Armageddon/The Haunting (1963)

Well, I actually saw this yesterday, so I’ve probably forgotten some things. I just remember sitting in the front row of a nearly packed theatre and seeing one of the LOUDEST movies I’ve ever seen.

I’ve been seeing movies at the Paramount lately. For those of you who have never been to Austin, that’s our main “revival house” type theatre here. It’s a restored theatre built in the 20s or 30s, I think. Every summer they have a classic movies series. The night before last I saw The Haunting, a 1963 horror film about a haunted house. It was one of the scariest movies I’ve ever seen and it never even showed the ghost! I saw a lot of influence on the Evil Dead movies from this one. Definitely an amazing film that probably needs to be seen on the big screen, but always in a dark room.

Anyway, I went from seeing this and the classic Gaslight to seeing Armageddon. Jerry Bruckheimer and Michael Bay are at it again. If you didn’t like The Rock or Con Air stay away from this one. It’s not as violent, but it’s just as big.

I think everyone knows what it’s about by now. A big rock is barreling towards Earth threatening to destroy every trace of life on it. Harry Stamper (Bruce Willis) and his team of oil drillers are sent by NASA head Dan Truman (Billy Bob Thornton) to nuke it from the inside out. On the team is A.J. Frost (Ben Affleck) who is in love with Harry’s daughter, Grace (Liv Tyler). There’s also Rockhound (Steve Buscemi) who got his name because he’s horny. That pretty much sums up all the real wit that this movie has.

The first thirty minutes of the movie almost gave me motion sickness. There was so much quick editing that I wasn’t really sure what was going on. I think Entertainment Weekly said that it looked like it was edited with a Quisenart. That’s a pretty good analysis of the style. A lot of jump cuts, almost overlapping lines and not many shots with a stable camera. I don’t think there were more than two or three shots in the whole movie where the camera wasn’t moving around. That’s fine for some movies, but this one needed an occasional still camera so we could know what was going on and who was getting killed.

The love story between Grace and A.J. was, of course, a little stilted. Not that it wasn’t believable, but it was just a little, well, badly written, I guess. There’s a scene where the two of them talk about animal crackers and we’re supposed to believe that they’re being cute. I enjoyed the shots of Liv in her bra, but come on! What’s with the crackers?!?! I think the writers were trying to be hip. They wanted to put some cultural reference that everyone would understand. After all, this movie is geared towards the lowest bidder (just like the people that built the rocket), so we can’t have a really intelligent or obscure reference. We want to be like Quinten and Kevin, but we aren’t smart enough. I like Ben and Liv, though, so I’ll forgive them for saying what the writers gave them. This time.

Then there’s Bruce. I have to admit right here that I’m a Bruce Willis fan. Yeah, he’s obnoxious, but he’s supposed to be. He’s an action star. I am sort of in shock that he and Demi broke up, but it doesn’t keep me up nights like my manners do. (There’s one for you movie buffs.) He’s shown quite a few times that he can act. Watch Pulp Fiction again. There’s also The Jackal. It wasn’t a great movie (although I liked it more than most people did), but he was really good in it. He had the “cold assassin” thing down perfectly. Much better than listening to Richard Gere try his Irish accent. Then you see movies like Last Man Standing. I think he just kind of walked through that one. Not much else he could do. The story’s been told so many times that there’s really not much new stuff you can do with it. Bruce showed his acting in this one a few times. There were scenes with Liv that brought it out and even a few scenes with Ben and Billy that showed some ability. He may never win an Oscar (if he does I think the Academy will be skewered in more ways than one) but he can do it when he wants to. He just really has to want to.

And we’ve got Steve. He’s a great actor. He’s at his best when he’s supporting other great actors in small weirdo roles much like this one. This, however, was not really his best performance. He was definitely comic relief here. Not much other reason for his character. If you saw Con Air you saw a version of him. He’s toned down a lot for this one (not much danger of him killing any little girls–he’ll do something to them, but he won’t kill them), but it’s pretty much the same character.

And now Billy. Some say that he’s the only actor who keeps his dignity in this movie. I don’t think that’s entirely true. Maybe he’s the only on to maintain dignity, but he’s not the only one to have it in at least a few scenes. He’s a great actor (as we’ve seen in Sling Blade and One False Move) and he probably deserves better than this, but he does a great job and his material is better than most in the movie.

There are a lot of cameos here, too. In the first destruction scene in New York Mark Curry is a cabbie. Udo Kier is a psychologist. Lawrence Tierney (from Reservoir Dogs and, of course, Dillinger) shows up as, apparently, Harry’s dad. I didn’t notice him, but he’s on the IMDb, so he must be there. Charlton Heston is the narrator. (Ironic, don’t you think? Moses narrating the end of the world?) The director shows up as one of the NASA guys in Houston. I think it’s him. It looks like him, but he’s not mentioned in the IMDb. Even Godzilla shows up in New York.

There are also a lot of holes here. Some small, some you could drive Texas through. First off, if every nuke that the U.S. has wouldn’t do one thing to this bohwemeth of a meteor, how would one nuke blow the thing in half. I understand that one is more powerful inside than it would be outside, but come on! Every nuke we’ve got would do an awful lot of damage. They would blow a lot of chunks off of it. According to the movie they wouldn’t even take a couple of mountains off. The next one involves spoilers, so highlight the next seemingly blank part if you don’t mind. If they blew the meteor in two as late as they appeared to wouldn’t there be some gravitational effects on the Earth? The scientists made it look like it would still destroy the world if it was blown even one second too late. It was blown at the very last second. Wouldn’t the surfaces of the Earth that the meteors passed be pretty much destroyed? Details, details! The little ones go something like this. Would NASA bother to paint “X-71″ on the top of the shuttles in mile high letters? They don’t have much money as it is. Why waste the money on paint that really doesn’t serve any purpose except to remind the viewers what the heroes are riding. And, the biggest question for me, why would they ever bring a machine gun on this mission?!?! None of these guys are murderers, so they can be trusted, but what’s the use? Why did they think they needed a machine gun? Maybe it was the monsters that we heard as the astronauts stepped off the ship. Some really weird noises on that meteor.

I really don’t mean to rip this movie up. I did like it. It was big, loud and fun. Everything you ever wanted from a summer action flick. Nothing more. Nothing less. Probably the best action movie of the summer. Not as good as The Rock. Not as much character development as Con Air. Still a lot of fun. And, strangely enough, Bay knows how and when to push all the emotional buttons. A lot of them were clichés (kids with toy airplanes, thousands of people praying, families saying goodbye to each other, etc.), but they’re still oddly effective. I have to admit that there were a few times that I got caught up in them.

Then there’s Deep Impact. Remember that one? It did pretty well. I think Armageddon is going to kill it, but I liked them both. I felt closer to the characters in Deep Impact (probably because there were more good actors) even if they weren’t too well written. The both had weak love story subplots. They both had really cool destruction scenes. There were more in Armageddon, but we got a cool shot of the Statue Of Liberty in Deep Impact. I think what was really funny between these two movies was the theatre I saw Armageddon in. There were about six or seven screens of Armageddon, all showing it about fifteen minutes apart from each other. Then there was one lonely little Deep Impact screen being drowned out by the volume of Armageddon. Poor Tea and Elijah. Too bad he didn’t discover the meteor instead of the comet.

Armageddon’s worth seeing, but only if you’re up for a lot of explosions. It’s great for that.