but Deep Impact really is an inferior movie to Armageddon ☄️. You might say that’s a controversial opinion, but I don’t think it is. I rewatch Armageddon ☄️ far more than I rewatch Deep Impact, and if I had to choose between the two, I’d choose Armageddon ☄️ every single time. Armageddon ☄️ is remembered far better than Deep Impact. When people are asked about an asteroid movie ☄️, the first movie they think of is Armageddon ☄️, not Deep Impact. And a lot of that is because the movie is kind of dull. Like I said, the movie looks like a Hallmark Channel or Lifetime movie, not a theatrically released big budget summer blockbuster. Obviously, Armageddon ☄️ had the much bigger budget. Armageddon ☄️ had a $140 million budget 💵, while Deep Impact only had an $80 million budget 💵, which is still big, but not as big as Armageddon ☄️’s budget.
And as this year, and the past couple of years have taught us, it really isn’t how much money 💵 you have on a movie, it’s how you use the money 💵 you do have. There are movies made today that have budgets in the $200 million 💵 range, or $300 million 💵 range, or even now $400 million 💵 range, that look like complete ass; and not the good kind of ass, if you catch my drift 😏. You look at some of these big budget movies, and you think to yourself, “What did they spend all that money 💵 on?” Like, Thor: Love and Thunder looks like complete shit, even though it had a $250 million budget 💵. Same thing with The Flash (2023), that movie had a $200 million-$220 million budget 💵, and it looks horrendous.
Same thing with Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, that movie looks like shit despite having a $200 million budget 💵. Same thing with Fast X, that movie had a $340 million budget 💵 and looks like shit; I think they spent most of the money 💵 on paying the actors’ salaries, especially Vin Diesel, Jason Mamoa, John Cena, Helen Mirren, Brie Larson, Jason Statham, and Dwayne Johnson, and also paying for the expensive locations for filming like Rome, Italy 🇮🇹, Turin, Italy 🇮🇹, Lisbon, Portugal 🇵🇹, Viseu, Portugal 🇵🇹, and Vila Real, Portugal 🇵🇹. Same thing with Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, that movie had a $295 million-$300 million budget 💵, and yet, it looks awful; it looks so digital, sterile, and hollow.
And to use a couple of Michael Bay movies as an example to not show a bias towards the Bay, Transformers: Age of Extinction and Transformers: The Last Knight. Transformers: Age of Extinction had a $210 million budget 💵 and Transformers: The Last Knight had a $217 million-$260 million budget 💵, and both movies look terrible. The Last Knight looks worse, but Age of Extinction still looks pretty bad too, and is incredibly unpolished and has very noticeable blemishes. Not only is the CGI in both movies not as good as the first three Transformers movies (in fact the CGI in Age of Extinction and The Last Knight looks pretty bad in a lot of instances), but both movies have technical errors and mistakes that are inexcusable for movies as expensive as they are.
Like, Age of Extinction has a scene early on where they forgot to remove the green screen from some monitors, and another scene later on when they forgot to digitally remove the Sears Towers (I know it’s called the Willis Tower now, but I like Sears Tower better) in the background (twice I think) when the scene’s supposed take place in Hong Kong 🇭🇰. Yes, they did film some of the Hong Kong 🇭🇰 scenes in that movie in Chicago, Illinois. They did the same thing in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, where they filmed all of the Shanghai stuff in the United States 🇺🇸; they filmed the parts at the steel mill in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and the rest of the Shanghai battle in Long Beach, California; they actually passed off Bethlehem and Long Beach as Shanghai.
Then there’s The Last Knight, which not only reused shots from Age of Extinction and Revenge of the Fallen, but even reused the same shot twice in the same movie, they use the same reaction shot of Lennox twice, and only minutes apart it seems like. Then, there’s the awful editing, where scenes are edited too frantically, and shots are cut together too quickly, there’s a lot of ADR that’s very obvious that doesn’t mesh well with the other audio, and there’s continuity errors all over the place. Then of course, the worst offense of all, there’s the ever-changing aspect ratios.
Michael Bay shot several scenes in the movie with IMAX 3D digital cameras (he did the same thing on Age of Extinction, but to an even greater extent on The Last Knight). About 98% of that movie was shot on IMAX, and the only 2% percent was shot on regular digital cameras. But, Bay and his editors decided to alternate between the IMAX footage and non-IMAX footage throughout the entirety of the film. So, the aspect ratios kept changing. Not from scene-to-scene, like second-to-second in the same scene. It would just go from 1.43:1 (which is the IMAX aspect ratio) to 2.39:1 (which is the regular widescreen aspect ratio) and then to aspect ratios in-between those for some reason in a matter of seconds.
But, anyway, back to Armageddon ☄️ and Deep Impact, I’ve already talked plenty about Transformers already. The problem with all of those other movies I mentioned is that while they all had big budgets, they used their money 💵 the wrong way. So, none of the money 💵 actually shows up on screen. Like, these movies don’t look like they cost the amount that they did. But, Armageddon ☄️ doesn’t have this problem. All of the money 💵 is right there on screen, and it definitely looks and feels like a big budget summer blockbuster, it actually feels like an event movie; it makes total sense why it was the most financially successful movie of 1998 🤑. Deep Impact, on the other hand, looks significantly worse.
