Wednesday, July 1, 1998 
 

   ARMAGEDDON is not only a complete waste of time for me to 
write about, but it is a complete waste time for you to see (as if you 
needed me to tell you that).  Do we really need another end-of-the-world 
movie in the spirit of such awful recent releases as INDEPENDENCE DAY 
and GODZILLA?  Heck, compared to ARMAGEDDON, INDEPENDENCE 
DAY is a plot tour de force and worthy of Academy Awards.  Whoopee, 
Bruce Willis, the best darn, rootin* tootin* oil-driller this side of the Milky 
Way, saves the planet for Liv Taylor, Ben Affleck, a million other bad 
actors and little Johnny and Susie but only if they are meat eating, red 
blooded Americans. The pro-American theme in this movie is so 
overwhelming it will bring tears to the eyes of Trent Lott, Jesse Helms 
and all the conservative Republicans who want to propose an 
amendment to ban desecration of the American flag.  What happened to 
the rest of the world?   If this asteroid, the size of Texas, hits earth won*t 
it affect the global weather patterns and won*t all people of the earth be 
effectively dead within a day?  Of course the good ol* Americans save 
the day and the world is reminded they should bow down and kiss the 
shoes of the imperialistic, overly capitalistic, but democratic and heroic 
United States saviors.  No wonder the rest of the world hates us and 
wants us to stop influencing their cultures. 
 
        ARMAGEDDON? I say who cares!  Didn*t we just see this same 
exact movie released two months ago?  Oh Yeah, I forgot, DEEP IMPACT 
had a plot, good acting, editing that didn*t conduce epileptic seizures and 
had some humanity about it.  I really hope Ben Affleck buys it on the way 
to the astroid, on the astroid or on the way back (just so long as his 
character dies).  Unfortunately Bruce Willis can*t buy it because he is the 
hero, you know the Charles Bronson character from THE DIRTY DOZEN, 
the only one that survives.  Bruce Willis can't save his marriage to Demi 
Moore, how are we going to believe he can save the world?  
 
         Once again meteorites pummel the earth*s cities before the big 
one hits and of course they destroy famous landmarks.  This time around 
meteorites hit New York City (every disaster film*s newest city to pick 
on) and destroy the Chrysler building and other famous sites.  In 
previews we see that a hot dog vender buys the farm from a meteorite. 
Mayor Giuliani will undoubtably jump up and scream at the top of his 
lungs in delight over this one.  (If you ask me that is not the type of 
civilized behavior that we should expect from a mayor.)  We already 
know big chunks of this astroid hit earth and destroy large cities. My 
question is, why are asteroids attracted to large centers of population?  
Why the hell can't  meteorites hit the Sahara desert?  Oh, I know, 
because then we wouldn*t have a two and a half hour movie to make fun 
of. 
 
        ARMAGEDDON perfectly illustrates everything wrong with most 
movies today - they are nothing but star driven vehicles with weak plots, 
underdeveloped scripts, over budgeted sound and special visual effects, 
the editing rhythms of music videos and the over all subtlety of used car 
commercials which have the lasting appeal of eating fruit roll ups on a 
bad roller coaster.  More and more we are presented with slop like this 
and are inundated with propaganda that these movies are the best things 
since sliced bread or at least the last over hyped, special effects 
bonanza.  Unfortunately we run as fast as we can to blow tons of 
money on these pieces of garbage and their related products and make 
their producers billions of dollars.  We did it with INDEPENDENCE DAY, 
THE LOST WORLD and even with TITANIC.  Luckily we didn*t do it with 
GODZILLA and if that is any indication of the future, then films like this 
are surely close to their judgement day.   

But I haven*t seen this film, so I could be wrong. 

SOURCES:  An endless barrage of film ads, commercials and previews.   
                        THE NEW YORK TIMES 
                        TIME 
                        USA TODAY 

Copyright 1998, Sockeye Publications a division on Shake It Up 
Productions.