Deep Impact (1998) vs. Armageddon (1998)

By ScottDS

In 1999, we had two CGI bug movies. In 1997, we had two volcano movies. And in 1998, we had two “killer asteroid” movies: Mimi Leder’s Deep Impact and Michael Bay’s Armageddon. They both have their good qualities and bad qualities. While the former is a heartfelt, human story set against the backdrop of impending disaster, the latter is… well, it’s what Michael Bay does best – it’s the id to Deep Impact’s superego!

In Deep Impact, Elijah Wood plays high school student Leo Biederman, who discovers a comet that appears to be on a collision course with Earth. Cut to one year later as reporter Jenny Lerner (Téa Leoni) investigates what she thinks is a sex scandal. However, the mysterious “Ellie” in question is actually “E.L.E.” – extinction-level event. Her investigation forces President Beck (Morgan Freeman) to make his announcement earlier than planned: in short, a comet the size of New York City is heading towards Earth. A joint U.S.-Russian spacecraft – the Messiah – has been constructed to intercept the comet and destroy it with nuclear weapons. Leading the mission is veteran NASA commander Spurgeon Tanner (Robert Duvall). Unfortunately, one of the astronauts is killed and the mission fails: the comet splits into two smaller pieces, both on a course for Earth.

President Beck reveals that the US has been building giant underground “arks” and that 800,000 Americans have been randomly selected to join 200,000 pre-selected scientists, engineers, etc. Leo and his family are selected but Leo’s girlfriend Sarah (Leelee Sobieski) and her parents are not. Leo and Sarah get married so that she can come along but her parents are omitted from the list and she decides to stay with them. Jenny gives up her seat on an evac helicopter to a co-worker and visits her estranged father to reconcile. Upon reaching the ark, Leo goes back for Sarah and her family and manages to catch up with them. The smaller comet fragment impacts near Cape Hatteras destroying much of the Eastern seaboard. Meanwhile, the Messiah crew sacrifice themselves to destroy the larger fragment and the pieces break up in the atmosphere. President Beck appears in front of the damaged Capitol building and urges us to begin again.

This is a good movie. At times, it’s a very good movie. The “Ellie”/“E.L.E.” mystery is deftly handled, the characters are decent and likeable people (some more than others), and the pacing is spot on: we’re in and out in two hours. Above all, it’s a human story and the visual effects are the supporting player, not the leading man. This was the second film for TV veteran Mimi Leder, whose previous film The Peacemaker had been released a year earlier. She handles the small moments as well as she does the big ones, ably assisted by executive producer Steven Spielberg who reunites with his Jaws producers Richard Zanuck and David Brown. Unlike today when all the big genre movies seem to share the same half-dozen writers, this movie was written by two guys known for much smaller work: Michael Tolkin (The Player and Rapture) and Bruce Joel Rubin (Ghost and Jacob’s Ladder) – not exactly regulars on the Comic-Con circuit.

Téa Leoni is okay – neither bad nor great – as an MSNBC reporter, back when that network was in its infancy. Morgan Freeman fits the role of president like a glove. Sure it’s a cliché now for Freeman to be “The Authority Figure” but I imagine there was still some novelty to it back then. No doubt more than one comedian has joked about the fact that “we finally get a black president and the world goes to s---!” Elijah Wood is fine as a high school astronomy geek (why do geeks in movies all have Jewish last names?) and, watching the film for the first time in years, I’d forgotten how little he’s actually in it. He disappears for large sections in the middle, but such is life in an ensemble. Robert Duvall is a warm presence as Tanner, nicknamed “Fish.” He’s tough when he needs to be, but also a surrogate father figure for the astronauts under his command.

Vanessa Redgrave and Maximilian Schell play Jenny’s divorced parents, Robin and Jason. This is the kind of subplot that would be non-existent in a movie like this today. Robin is lonely and depressed and Jason is remarried to a much younger woman. Since the aforementioned lottery doesn’t include anyone over 50, Robin kills herself. The reconciliation scene on the beach between Jenny and Jason is nicely done. The Messiah astronauts feature some familiar faces, including Blair Underwood, a young Jon Favreau, and Ron Eldard, who unfortunately is saddled with the arbitrary ageism conflict with Duvall. Admittedly, the scene in which the astronauts say goodbye to their families for the last time brings a tear to one’s eye. Omnipresent character actors like Kurtwood Smith, Richard Schiff, and James Cromwell also make appearances.

Unfortunately, the first adjective that came to mind after finishing this movie was “slight.” Certain things are either rushed or never seen. We never see the construction of the arks, nor do we see the last-ditch effort to destroy the comet with missiles: we only hear about it on the radio after it fails. They can’t show everything but in a movie about the end of the world, sometimes it’s nice for the audience to actually see how we prepare for it. James Horner’s score is treacly to say the least, and ILM’s visual effects are okay. The killer tidal wave (seen in the trailers) hasn’t aged very well. The best effect might be the real traffic jam staged by the filmmakers on Virginia State Route 234, though I could NEVER believe that Leo would actually find Sarah and her family in the middle of it!

