By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
With the holidays upon us, many families are trying to find the perfect films to watch together, but that can be difficult when the most interesting stuff hitting theaters (from Nosferatu to Babygirl) isn’t exactly kid-friendly. But did you know that the perfect ‘90s blockbuster is just a click away, and it’s one that the whole family can enjoy without leaving the house? Armageddon is now on Disney+, and this is the perfect time to revisit this timeless tale of hardened roughnecks recruited to save the world from an asteroid threatening to make the human race extinct.
The Plot Of Armageddon
In Armageddon, NASA discovers that an asteroid will impact the planet in 18 days and make humanity go the way of the dinosaurs. They devise a plan to drill a hole in the asteroid and drop in a nuke, but this means finding expert drillers on short notice. To this end, NASA recruits a veteran oil driller and his team of misfit employees, and whether or not they can work as well in space as on Earth will determine whether they even have a planet to return to when their mission is over.
The plot of Armageddon is delightfully insane, but it’s anchored by some great performers, including Billy Bob Thornton as the grumpy NASA executive in charge of recruiting an oil team led by Bruce Willis. The team’s best worker is played by Ben Affleck, who often has his eye more on the boss’s wife (played by Liv Tyler) rather than the job. As for the job, its success or failure hinges on the talents of the oddball oil team, whose characters are brought to life by quirky genre veterans like Steve Buscemi and Owen Wilson.
Big Box Office But Bashed By Critics
When Armageddon premiered in 1998, it was a major hit with audiences thanks to everything from the star-studded cast to the hit Aerosmith song and music video. Against a budget of $140 million, this film brought in a stellar (or maybe that should be interstellar?) $553.7 million. Surprisingly enough, this movie never got a sequel, but its cultural influence continues to resonate to this day.
Sadly, Armageddon didn’t exactly resonate with critics: on Rotten Tomatoes, the movie has an astronomically low 43 percent critical rating. In general, critics complained that the movie’s slick presentation was brought down by a very dumb script. Audiences didn’t mind, though, and Armageddon has a much higher 73 percent Popcornmeter audience rating.
The critics aren’t wrong that this is the kind of script you need to turn your brain off to enjoy. If you can do that, though, you’ll find Armageddon the ‘90s action inheritor of all those “snobs vs. slobs” movies of the ‘80s. Now, the snobs are the ones running the show but must ultimately beg the slobs for help for nothing less than saving the world, and the resulting film is wildly entertaining to watch.
Additionally, the large bench of talent means that you can always count on a veteran actor to steal the scene through a combination of dumb dialogue and killer line delivery. There’s also some fun physical comedy that helps to give this disaster movie just enough off-kilter laughs to avoid being deadly serious. Armageddon also has a moving romantic subplot, and the sticky sweetness of these characters’ love pairs perfectly with the salty sarcasm of… well, pretty much everyone else.
Will you find Armageddon an out-of-this-world hit like we did, or will you want the asteroid to wipe us all out by the time the credits roll? You won’t know until you stream it on Disney+. Just be warned: you’re going to have a certain Aerosmith song stuck in your head for a long time after this one is over.
