Roger Ebert named Armageddon his worst film of 1998 and called it a feature-length trailer and an assault on the senses and common sense.
In the discussion (2)
- Ebert’s “150-minute trailer” formulation earns reluctant admiration even from the movie’s defenders.
- His longer dismissal is quoted as attacking the eyes, ears, brain, common sense, and desire to be entertained.
Final choices split among the astronauts’ return, assembling and briefing the drillers, the Billy Bob and presidential speeches, and disarming the bomb.
In the discussion (8)
- The New York meteor strike is praised as an effects opener whose long Eddie Griffin setup resembles the era’s habit of giving comedians disposable mini-movies.
- Harry discovering Grace with A.J. and firing across the oil rig announces the movie’s insanity, while Grace calling her father Harry and his physical intrusion become objections.
- Harry’s crew demands—cleared tickets, citizenship, Caesar’s Palace, the Kennedy answer, White House access, and no taxes—are a funny, sharply written assembly payoff.
- The crew’s slow-motion walk and the president’s global address turn NASA departure into maximal patriotic spectacle.
- A.J. and Bear’s crash, Independence’s destruction, A.J.’s monster-vehicle return, and the abrupt forgetting of Max provide escalating asteroid action and dark comedy.
- Harry’s goodbye, sacrifice, and the surviving astronauts’ return culminate in Sharp asking Grace to shake the hand of the bravest man he has met.
- The Russian station sequence, the bomb standoff, Harry’s promise, and Billy Bob defying the president are additional major candidates.
- One final pick is the astronauts landing and Sharp greeting Grace; another is assembling the crew and its Kennedy beat; a third ties Billy Bob’s briefings with the presidential speech; the last favors disarming the bomb.
Billy Bob Thornton’s grounding authority leads a category that also celebrates patriotism, product placement, supporting performances, commentary, Los Angeles doubling, and urgency-as-exposition.
In the discussion (9)
- Thornton’s NASA director is compared favorably with his Friday Night Lights work and Ed Harris in Apollo 13; his “global killer” explanation makes outlandish science sound authoritative.
- The brief asteroid discoverer naming it after his wife contributes an unexpectedly funny one-scene performance.
- The film’s unapologetic patriotism still creates emotional force.
- The Affleck/Tyler hill scene operates as an exceptionally conspicuous BMW commercial and marker of Bay’s early embrace of product placement against the era’s anti-selling-out culture.
- Aerosmith underscoring Steven Tyler’s daughter during erotic animal-cracker play is preserved as deliberately noted psychosexual discomfort rather than ignored as romance.
- Keith David’s skeptical military authority and the closing-credit wedding footage and memorial portraits are praised for giving the broad movie opposition and an emotional coda.
- Affleck’s commentary challenge—why teach drillers to be astronauts instead of astronauts to drill—became a legendary critique, with Bay telling him to stop questioning it.
- Will Patton’s reunion reactions, Liv Tyler’s durable career, and Bay using Los Angeles for distant cities are additional favorites.
- The constant command that there is no time is identified as efficient exposition that keeps complicated space mechanics legible and the film moving.
The 150-minute runtime, Twin Towers image, training premise, Affleck’s replacement teeth, weaker romance, Rockhound’s sexual behavior, and the Godzilla swipe have aged poorly.
In the discussion (7)
- Criterion inclusion is jokingly treated as an objection and then defended as recognition of an important movie.
- At roughly 150 minutes the film could lose about 20 minutes, despite a playful desire for even more.
- A burning Twin Tower in the opening destruction now reads as eerie and sobering.
- The failure to train astronauts as drillers is a premise-breaking problem that Bay never resolves, though one defense distinguishes mathematical space training from embodied drilling instinct.
- Bruce Willis’s hairpiece is mostly defended, but Affleck’s $20,000 set of enlarged white teeth is a conspicuous Bay-driven transformation.
- One host rejects the Affleck/Tyler love scenes, while Rockhound’s repeated interest in barely adult women is described as not surviving to 2020.
- Bay’s extended opening insult aimed at the competing Godzilla film remains inexplicably petty.
Arnold Schwarzenegger was considered for Harry Stamper, while Milla Jovovich and Robin Wright reportedly preceded Liv Tyler as Grace possibilities.
In the discussion (2)
- The panel is relieved that Schwarzenegger did not take the Willis role.
- Jovovich is considered interesting and Wright talented but perhaps too old for the Grace/A.J. dynamic.
William Fichtner wins as the performer closest to transcending That Guy status while still serving as its premier example.
In the discussion (1)
- Mark Curry is another possibility, but Fichtner’s Armageddon colonel and Heat’s Van Zant dominate recognition.
Carl the asteroid discoverer and Colonel Davis are competing overacting candidates without a final decision.
In the discussion (2)
- Carl repeats demands for a phone book and attacks his wife with theatrical energy in a tiny role.
- The second shuttle pilot’s “this is what we trained for” intensity is the late alternate.
Eddie Griffin’s dog Little Richard receives six Chewies out of ten for attacking toy dinosaurs and later dangling over an asteroid crevice.
In the discussion (1)
- The dog’s two disconnected danger beats are enough to supply the episode’s pet-performance score.
Owen Wilson wins for an early exit, a horseback introduction, and the concise “scariest environment imaginable” joke.
In the discussion (2)
- Michael Clarke Duncan is ruled too present; Carl and Eddie Griffin remain eligible minor candidates.