I know I keep saying this, but it looks like a made-for-TV movie, not a tentpole summer blockbuster that had the backing of Steven Spielberg. I know, $80 million 💵 is a lot less than $140 million 💵, but they could’ve still made that movie look good with that amount of money 💵. I mean, Jurassic Park had a $63 million budget 💵 and The Lost World: Jurassic Park had a $73 million budget 💵, and both of those movies look really good. They look like they cost way more than they actually did. Why couldn’t they do the same for Deep Impact? The fact that The Lost World was literally released the year before, only made this one look worse. I’ve never seen any of the director, Mimi Leder’s other work besides this, but the way she shot this movie looks very flat, bland, and sterile. There’s no flare or energy to it, like there was with the way Michael Bay shot Armageddon ☄️.
Perhaps, hiring a director who mainly did TV before and after this movie to direct a disaster movie about a comet (or two) hitting the Earth 🌎 wasn’t a good idea. I know that Mimi directed that political thriller movie, The Peacemaker (no relation to DC’s Peacemaker) that starred George Clooney, and was based off of the lies of a conman. But, that probably isn’t the best showcase for this director; I mean, I’ve heard that The Peacemaker is fine, but isn’t good or great either, it doesn’t really excel at anything in particular, which you could also say about the majority of Deep Impact. It’s clear that when she came to direct this movie, Mimi decided to make it more of a slow paced drama film about people’s reaction to the comet hurdling towards Earth 🌎 rather than a fast paced action film about the space mission to actually destroy the comet (or asteroid ☄️) like Armageddon ☄️ was.
Sure, we see the astronauts in the movie, we see their mission to destroy the comet, but they’re side characters mostly. Robert Duvall got top billing in the movie’s credits, and yet, he’s not the main character, Téa Leoni is. She’s the character we focus the most on for the first half of the movie, and in the second half, the movie jumps around to the perspectives of the other characters like Elijah Wood, his girlfriend, and their families, the President (occasionally), and of course, the astronauts+one cosmonaut just like Armageddon ☄️ coincidentally enough.
But, the astronauts get the least amount of focus in the movie, even though they’re ones actually in space trying to stop the comet, and later comets, from hitting the Earth 🌎. Even the President gets more focus than they do, and he doesn’t even get much focus either. And of course, there’s this really boring subplot where Téa Leoni’s character is trying to find out who her father really is, and surprise, surprise, it’s the guy who keeps showing up at her workplace, and keeps bumping into her and saying that he’s her father. And for all the focus she gets, Téa Leoni’s character dies anyway. It was all kind of pointless in the end.
It’s like they knew that Armageddon ☄️ was being made at the same time, and was going to be released the same year, in the same summer. So, in order to differentiate this movie from that movie, they decided to focus more on the people on Earth 🌎 rather than the astronauts off in space. They just pushed all the exciting stuff aside to focus on all the boring stuff back on Earth 🌎. So, what we have here is a dull melodrama full of a bunch of people standing around in the rooms and talking, sitting and talking, walking inside and outside and talking, or sitting and reacting to TV news reports (usually from Téa Leoni’s character since she’s a reporter and a news anchor) or to the President’s speeches.
They turned what should be an exciting disaster movie with lots of spectacle into a chick flick essentially. Why do you think it’s mainly women ♀︎ who mainly like this movie? I mean, my grandma (on my mother’s side) watched this movie more often than she watched Armageddon ☄️, and I watched Armageddon ☄️ more often than I watched this movie. Now, it’s not impossible to make a chick flick disaster movie good, I mean, James Cameron managed to do it with Titanic (1997). That movie is one part romance ❤️ and one part disaster movie. It was entertaining for women and girls ♀︎ as well as men and boys ♂︎. And that movie came out the year before this movie, come on!
There are concepts in this movie that could’ve worked. Like, focusing on the people on Earth 🌎’s reaction to the comet or asteroid ☄️ heading towards Earth 🌎 isn’t an inherently bad idea. You could show people are just lose all hope because they’re fully convinced that the world is coming to an end, and either do all the things on their bucket lists, making the most of their short time left on Earth 🌎, turning to religion, abandoning religion, committing suicide, or turning to a life of crime believing that there are no more consequences since the world’s gonna end anyway. They could’ve showed more of the rioting and looting 🔥 that starts taking place as the comet (or asteroid ☄️) draws close.
This could’ve been a really dark and even depressing movie that delves into the dark side of humanity, and showing how horribly people behave when they believe that the world’s going to end, or how much despair and hopelessness there can be if people believe that the world’s going to end. And while this movie kind of tries to do some of that, it’s executed poorly most of the time. We don’t really see the world’s reaction to the comet(s) approaching Earth 🌎 outside of the main characters, and all we really get is a TV reporter with daddy issues, and a teen love story ❤️. How is that remotely interesting? The only reason why they decided to make the protagonist of the movie a TV reporter in the first place it seems was to just to promote MSNBC really, since MSNBC was brand new at the time. All of the interesting stuff happens off screen. Like, there is rioting and looting 🔥, there is increased criminal activity, but we never see any of it, we just see the aftermath of it.
Like, in Leo Beiderman (Elijah Wood’s character)’s neighborhood. When, Leo leaves his parents behind at those caves and goes back to their neighborhood to search for his wife, the neighborhood is completely trashed. Everything’s been ransacked or destroyed, there’s stuff lying all over the streets and sidewalks, and there’s not a single person in sight. It’s like a ghost town. But, we never see how the neighborhood got that sad state, like we never see anyone be evacuated, or anyone loot or destroy houses. The only evacuation we see is when Leo and his family, and the other people selected to go into the caves get picked up in those military buses.
And they do sort of address the increased amount of suicides that would inevitably take place if an asteroid or comet ☄️ was heading to Earth 🌎, and nothing was able to stop it, like Téa Leoni’s character’s mother I believe commits suicide towards the end of the film, shortly before Téa Leoni goes to meet her father. But, that’s as far as they address that, they don’t even really show it, they just imply that she killed herself and that’s about it. I don’t even know if Téa Leoni ever finds out that her mother died or not. This movie never really feels as apocalyptic as it should.
