Armageddon delivers blockbuster thrills in a big-budget disaster movie from Michael Bay, but NASA experts are quick to dismantle the movie’s realism. Armageddon was released in 1998, starring Bruce Willis as the leader of a ragtag group of oil drillers who are tasked with flying into space to help stop an asteroid heading right towards Earth. Despite earning a lot of negative reviews from critics, the movie grossed over $550 million worldwide (via Box Office Mojo). However, even the movie’s biggest fans cannot defend the logical issues with Armageddon.
Armageddon is a silly big-budget action movie, and sometimes enjoying popcorn entertainment like this requires the audience to accept some errors in logic. However, that can be harder for experts who are in the fields that are being depicted in movies like this. In the case of Armageddon, NASA experts don’t find a lot to enjoy in the movie. While it may not come as a surprise to many people, Armageddon is lacking a lot of accuracy, and those familiar with the subject matter are all too willing to point out the movie’s faults.
NASA Isn’t Impressed With The Accuracy Of Michael Bay’s Armageddon
Armageddon Is A Unique NASA Training Tool
There have been a lot of space exploration movies over the years, and the science behind some of these concepts is questionable at best. However, Armageddon stands on its own with a particularly dubious honor, as NSAS reportedly uses the movie as a training exercise for new recruits to see how many errors they can spot. In an interview with inews, astrophysicist Alastair Bruce took some time to highlight some of those aspects. Bruce first pointed out that the size of the asteroid in Armageddon was a significant problem:
“The rock is just too damn big. That’s why it’s fun to talk about, because it’s such a Hollywood thing – they went big, and then they went way too big… Once you get up to 1 km-sized rocks, that’s when we get nervous. That size could significantly devastate an entire region on the planet. Those rocks, luckily, are pretty rare. We’ve got telescopes that can keep an eye out for those things.”
Bruce pointed out that having an asteroid that is “the size of Texas” makes the idea of destroying it with one nuclear warhead a “ridiculous” plan. Bruce also points out that, because of the size of the asteroid, the timeline of the movie would be much different:
“You would probably be able to see it with the naked eye at least a few months before it hit. In Armageddon, they don’t notice it until 18 days before the rock smashes into us. I mean – it would be visible. People would be looking at the sky, going ‘what’s that?’”
Bruce insists that, if this were a real situation that NASA would have to deal with, they would have much safer plans in place that didn’t involve sending astronauts into space, which he claims would present too many dangerous variables. However, while the disaster movie ends with the heroes accomplishing the mission and saving the world, Bruce theorizes that the real scenario would lead to a much darker ending to the story:
“Everything sort of vaporises. That’s bad for a few reasons. Even if you were able to vaporise the entire rock, it would still be moving with an incredible speed towards the Earth. All you’ve really done is spread out the impact.”
Even with all of these errors, Bruce acknowledges that Armageddon does have some aspects that are true to life, mostly coming from actual locations that NASA allowed the movie to use:
“Some of the locations are genuine NASA locations,” explains Bruce. “The launchpads are real, but they are made to look a bit prettier in CGI. Some of the training sites they use are genuine. They did have NASA’s help with a lot of this. It’s just the core science of the film that’s wrong.”
Armageddon Stretches Suspension Of Disbelief To The Point Where It Hurts The Movie
Even Ben Affleck Called Out The Movie’s Ridiculous Plot
Michael Bay’s movies have never been known for their realism, but Armageddon stretches logic to some extremes. While NASA people might have fun picking apart the logic of the movie, you don’t need to be a scientist to notice the ridiculous ideas that the movie presents. As much as it can be fun to embrace movies like this, it does hold Armageddon back somewhat when the suspension of disbelief is so great.
Ben Affleck’s Armageddon commentary has become legendary for simply and hilariously breaking down the entire premise behind the movie. As Affleck points out, training a bunch of blue-collar oil drillers to become astronauts in a matter of days cannot be easier than simply training the existing astronauts on how to use the drilling equipment. Alastair Bruce’s comments on the movie only further highlight the mᴀssive flaws in the premise.
It is these kinds of errors that test the boundaries of what an audience can accept and what becomes too ridiculous.
The fact that the size of the asteroid in Armageddon presents so many logical issues is an indication of the mindset behind the movie. While an asteroid of a more reasonable size would have threatened the Earth effectively, Michael Bay and his team decided to go for the much bigger option than then calls into question how this plan would ever be effective and how the asteroid could go unnoticed. It is these kinds of errors that test the boundaries of what an audience can accept and what becomes too ridiculous.