And then... Armageddon! There once existed a geek-friendly magazine called Cinescape, before the Internet rendered it obsolete. One issue featured a chart comparing these two movies: Deep Impact was labeled “A sci-fi version of On the Beach” while Armageddon was labeled “Con Air meets The Rock in outer space!” And it is. An asteroid the size of Texas is 18 days away from colliding with Earth. NASA decides to bury a nuclear device inside the asteroid that will split it in two, with each fragment flying safely past the Earth. Since it’s apparently harder to train astronauts to drill than it is to train drillers to be astronauts, NASA director Dan Truman (Billy Bob Thornton) decides to hire the world’s best oil driller: Harry Stamper (Bruce Willis), who brings along his crew of numbskulls. Harry’s daughter Grace (Liv Tyler) just happens to be in love with one of the roughnecks, A.J. (Ben Affleck). The crew undergoes a short and rigorous training program and after an asteroid fragment destroys Shanghai, the plan is revealed to the public.

The crew takes two shuttles – the Freedom and the Independence – and after a seizure-inducing side trip to the Russian space station, Freedom lands safely while Independence is presumed destroyed. Long story short, A.J. and the surviving Independence crew use their mobile drilling vehicle (the “Armadillo”) to reach Harry’s team. During a subsequent rock storm, the bomb’s remote trigger is damaged which means one man has to stay behind. (Naturally.) A.J. picks the short straw but Harry pulls his air hose and shoves him back inside the shuttle. After Harry and Grace say their heartfelt goodbyes, he blows up the asteroid, which indeed splits in two with both pieces dodging the planet. The film ends with home movie footage of A.J. and Grace’s wedding. And, uh... America!! [smile]

Allow me to quote from the Criterion DVD booklet (yes, this movie has a home in that exalted collection). This is Jeanine Basinger, film historian and Michael Bay’s professor at Wesleyan: “It is true that Armageddon, a perfect example of Bay’s work, illustrates his ‘take-no-prisoners’ form of storytelling, in which he trusts an audience to figure things out. (One of its strengths is its minimum of dreadful exposition that over-explains the inevitable pseudoscience.) Yes, it gives audiences a lot to absorb. Yes, it cuts quickly from place to place, person to person, event to event. But it is never confusing, never boring, and never less than a brilliant mixture of what movies are supposed to do: tell a good story, depict characters through active events, invoke an emotional response, and entertain simply and directly, without pretense.”

To quote Jack Benny, “Well!” Truthfully, this movie is Citizen Kane compared to some of Bay’s subsequent work. At this point, he still had Jerry Bruckheimer to keep him under control. Bay’s style might be filmmaking on steroids but in 1998, he was only just starting to overdose! Bruce Willis can often be on autopilot, but here he’s the consummate everyman-turned-hero. Ben Affleck knows exactly what this movie is and he even asked Michael Bay why they couldn’t just train astronauts to drill. Bay’s response? “Shut the f--- up!” This film was also my first exposure to Michael Clarke Duncan and Owen Wilson, who are seen here in their “purest” form: the gentle giant and the likable bumpkin. Peter Stormare is a blast as Lev, the loopy Russian cosmonaut who hitches a ride after the space station is destroyed. Will Patton is Harry’s “aww shucks” sidekick. I used to think Patton was naturally like that but after watching The Postman and No Way Out, I realize he often overacts and this movie is the outlier!

On the Criterion commentary, two NASA gurus spend most of the time nitpicking the scientific flaws, which are many and varied. My biggest problem is this: so the asteroid is the size of Texas but what if a fragment the size of, say, Rhode Island hits the Earth? It’d still be an extinction level event! Oh, and we still have the clichéd scientists versus the military conflict as General Kimsey (Keith David) initiates “secondary protocol” to detonate the bomb remotely, much to the chagrin of Truman. This leads to the requisite bomb defusing scene and shuttle pilot Sharpe (William Fichtner) just happens to have a gun... in space! There’s something to be said about getting the most out of your premise but in a movie about the possible end of the world, these subplots are rather unnecessary. Seriously, a good 20 minutes could’ve been cut from the movie with little to no effect! Technical aspects are top notch all around, including the Oscar-nominated visual effects by the late Dream Quest Images and Trevor Rabin’s “America: F--- Yeah!” score.

This brings up another issue. There’s nothing wrong with blue-collar working-class heroes… but Bay doesn’t have to denigrate scientists to make the blue-collar guys look good. Here’s action movie scholar and author Eric Lichtenfeld: “How hard would it have been to craft a scene where those ideas are introduced, and for logistical reasons, none of them are tenable, and then Bruce Willis and his team are the only option, as opposed to showing why all those ideas are ridiculous? It’s not that the movie can’t have a butch hero stopping the [asteroid]; the problem is that you don’t need to make Bruce Willis look good by making the smart people look bad. It’s a very cynical view of the audience, and it’s a view of science and intellectualism that is full of contempt, but that’s what Michael Bay does when he talks about critics, or his education.” No argument from me!

So what do we have? Two movies about a similar subject, with large ensemble casts, and some heartfelt moments. Deep Impact isn’t exactly subtle but I give 1st place in manipulation to Armageddon. The shot of the kids running with their toy space shuttles past an old poster of JFK? Just... wow. The former was smaller than I’d remembered while, oddly, the latter was just as entertaining (and dumb) as I’d remembered. Deep Impact is the better quote unquote “film” while Armageddon is glorious junk food... and admittedly, 90s nostalgia plays a part here, too.

“The fate of the planet is in the hands of a bunch of retards I wouldn't trust with a potato gun.”