It’s like the writers wanted to do a movie showing how people would react to a comet hitting the Earth 🌎, but also didn’t want the movie to be too dark and depressing, and wanted the movie to have a happy ending. That’s why only the smaller comet hits the Earth 🌎, and the larger comet is blown up 💥 before it even reaches the Earth 🌎. Sure, the entire East Coast of America 🇺🇸, and parts of Africa and Europe are destroyed, but they can still rebuild, and human civilization continues on. So, we get an ending that’s more schmaltzy and overly uplifting with triumphant feel good music. It is only feel good though, if you ignore the implications of what happens with Leo and Sarah, and Sarah’s baby brother. Honestly, with how the movie turned out, a more bleaker direction probably would’ve been the better way to go.
There are other plot and writing issues that are kind of annoying, like opening scene. The opening scene shows Leo spotting the comet on his telescope 🔭 while flirting with Sarah (Leelee Sobieski’s character), and then sending the findings to an astronomer named Dr. Marcus Wolf. And upon looking at the readings, Dr. Wolf realizes the severity of the situation and the gravity of what Leo had discovered, and immediately puts the findings on a floppy disk 💾 (the movie really shows its age with that one, and the boxy computers), and drives off somewhere to alert the authorities. They don’t specify which authorities he’s going to alert, but I think we can safely assume he’s going to alert NASA.
I mean, they’re the organization you probably would go to if you discovered a Mount Everest-sized comet that was heading towards Earth 🌎; and yes, they do state in the film that the Wolf-Beiderman comet is the size of Mount Everest, at least until it gets split into two. But, Dr. Wolf gets into a car wreck and dies, failing to get the floppy disk 💾 to whoever he was going to get it to. And the movie’s implying that’s the reason why no body knows about the comet until it’s already few months away. But then that’s all rendered pointless because the US government 🇺🇸 find out anyway.
Why even bother with that setup of Dr. Wolf putting the information about the comet on a floppy disk 💾, and then getting into an explosive car accident 💥, and thus losing the data altogether, only to have the government learn the truth anyway regardless of the floppy disk 💾 being destroyed in the crash? That was unnecessary. It’s like they only opened the movie that way so it would be more dramatic, and so they could have an explosion 💥 at the beginning to show that this is an action movie, kind of. It’s not just a boring melodrama with people talking, even though it totally is. They really wasted our time with that opening. They wasted our time with a pointless plot point, and they deceived us by trying to convince us that this would be an exciting action movie or thriller, even though it really isn’t for the most part.
The movie jumps forward a year or two, or even four years (I don’t exactly remember) to then the present day of 1998, and Téa Leoni discovers that the US government 🇺🇸 has been hiding the existence of the comet from the rest of the world, and is barely just now telling everyone. The only reason she finds this out is that she’s convinced that the Secretary of the Treasury is having an affair, and she tries doing some investigative journalism to find out who he’s having an affair with. Can’t you tell this was made during the decade of Bill Clinton? But then, the President stops her and just flat out tells her that a comet is heading towards Earth 🌎.
She thinks that the Secretary of the Treasury is having an affair with a woman ♀︎ named “Ellie,” and when the President confronts her and forces her to stop her investigation, he asks what she knows about E.L.E.. And that leads to her looking up what E.L.E. stands for on the computer, and finding out its acronym meaning Extinction Level Event on this website showing the extinction of the dinosaurs at the hand of an asteroid impact ☄️, and that’s how she puts two and two together and realizes its a comet heading towards Earth 🌎.
That’s another thing, you see the K-T extinction theory was still fairly new during this time, like it was still a theory that an asteroid ☄️ killed the dinosaurs, and not every paleontologist agreed it, as opposed to nowadays where it’s just a common fact. Like, everyone just accepts that an asteroid ☄️ killed the dinosaurs as much as they accept that lions are cats. And the K-T extinction event has become so ingrained in people’s minds, and in pop culture, that people just associate asteroids ☄️ with mass extinctions and apocalyptic doomsday scenarios. How many apocalyptic doomsday shows have you seen where they discuss the possibility of an asteroid apocalypse ☄️?
But, back then, in the 90s, it was still a new and exciting theory, and the public was just barely getting used to the idea that an asteroid ☄️ killed the dinosaurs and accept it as an undeniable fact. People were still wrapping their heads around the idea that a space rock the size of a football stadium 🏟️ could wipe out 80% of Earth 🌎’s biodiversity at the time. That’s the reason why there’s a website dedicated to the K-T extinction event in the film. That might also be the reason why Hollywood decided to make two movies about an asteroid ☄️ hitting the Earth 🌎 in the first place. Like, “Yeah, sure, an asteroid ☄️ killed the dinosaurs, but what if it happened today? What if we went extinct like the dinosaurs?”
So, the United States 🇺🇸 knew that the comet was coming, years in advance, and they told no body. Except Russia 🇷🇺, they would’ve had to have told Russia 🇷🇺 for them to help them build the spaceship and donate a cosmonaut to go on the mission to destroy the comet. Why wouldn’t you alert everyone when it was years away, rather than months away. I know, the justification in the film is that they didn’t want to cause a mass panic, but you still caused a mass panic anyway by telling everyone that the comet was coming when it was months away.
