Let’s start at the end. In the final few minutes of Armageddon, the surviving crew of the mission to blow up that asteroid the size of Texas and save every human, animal, and bacterial resident of Earth are about to touch down on the runway at Johnson Space Station. It was a rough go, but now all is well. The day has officially been saved.
Except there’s a little turbulence on the way down. The triumphant score shifts momentarily to the tense pulsing of strings. All of a sudden, we’re back in an action sequence. “I never told anyone this before, but I hate flying,” says Chick (Will Patton), “so it’d be an awful shame to die now.” The moment doesn’t last. Rock Hound (Steve Buscemi) responds with a punchline about owing money to a loan shark, and then the swooning score returns. The plane touches down safely.
Why would director Michael Bay do this? Why make the audience think the ship is going to crash after all they endured? Why shift to a brief, utterly meaningless moment of tension and then swerve right out of it? Because he can’t help himself, that’s why. Because he’s Michael Bay, and he never met an explosion that couldn’t be bigger, a man that couldn’t be brawnier, or a flag whose colors couldn’t be more true. In Armageddon, there is no obstacle he can’t throw into the path of his heroes.
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