- Wilson’s western gallop under pursuing helicopters and his compression of a technical briefing into one comic phrase clinch the award.
Angelina Jolie for Grace is voted down, Anne Hathaway is accepted as the only plausible alternate, and Owen Wilson replacing Affleck is rejected.
In the discussion (4)
- The Jolie pitch uses her age and rising Gia-era profile but is rejected because her forceful energy would make Harry’s protectiveness and her ground-bound role less credible.
- Anne Hathaway is the one suggestion the Liv Tyler defenders would entertain.
- The pitch is also framed as an alternate-history Affleck/Paltrow/Jolie/Billy Bob celebrity triangle, not merely an acting improvement.
- Owen Wilson as A.J. is rejected because he lacks Affleck’s all-American leading-man quality and had already struggled in Behind Enemy Lines.
Research finds the asteroid plan wildly infeasible, notes NASA’s error-counting exercise, confirms real shuttle footage, and records the film as Criterion’s final LaserDisc.
In the discussion (4)
- A 2011 student paper calculated that the required bomb would need roughly a billion times the power of the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated.
- NASA management training uses the film to spot errors and has identified at least 168.
- The shuttle launches use real launch footage.
- Armageddon was Criterion LaserDisc spine 384 and the last LaserDisc title the company released.
Michael Bay’s post-Armageddon freedom makes this the unanimous “Baypex,” with Bruce Willis and Billy Bob Thornton receiving substantial secondary cases.
In the discussion (5)
- Willis has a second-summit case because he converts extraordinary leverage into this film, The Sixth Sense, and Unbreakable, though Die Hard remains his stricter apex.
- Bay uses Armageddon’s success to obtain total freedom and Pearl Harbor-scale resources; all agree this accumulation of power is the Baypex.
- Michael Clarke Duncan’s peak arrives with The Green Mile, while Will Patton, Liv Tyler, Keith David, and Aerosmith have other stronger moments.
- Thornton’s authority may elevate this movie more than his work elevates any other, though Monster’s Ball and Friday Night Lights complicate his case.
- Titanic wins the 1990s-disaster-movie apex over Armageddon.
The panel largely punts because the premise invites limitless objections, but preserves the ex-wife reversal, nameless president, sound in space, impossible communications, A.J.’s navigation, and elastic time.
In the discussion (6)
- Chick’s ex-wife bars contact and then immediately embraces him as the boy’s father after the mission, a reversal one host finds unearned even after saving Earth.
- The president makes consequential speeches but is never given a name; a proposal suggests Bill Pullman should have played every fictional 1990s president.
- The movie ignores the absence of sound in space and solves a prolonged communications blackout with one satellite bounce that produces crystal-clear final video.
- A.J.’s crashed vehicle locates Harry’s group despite enormous potential separation, as though crossing metropolitan Los Angeles.
- The asteroid is struck by more asteroids, and the countdown repeatedly stretches to allow global assembly, training, transit, reunion, and emotional pauses.
- Eating, sanitation, and survival during the surface drive disappear from the story.
“He’s got space dementia” is the highlighted quote, delivered with complete seriousness in response to Rockhound’s breakdown.
In the discussion (1)
- The panel briefly misattributes the line between the two Wills before correcting that Fichtner, not Patton, says it.
A ten-episode remake is rejected because the film already approaches three hours; the only extension pitched is Chick’s post-mission family relapse.
In the discussion (1)
- The suggested sequel material follows the reconciliation failing again when Chick returns to gambling.
Questions examine A.J. and Grace’s permanent bond, Rockhound’s near future, the crew’s promised rewards, Harry’s legacy and backlash, Bay directing Fast and Furious, and cinema’s longest time jump.
In the discussion (6)
- A.J. can never break up with Grace after Harry’s sacrifice without destroying the moral premise of their relationship.
- Rockhound’s hero fame, loan shark, criminal exposure, and destructive appetite suggest he may survive only six to twelve months.
- Bear’s Lincoln-bedroom request may need to happen before the presidency changes.
- Harry initially receives a rig, statue, and possible holiday before a later environmental and workplace-behavior reassessment dismantles the hagiography.
- Bay directing Fast and Furious is rejected as too bombastic and likely to create immediate conflict with Vin Diesel; Justin Lin is defended as the franchise’s center.
- The opening 65-million-year cut from dinosaur extinction to the present is proposed as perhaps cinema’s longest temporal jump.
Billy Bob Thornton wins two explicit ballots to Will Patton’s one, while Michael Bay is discussed but not chosen.
In the discussion (3)
- Two voters choose Thornton because his magnetic competence and gravity keep the fourth-billed NASA role—and the movie—credible.
- One voter chooses Will Patton in an openly personal selection that the others call a homer pick.
- Bay owns the film stylistically but is denied the win for disowning it after criticism and for later excess; the hosts urge him to claim the masterpiece.
Podcast choices
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- Billy Bob Thornton
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- Will Patton
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Roger Ebert's review
Most Rewatchable Scene
What’s Aged the Best?
What’s Aged the Worst?
The Joey Pants “That Guy” Award
The Ruffalo / Hanna / Rubinek / Partridge Overacting Award
Brandy Booth Award for Best Performance by a Pet
The Dion Waiters Award for Best Heat Check Performance
Apex Mountain
Sequel, Prequel, Limited Series, or All-Black Remake
Who Won the Movie?