If anything, you made it worse by telling everyone when the comet’s even closer to Earth 🌎, and when people have even less time to prepare for the worst. And if you really wanted to keep this a secret, and not tell anyone except the Russians 🇷🇺 (for their rocket technology and available cosmonaut), why didn’t you send the mission to destroy the comet years in advance? Why did you wait until the comet was mere months away to send the mission? Did you really spend those 2-4 years just building that ship, the Messiah, and digging those stupid caves? Did those two things really suck up that much time, money 💵, and resources?
Oh, that’s another thing too about this film, it has a lot of religious themes and religious allegories. The ship sent to destroy the comet is literally called the Messiah, the caves they built to protect people from the impact(s) are called the Arks, you have characters praying constantly, and God is evoked several times. The movie is essentially a modern retelling of “Noah’s Ark,” but with a comet instead of God, and caves instead of a wooden boat. The comet causes a flood 🌊 that washes away the old world, and brings about the beginning of a new one. They even take animals into the caves just like how Noah said two of every animal in the Ark in the Biblical “Noah’s Ark” story.
It’s kind of like Roland Emmerich’s magnum opus, 2012 (2009), which was also a modern retelling of “Noah’s Ark” that was just an excuse to have flood destruction 🌊. They even have a scene in that movie where the President suggests that they should’ve had a lottery to determine who got to go on the Ark ships, and survive the apocalypse, just like how the US government 🇺🇸 used a lottery to determine who got to go inside the caves in this movie.
What I will say that this movie has one thing above 2012 (2009), at least it didn’t end with only rich people surviving the end of the world, and every poor and middle class person that isn’t one of the main characters dying. And of course, I already addressed the issue of how Sarah’s parents give her little brother to her, and expect her to take care of him when he’s only an infant, and she’s still a teenager, and the ridiculous and uninteresting subplot about Téa Leoni’s character searching for her father when it’s so obvious who he is, but there’s one more thing.
You see, Leo and his family live on the East Coast, they’re in the same neighborhood as Sarah and her family. The caves are in Colorado, and when they get there, Leo decides to go back for Sarah, not wanting her to die in the comet impact. But, how did he get all the way from Colorado all the way to the East Coast, in Virginia or wherever they all live? It just shows him leaving his parents behind to go in the caves while he goes to find Sarah, and then later shows him already there in the neighborhood. How did he get there? And how did get there that fast? Did he take a plane 🛩️?
The movie never shows how he gets from Colorado to the East Coast in such a seemingly timely manner. No indication of the time passage, how long it actually took for him to get there. How did the writers miss that up? That is just some sloppy writing right there. Or perhaps, I’m not remembering right, but I’m pretty sure that the caves are in Colorado because they make a big deal about how they dug and built them out of the Rocky Mountains (like they literally drilled holes into the Rockies and built caves out of them), and the Beiderman family and the Hotchner family live on the East Coast, otherwise they wouldn’t be at risk of the tidal wave 🌊.
Deep Impact isn’t even all that great from a technical perspective. Sure, the movie is competently made, it’s shot okay enough, but as I said, it looks very flat and boring. It looks and feels like a made-for-TV production rather than an $80 million 💵 blockbuster. But, the special effects in this movie doesn’t even look that good. That scene where the astronauts actually try to dig into the comet, and insert the nukes ☢️ to blow it up looks awful.
The set itself looks fine, but they added all of these CGI effects to make it seem like they’re on a comet, like they added CGI smoke and snow and this particle filter effect thing like that’s supposed to be like the comet’s tail. The CGI used in that scene absolutely sucks. This scene never looks or feels real or convincing, it always looks and feels exactly like what it is: a sound stage. I mean, the asteroid set ☄️ in Armageddon ☄️ looked way more convincing, and actually looked and felt like you were on the surface of an asteroid ☄️.
Even the CGI on the comets themselves isn’t that good, like they always look very digital, and hardly ever look real. They even added these goofy faces to the comets to make them more “evil.” And they peeled back the water vapor on the comets so that you would see more of the rock underneath because they didn’t want the comets to look too pretty, and wanted them to look scary and intimidating. But, then it’s like they might as well just be asteroids ☄️ at that point. I mean, the whole idea of making them comets was that comets are beautiful, but also potentially deadly, and you’d think they would’ve used that opportunity to show that something so beautiful could be so deadly and world-ending. I think that was a missed opportunity.
The Messiah itself doesn’t look that good. They did actually build a good looking model of the ship, that they did use in a few shots, but then they switch to an awful looking CGI one when the astronauts actually land on the comet. The space suits that astronauts wear when they go on the comet look horrible, they look goofy as hell. The space suits in Armageddon ☄️ look way cooler. Michael Bay was right when he said that a space movie needs to have cool looking space suits, otherwise people won’t take it seriously. The space suits in Deep Impact are really goofy looking, and make that part of the film hard to take seriously.
It’s hard to believe that the special effects in this movie look as bad as they do considering that they were done by ILM, the same people who did the special effects in the Jurassic Park movies. They did some amazing special effects in two movies that most people today would consider mid budget ($63 million 💵 and $73 million 💵 are considered mid budgets for a film nowadays). How did they do significantly worse visual effects in a movie with a similar budget range as Jurassic Park and The Lost World, and was released a year after The Lost World? I don’t know if the CGI in this movie looked as bad back then as they do now. I have a feeling they did, but even if they didn’t, they aged horribly, like they do not hold up at all.
