Asteriod the size of Bruce Willis's head aims
for Earth.
Having failed to have been made extinct by the
asteroid(s) in "Deep Impact" because I didn't
bother going to see it, I made an appointment
with "Armageddon". It started with the photogenic
extinction of the Dino's due to the Yucatan
asteroid, the hint being: now it is our turn.
If you have seen a trailer of this film you
have seen the film. Everything is fairly straight
forward. Too many happy endings in Hollywood
blockbuster movies have, for yours truly, leeched
all suspense out of watching this type of film.
The question is always "How will disaster be
diverted" hardly ever "Will disaster be diverted".
This is a pity as the latter question is three
orders of magnitude more fun. You see the former
coming a mile off.
Never the less disasters did actually occur
in this movie. Bruce Willis and Liv Whats-her-name
aside, Paris got flattened and the yanks managed
to destroy the Russians' famous Mir Space Station.
NASA have been designing a space station for
a decade or so (after Skylab perished nearly
twenty years ago) and now their effort seems
disingenuous in this age of cheap robotic space
craft. The Russians built Mir yonks ago, probably
for an excellent price, and it is still going
strong today. Imagine the chagrin the Yanks
feel at their impotence, Space Station-wise,
compared with the Russians. Now the USA are
on the verge of building one, after interminable
billion dollar redesigns, it is too late.
The proposed NASA Space Station will be of little
scientific benefit and will cost astronomical
sums of cash (mainly because of the cost of
pointlessly keeping people in orbit). Thousands
of interplanetary robot space craft should be
built with the cash instead, which would be
of tremendous scientific value and imaginative
missions would excite public interest.
In Hollywood movies the Yanks seem to win the
Vietnam War, in a similar vein the yanks take
the piss out of the Russian Space Station before
triumphantly, but ostensibly inadvertently,
blowing it up in the movies. This movie demonstrated
eloquently with this mean spiritedness just
how desperate the Americans are to keep knocking
the Russians, but it is disingenuous to do so
in a field where the Russians have been vastly
more successful that they. Sour grapes anyone?
Having said all that, blowing up Mir was probably
a good idea after all because of the humour
it afforded. It was very funny but it is hard
to believe the irony was intentional.
The film took the expected liberties with scientific
reality. Where to start? Lots of the usual whooshes
of vacuum-borne space debris. The gravity on
the asteroid "the size of Texas" would be negligible,
not earthlike, as the film seemed to portray
most of the time. The dog would be dead. This
is acceptable artistic licence. More interestingly
America, India and the Far East were shown watching
the Presidents crappy speech in awe. In all
three or more locations was bright day light.
Hmmm
Back to the asteroid, the unrealistic jagged
spikiness of the surface had the weird effect
of making the asteroid appear less dangerous
by seemingly offering the visage of shelter.
If the chaps drilled on an open, exposed surface
with space its self overhead they may have appeared
far more vulnerable to the agoraphobic, suffocating
vacuum of space.
The film was enjoyable but uninvolving and strangely
unsuspenseful for a film designed around suspense.
I paced out into the night sporting that vague
deflated feeling one gets when one has seen
an unscary horror film.
Bruce
forgets to detonate the nuke and the asteroid
spectacularly ploughs cataclysmically into Hollywood,
miraculously transferring the wild happy-ending
celebrations from the screen actors to the audience
in the process.
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| From: |
marcin | Subject: | 2003-01-13 19:55:15 |
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| From: |
Janie | Subject: | 2008-02-23 04:39:01 |
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