Armageddon

Armageddon is a 1998 disaster/science fiction film about a group of blue-collar deep-core drillers who are sent by NASA to deflect an asteroid on a collision course with Earth. It was directed by Michael Bay and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, and featured Bruce Willis, Billy Bob Thornton, Ben Affleck and Liv Tyler. The film's tagline is For Love. For Honor. For Mankind.

Armageddon was released during a period when disaster movies were seeing a comeback. Another asteroid impact movie, Deep Impact, was made the same year, along with a reprise of Godzilla. The previous year saw a few volcano-based disaster movies.

The soundtrack featured the song "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing" by Aerosmith (fronted by Liv Tyler's father, Steven Tyler) which was the first number 1 hit of the band's career.

A DVD of Armageddon was re-issued by The Criterion Collection, which releases what it considers to be "important classic and contemporary films"; the film also received the Saturn Awards for Best Direction and Best Science Fiction Film (where it tied with Dark City).

C. Bolin wrote a novel based on the screenplay by Jonathan Hensleigh and the story by Jonathan Hensleigh and Robert Pool.

Trivia

• Because of the patriotic nature of the script, and the success of using Top Gun (1986) as recruitment material, persuaded NASA to allow Bay and Co. to shoot in the normally restricted space agency. This included the neutral buoyancy lab, a 65 million gallon, 40 ft deep pool used to train astronauts for weightlessness and the use of two ten million dollar space suits. The crew was also allowed to shoot in the historic launch pad that went out of service after the Apollo 1 disaster, and parts of the movie were filmed at Edwards Air in California.
  
  
• This was the first movie that the cast was allowed to use genuine NASA spacesuits. The cast are the only civilians to ever wear NASA spacesuits, which cost over 3 million dollars each.
  
  
• According to the Criterion Collection commentary, many of the errors found in the film were acknowledged by the director and known even during filming/production and were left in deliberately (such as fire in space) because he said "it's a movie and not many people know about it" these things were kept in for entertainment value.
  
  

• Director Michael Bay had the actors write their list of demands on the papers that 'Bruce Willis (I)' read from.
  
  
• The convenient existence of a fault plane passing right through the asteroid is not unrealistic. Several asteroids are now believed to be "contact binaries", each apparently consisting of two separate lumps of rock that are just sitting on each other.
  
  
• The second movie that depicts a fictional shuttle launch using actual launch footage. (The first was SpaceCamp (1986).)
  
  
• The film opened on Liv Tyler's 21st birthday.
  
  
• In the movie trailers the shuttles that are launching are the real space shuttles, not the ones that appear in the movie.
  
  
• Director Cameo: [Michael Bay] as a NASA scientist.
  
  
• Liv Tyler turned down the role of Grace Stamper twice before finally accepting.
  
  
• Space Shuttle Freedom's armadillo contains a Terminator Robot toy.
  
  
• During the training of the mission team, an Aerosmith song ("Sweet Emotion") is playing in the background with vocals by Liv Tyler's father, Steven Tyler.
  
  
• Rockhound's line about sitting on a million pounds of fuel in a rocket built by the lowest bidder is a variation of an actual radio transmission by Mercury astronaut Alan Shepard, just prior to lift-off.
  
  
• One of two major asteroid-hitting-earth movies released during 1998. The other was Deep Impact (1998).
  
  
• The film crew was also allowed to shoot sequences at the top of a real launch pad with an actual space shuttle docked to it. The only condition was that they not step into the shuttle itself. Ben Affleck admitted to stepping inside the orbiter for a brief moment before NASA technicians ordered him out of the spacecraft.
  
  
• In the opening sequence, a little dog attacks some Godzilla toys. This was a friendly jab at the other big special effects movie of that summer, Roland Emmerich's American version of Godzilla (1998) which was released a month and a half earlier.
  
  
• One of the badges on the front of A.J.'s Armadillo is the marque for a manufacturer of Swiss Army knives. It can be seen as they bring his Armadillo into position after the first was destroyed.
  
  
• The logo of the Swiss Army Knife manufacturer, Victorinox, is on Harry's helmet.
  
  
• When the Thunderbirds fly over in the final scenes, the formation they are flying in is known as the "Missing Man" formation. This was obviously done for Stamper. It is an extraordinary honor to have this formation flown during a funeral or, in this case, after a mission, equivalent to the riderless horse.
  
  
• Regarding the film's premise, Ben Affleck asked director Michael Bay, "Wouldn't it be easier for NASA to train astronauts how to drill rather than training drillers to be astronauts?" Bay told Affleck to shut up.
  
  
• The cuts last an average of about 1.5 seconds.
  
  
• Director Michael Bay said in a magazine interview that the solution in the movie for dealing with the asteroid was very clever but not realistic, but that one idea for countering the threat was in line with actual NASA research (anti-gravity systems). He also said that a problem with a film like this was that it would make Americans erroneously think that if a situation like the movie actually occurred then there was anything that could be done about it.
  
  
• Cameo: [Shannon Lucid] the astronaut who made headlines for setting endurance records for living in space aboard the Mir Space Station is in the background of the "underwater simulation" scenes.
  
  
• 'Bruce Willis (I)' had a picture of his daughters in front of him to help him cry during his goodbye to Grace.
  
  
• During the filming of this movie, the cast and crew worked around $19 billion worth of equipment, including a real oil rig and real space shuttle.