The effects in Armageddon ☄️ still hold up tremendously well, despite them being done by Digital Domain, a company considered less prestigious than ILM at the time. It was still a pretty new company at the time, as was founded in 1993 by James Cameron, Stan Winston, and Scott Ross. And Armageddon ☄️ came out in 1998, so Digital Domain was only 5 years old at that point. Whereas ILM had been around since 1975. It was founded by George Lucas just so that they could do the effects in the original Star Wars, retitled by Lucas to Star Wars, Episode IV – A New Hope decades later. Then the company grew, and Lucas opened up it the entire industry, and ILM branched did effects for many other movies besides those produced by Lucasfilm.
The only technically impressive things about Deep Impact are the tidal wave scene 🌊 and the traffic jam. The tidal wave scene 🌊 still looks pretty good even to this day, and is really the only time that the movie actually feels like a disaster movie. That was the kind of city destruction that most people went to that movie to see, not to see a boring melodrama with people standing around in offices or conference rooms, or living rooms or backyards, or walking in parks talking. It’s really the only part of the movie that most people actually remember, and praise, and actually stands out in any meaningful way. Armageddon ☄️ just offered way more in terms of action, and asteroid destruction scenes ☄️. You got the meteor shower ☄️ at the beginning that destroys that space shuttle and kills that poor astronaut named Pete, and then devastates Manhattan.
You got the Shanghai destruction scene, which happens at the mid point of the movie, and is what alerts everyone about the incoming asteroid ☄️; the US 🇺🇸 was keeping it a secret in that movie too, and the impact in Shanghai just completely blew the lid off in a big explosive way ☄️. And you got the Paris scene, where the entire city of Paris is just wiped off the map by a massive asteroid ☄️ that broke off the larger one that Harry and his crew are still on.
That scene was like that movie’s equivalent to the tidal wave scene 🌊 in this movie where the smaller Beiderman comet crashes into the Atlantic Ocean, and destroys the American East Coast 🇺🇸, and presumably parts of Africa and Europe. We never see the rest of the world in Deep Impact, just the US 🇺🇸. All of the characters in the film are either from Washington DC or Virginia. The only one who isn’t is the cosmonaut and he’s off in space most of the movie. See, it isn’t just Michael Bay who was Americanocentric 🇺🇸. At least we actually see other countries in Armageddon ☄️. I mean, the scene where the Russian space station 🇷🇺 explodes 💥 alone beats any of the “action scenes” in Deep Impact.
But, yes, the traffic jam scene was impressive from a technical perspective. It is genuinely impressive that they managed to get that many cars and get that many extras, shut down a highway, and a create an artificial traffic jam for the movie, and do it all in camera practically with very little VFX trickery; classic Hollywood filmmaking right there 🙂👍. It was so impressive that they made an entire behind-the-scene featurette about the making and logistics of that traffic jam on special features for the DVD 📀 and later, Blu-Ray and 4K releases 💿; yes, this movie is in 4K now; would it kill Disney to release Armageddon ☄️ in 4K? But besides that, and the awesome tidal wave sequence 🌊, this movie is very underwhelming on a technical level.
Deep Impact really isn’t a great movie, or even really a good movie. It’s a mediocre or okay movie at best. I actually think the behind-the-scenes featurettes are more interesting than the movie itself. How the movie started out as a remake of the 1951 movie, When Worlds Collide, but later became its own original thing with no real connection to When Worlds Collide other than the basic premise of a celestial body slamming into Earth 🌎 during the pre-production process, and was inspired by the Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet that hit Jupiter in 1994; that’s the reason they decided to make it a comet in the first place. The only real things people praise about the movie is the tidal wave scene 🌊 and the casting of Morgan Freeman as the President (which was an awesome choice), and also science nerds praise the movie for being more “scientific accurate” than Armageddon ☄️.
Like, the common consensus about Deep Impact from critics and science geeks that it was better than Armageddon ☄️. While the common response from general moviegoing audiences is that Deep Impact was a boring and melodramatic slog that was way too self-serious, while Armageddon ☄️ was a fun and exciting popcorn movie 🍿 that keeps your interest all the way through, and is entertaining to watch despite how long it is. Armageddon ☄️ is 151 minutes long (2 hours and 31 minutes) while Deep Impact is 121 minutes long (2 hours and 1 minute). But, like Jeremy Jahns always says, it’s not how long a movie actually is, but how long it feels. And Deep Impact feels a lot longer than it actually is, while Armageddon ☄️ breezes by, and you hardly ever feel its length; most of the time.
Scientific accuracy does not make a good movie. Just because the Neil deGrasse Tysons of the world are happy with it doesn’t mean I’m happy with it. Sure, it can help, it can give a story more credibility, especially a science fiction story. But, in this case, I’d rather have something that’s fun and exciting rather than something that’s realistic and scientifically accurate. And I don’t even think Deep Impact is as scientific accurate as it’s made out to be. There’s probably some iffy stuff in there that people just over look. But, it’s more scientifically accurate than Armageddon ☄️ and that’s all that seems to matter to most people.
Yes, I know that there’s no way that oil drillers could be taught to be astronauts in just 12 days, I know that there’s no way that NASA could actually mount a response to an asteroid ☄️ that’s only 18 days away, I know that explosions 💥 can’t happen in space (at least not the way that they do in Armageddon ☄️), I know that if a space station like the Russian space station 🇷🇺 (which was called Mir) was destroyed like that, it would create so much space junk and debris that it would cause a knock on effect that would lead to many other satellites being destroyed and make Earth’s orbit 🌎 unsafe for space travel in the future, I know there’s no such thing as space dementia, and I know that you probably couldn’t blow up an asteroid ☄️ the size of Texas with just one nuke ☢️; you probably couldn’t even destroy an asteroid ☄️ that big with multiple nukes ☢️. But, I don’t care.
