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.

Casting What-Ifs

Arnold Schwarzenegger was considered for Harry Stamper, while Milla Jovovich and Robin Wright reportedly preceded Liv Tyler as Grace possibilities.

In the discussion (2)

Approx. transcript time · 01:01:33Read transcript

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.

Recasting Couch

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)

Approx. transcript time · 01:06:27Read transcript

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.

Half-Assed Internet Research

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)

Approx. transcript time · 01:09:13Read transcript

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.

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)

Approx. transcript time · 01:16:33Read transcript

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.

Probably Unanswerable Questions

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)

Approx. transcript time · 01:23:39Read transcript

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.