I still love that movie regardless, way more than Deep Impact. The thing that makes that movie work besides the action sequences, the jokes, and the awesome soundtrack, is the characters. The characters are what really what sell Armageddon ☄️, especially Rockhound (Steve Buscemi’s character), Bear (Michael Clarke Duncan’s character), Oscar (Owen Wilson’s character), and Lev (Peter Stormare’s character). Rockhound and Lev are easily the best characters in the movie. They share beat any of the characters in Deep Impact, except the President. In fact both Armageddon ☄️ and Deep Impact have pretty good presidents. The president in Armageddon ☄️ gives one helluva epic speech that really gets the blood 🩸 pumping and ready to kick some asteroid ass ☄️, and the president in Deep Impact is Morgan Freeman, need I say more? So yeah, Armageddon ☄️’s better.
There are a few more things that I also want to touch on about Armageddon ☄️ that I didn’t talk about in the main description excerpt. If you didn’t know already know, Armageddon ☄️ is in the Criterion Collection. In fact, it’s one of two Michael Bay movies that are in the collection, the other one being The Rock, which many people consider to be Bay’s best film. So, now Michael Bay is among such greats as Akira Kurosawa, Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, Andre Tarkovsky, and Ingmar Bergman, among other prestige directors that only film snobs really care about. Terrence Malik is in the collection, and he’s made films that people like right?
Armageddon ☄️ and The Rock are of course two most controversial movies in the Criterion Collection, at least until WALL•E was added in 2022. A lot of people found it bizarre that a movie like Armageddon ☄️, a movie that received mostly negative reviews from critics, and is a big dumb blockbuster with very little substance or perceived artistic merit, was given a release by a company that specializes in releasing artsy, high brow type of movies for film buffs and film historians. A lot of cinephiles (people who love movies) hated the fact that Michael Bay was given the same treatment and put in the same ledge as some of cinema’s greatest and most influential directors, when a lot of his movies are badly reviewed and seen as the worst part of cinema.
I imagine the reaction would be the same if one of Roland Emmerich’s movies was added to the collection. Could you imagine if like Stargate was added to the Criterion Collection or Independence Day, or The Day After Tomorrow, or 2012 (2009)? Well, out of those four of those, The Day After Tomorrow and 2012 (2009) are the only ones that aren’t part of a greater franchise, and Criterion seems to be against adding movies that are part of a franchise, unless you’re Godzilla or Police Story. Speaking of which, I highly doubt that would add Godzilla (1998) to the Criterion Collection, even if it is a Godzilla movie and a Roland Emmerich movie. The Emmerich movies that probably would be added are Independence Day or 2012 (2009), perhaps even both of them.
And probably with the same justification they used with adding both Armageddon ☄️ and The Rock. They’re both stylistic movies that are fun blockbusters or something to that effect. Like, this film scholar named Jeanine Basinger wrote an essay defending Armageddon ☄️’s addition to the Criterion Collection by saying that the movie is "a work of art by a cutting-edge artist who is a master of movement, light, color, and shape—and also of chaos, razzle-dazzle, and explosions.” She also said that the movie was a celebration of men ♂︎, "This film makes these ordinary men noble, lifting their efforts up into an epic event." And then she said that the characters are well-written, especially in the first few moments of the film, "If that isn't screenwriting, I don't know what is.”
I imagine if Independence Day was ever added to the Criterion Collection, some film scholar somewhere would write an essay defending that film’s selection by saying something like, “This movie is work of art made by a true artist who is a master of spectacle, razzle-dazzle, and widespread destruction,” and “This movie is a true celebration of America 🇺🇸, and the American spirit 🇺🇸 to persevere and beat back against the odds,” and “It truly set a new standard for alien invasion movies 👽🛸,” and “It’s a great time capsule of America 🇺🇸’s obsession with aliens and UFOs 👽🛸 in the 1990s, brought about by The X-Files,” and “The screenwriting is tight, every character arc is paid off in a satisfying way, and the President’s speech is one of the greatest speeches ever put on film.” The logic being that even movies perceived to be as dumb and meaningless as these are worth preserving, and do have value as works of art in their own right.
I mean, compared to a lot of the other shit that’s in the Criterion Collection, and got official Criterion releases, Armageddon ☄️ really isn’t that bad. I mean, pretty much all of Wes Anderson’s movies are in the Criterion Collection, and I hate his movies (except for the soundtracks to his movies) and him as a director overall. And the 1953 War of the Worlds was added to the Criterion Collection recently, and that movie’s kind of perceived as a schlocky B movie from the 1950s. A more polished and well made B movie, but still a B movie regardless. It’s not really the kind of movie people would think of when they think of the Criterion Collection. And they added all of the Showa era Godzilla films, and those are seen as campy B movies as well, especially the later ones in the 60s and 70s. So, adding Armageddon ☄️, or The Rock for that matter, weren’t betrayals of what Criterion stood for. Get your head out of your ass if you think that.
The Criterion release of Armageddon ☄️ was actually pretty cool. It included a lot of bonus material that has never been included on any other home release of the movie; a lot of awesome special features that I never knew existed until years later. There’s a blooper reel (which are outtakes if you aren’t familiar with the term “blooper reel”), there’s deleted scenes, and there are a couple of audio commentaries, one from Ben Affleck and one from Michael Bay himself. The commentary with Ben Affleck gained a lot of traction online because he talked about how he thought the plot was ridiculous how oil drillers are trained to be astronauts, instead of astronaut being trained to drill, and when he told Michael Bay how he felt, he apparently just told him to shut up.
Only thing is that Criterion has not updated the release of Armageddon ☄️. They haven’t done a more up-to-date release of the movie on Blu-Ray or 4K Ultra HD 💿, they just have the DVD and Laserdisc versions 📀. So, if you want to see those special features, and don’t have DVD or Laserdisc player 📀 then you’re shit out of luck. Some of the special features have been uploaded to YouTube, but not all of them. Some of it is technically lost media, and for the simple reason that Criterion has not re-released the movie in HD. The only HD quality version of the movie that you can get is the standard Blu-Ray release 💿 that’s incredibly barebones and has no special features except for the music video for Aerosmith’s “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing.” So, get on it, Criterion, give us an updated HD release of Armageddon ☄️. If Disney won’t give us a 4K version of the movie, then you can.
Also, Michael Bay did famously do a cameo in the movie. He’s one of the NASA guys that mans the Hubble telescope 🛰️, and takes pictures of the asteroid ☄️. Bay has cameoed in a few of his other movies like Bad Boys II, and even in other director’s movies like Mystery Men and Bad Boys For Life. I think he may or may have cameoed in Transformers: Age of Extinction, but I’m not quite sure about that. During the highway chase scene in that movie, there’s a part where Optimus Prime and Bumblebee 🐝 go through the trailer of a semi-truck while saving Cade Yeager, Tessa Yeager, and Shane Dyson, and one of the guys inside of the truck who’s trailer the crash through looks a lot like Michael Bay, but really not sure on that.
Also, apparently, Michael Bay and Bruce Willis couldn’t really stand one another 😡👊, and Bruce Willis actually vowed never to work with Michael Bay again after this. And to his credit, he kept his promise, as this is only Michael Bay film that he ever starred in. But, I guess Ben Affleck didn’t have any problems working with Michael Bay, as he worked with him again on Pearl Harbor, a movie that isn’t as well regarded as this movie; not that this movie is very well regarded to be begin with.
And also, this is first of two times Michael Bay destroyed Shanghai in a movie. The second time was Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Neither times, he actually filmed in Shanghai, instead using sound stages or location stand-ins. I don’t know why he chose to destroy Shanghai of all cities in China 🇨🇳. But, it seemed like he just really likes destroying Shanghai. At least, until Transformers: Age of Extinction where he wasn’t allowed to destroy Shanghai, and was only allowed to destroy Hong Kong 🇭🇰. He also end up destroying Hong Kong 🇭🇰 a second time in 6 Underground. I guess, once Bay destroys one Chinese city 🇨🇳 in a movie, he’s gotta destroy it a second time in another movie later on.
—
Note (Wednesday August 16, 2023):
🚀
There’s one more thing that I forgot to address yesterday when I wrote the other note, because I just so many things to cover about Deep Impact, but there’s the issue of how the Messiah crew deals with the comet, and later two comets. You see, in the film, there’s one big comet, and it’s called Wolf-Beiderman (named after Leo, and the astronomer who died in the car accident at the beginning, Dr. Wolf). They say in the film that it’s the size of Mount Everest, so it’s pretty huge, and would easily destroy the world and end human civilization if it crashed into Earth 🌎.
The United States 🇺🇸 and Russia 🇷🇺 join forces, and send a joint space mission to destroy the comet by blowing it up with nukes ☢️; that’s why there’s a token cosmonaut on board. However, when the Messiah actually makes it to the Wolf-Beiderman comet, and they start drilling into it, and placing the nukes ☢️ inside, the mission goes terribly wrong, and all they end up succeeding in doing is splitting the comet into two pieces. So now, there’s two comets: a smaller one called Beiderman and a larger one called Wolf.
The Messiah crew decides that there’s no way that they can actually destroy the Beiderman comet, so they just decide to let it hit the Earth 🌎, and focus all of their remaining efforts on destroying the Wolf comet. The Beiderman comet hits the Earth 🌎, in the Atlantic Ocean, causing a massive tidal wave 🌊 that devastates the entire East Coast of the United States 🇺🇸, and also probably parts of Europe and Africa; but who cares about those places? We only care about what happens to America 🇺🇸 (that’s sarcasm if you couldn’t already tell). Then, they all the remaining Messiah crew (because some of them died in the first attempt to destroy the Wolf-Beiderman comet) decide to sacrifice themselves, and crash the ship into the Wolf comet, and they blow it up thanks to all the nukes ☢️ on board.
Now, of course, there’s the issue that the Messiah crew essentially made the problem worse by splitting the comet in two in the first place. But, unforeseen circumstances happen, and things don’t go exactly according to plan, and probably wouldn’t in actual scenario where NASA sent a mission to destroy a comet or asteroid ☄️ heading towards Earth 🌎. So, I’ll forgive that, even if the people on Earth 🌎 watching this probably wouldn’t be as forgiving; to them, these astronauts seem incompetent, and just doomed them all even further. But, why couldn’t they actually destroy the Beiderman comet? It seems like it would be the easier one to destroy considering it’s a lot smaller.
I know, the explanation in the film is that the Messiah depleted a lot of their nukes ☢️ in the first failed attempt, and they aren’t capable of launching them. So, they can only drill into the comets, and drop the nuke ☢️ inside of it. But, why? Why couldn’t they actually give them the capability to launch the nukes ☢️ in rockets or missiles if it ever came to that? It seemed there was no real contingency plan in case the first plan failed. I know that there wasn’t a contingency plan in Armageddon ☄️. The plan in that movie was also essentially a drill a hole into the asteroid ☄️ and drop a nuke ☢️ into that hole and then detonate it, or fail, and that’s it.
But, at least they sort of addressed it, with Harry chastising Billy Bob Thornton’s character, Truman for not coming up with a backup plan. He said, “This is all the government, the US government 🇺🇸 could come up with? I mean, you’re NASA for crying out, you put a man on the Moon 🌕! You’re geniuses, you’re the guys that thinking shit up! I’m sure you got a team of guys just thinking shit up, and guys just backing them up! And you’re telling me that this is our one best hope, that’s what you’re telling me?!” Then Truman answers, “Yes,” and Harry is just shocked and says, “Oh, Jesus, dammit!” And at least, NASA had more of an excuse in that movie for why they didn’t have a backup plan since they only had 18 days to figure out a way to destroy the asteroid ☄️ before it hit Earth 🌎.
They had years to plan and prepare in this movie, so there isn’t as much of an excuse. And the way it was executed in the film just make it seem like the Messiah crew just gave up on trying to destroy the Beiderman comet, and just decided that it was only worth destroying the Wolf comet, because trying to destroy both comets was too much work. Sure, the entire planet was saved, but millions of people died, and entire cities were flooded and flattened, by their decision to let the Beiderman comet hit the Earth 🌎.
Like, the Messiah crew just seems callous for dooming millions of people, and leaving them to their fate, and never really thinking twice about it. We never see that this decision has a weight on their shoulders, and makes them feel guilty for letting millions of people die. It’s a horrible decision to have to make, but we never really see it have any effect on the crew on an emotional or mental level. It’s like they took the whole “the needs of the many outweigh of the few” idea to its horrifying conclusion with the mental and emotional distance of robots; I mean millions of people is a lot of few. It never feels like they reaction to these decision like actual human beings.
This whole idea could have worked if the movie better conveyed the desperation. Like, they could’ve really shown how much the Messiah’s resources had been stretched thin, how little crew they have left, and how they’re only capable of destroying one of the comets, rather than both. Like, really sell how desperate and dire the situation on the Messiah really is. And then, when the crew does decide to destroy one of the comets and let the other one hit Earth 🌎, show how much that decision takes a toll on the crew mentally and emotionally. Show them actually getting sick to their stomaches (metaphorically), and actually argue with each other and get genuinely angry 🤬 with each other for wanting to let millions of people die, while the others argue it’s better to sacrifice millions of people to save billions rather than letting everyone die. Then, show how guilty they all feel for doing this.
This is essentially the Ozymandias Watchmen conundrum, sacrificing millions of people to save billions of people. The decision should have that level or moral weight to it. But, it never feels that way in the film. It just feels like the Messiah crew just gave up, and thought it was easier to destroy one comet rather than going through the trouble of trying to destroy both comets. So, yeah, that does really bother me thinking about this film, and how it plays out. It’s one of the many interesting ideas and concepts that this movie has that are executed terribly.
Also, one more thing about those Ark caves. Of course, like with the Messiah mission, the US government 🇺🇸 was keeping the construction of the caves a secret from the American public 🇺🇸 and from the rest of the world as well until the President decided to finally spill the beans 🫘. But, there’s one problem with that: they built them out of the Rocky Mountains. The Rockies are a tourist attraction and a national landmark, I think that they’re apart of a national park, at least the part that’s in Colorado. And the caves were constructed in the part of the Rockies that’s located in Colorado. So, how would you even cover something like this up? Did no body ask any questions in those two or four years what the government was building in those mountains, and why they were drilling holes into them? You’d think a big operation like that would raise some suspicions, if not from the general public, then certainly from journalists.
It’d be trying to build a bomb shelter inside the Grand Canyon, it’s going to raise suspicions, and people will ask questions why they’re defacing a national landmark and natural wonder. And people would probably discover what it is long before you’d actually intend to. I mean, today, you could never keep anything like this a secret for very long, what with how many classified documents 📄 keep getting leaked.
People would find out that you were building caves out of the Rockies in an instant. Any hope of secrecy would be dashed. But, even in the 1990s, this would still be a difficult thing to keep under wraps, probably never impossible, and it’s all because of how famous the Rockies are, and much tourists like to visit them. I know conspiracy theorists like to think that the government’s all shadowy, and is super good at keeping secrets and covering things up, but it really isn’t.
At least in 2012 (2009), they were building those Ark ships in a pretty well hidden and disclosed area in Tibet, somewhere most of people aren’t even aware of, or would ever think to go and look for such things. But, here, in Deep Impact, the Rockies are right there out in the open. Everybody knows about them, and wants to go see them. Ain’t no way that secret cave project is staying a secret for very long.
We also never see the inside of the caves, we just see the outside of them. We don’t know if they have sleeping quarters for the people inside, like does every selected person get their own room with a bed 🛏️ inside? Is there a cafeteria that everyone goes to eat at or does everyone have their own individual kitchen that they can cook their own food in? What is there to even eat in there? They mention how they transported seeds into the caves, and presumably some of those would be used for crops 🌾 to feed the people. Or does everyone inside the caves just have to eat MREs or canned food? Are there any activities to do inside the caves? Any sports? Any swimming pools 🏊♂️? Is there a movie theater 🍿?
For all we know, it could all just be a dark room with nothing inside, and the people just have to stand or sit around in complete darkness. That seems like a pretty sad existence. I mean, that’s a fate worse than death. I would take the comet if that was what living in those caves was actually like. At least, with the comet, depending on where you were during the impact, your death would probably be quick. If you were directly in the impact zone or close by, your death would be so quick that you probably wouldn’t even perceive any pain; it’d be like being in the immediate blast radius of a nuclear explosion ☢️, you’d die so quickly that it would essentially be painless.
Comments
Post a Comment