"Armageddon" (1998)

                            I don't hate Michael Bay. That's probably an unpopular thing to utter. To cineastes, he ruined the modern landscape of movies, relying on blunt spectacle rather than substance. But, you can't deny that he holds a unique place in movie history. I mean, sure, his name has become synonymous with shlock but it's shlock with flair. He's a dazzling pyrotechnic, full of sound and fury, signifying absolutely nothing. If Bay had picked a different career, he probably would have been one of those fellas who shoot off fireworks at the local county fair. Roland Emmerich is in the same camp though you never hear his name bandied about (probably because 'Michael Bay' is a snappier name). His movies are not quite as memorable as Bay's (except for Independence Day) which I guess makes Bay a half....step up, I guess (as I write this, I realize that Emmerich, as mediocre a filmmaker as he is, at least has dipped his toes in other subject matter other than action shlock; he made a film about Shakespeare which I've heard is complete bull-shit, but I guess it's something different). Anyway, Armageddon.
                            Armageddon tell the very grounded story of a group of deep sea drillers hired by NASA to be shot up into space so they can drill into the center of a large cataclysmic asteroid heading for Earth and plant an H-bomb inside the core and blow it up. There's also romance, laffs, 'splosions, and a rockin' Aerosmith soundtrack ("Don't Wanna Miss a Thing" was the "Open Arms" of 1998).
                            I've only seen three of his movies (this, the first Transformers, and Pain and Gain) and they're basically what you would expect from the man. However, watching this movie closely, I understand why film purists hate him. Michael Bay doesn't seem to understand film language and how editing works. This is very apparent when watching dialogue scenes. He doesn't seem to plan his shots. Rather, he shoots from every single angle possible. Instead of a simple over-the-shoulder shot-reverse shot, he'll have a close-up of one of the characters, then he'll cut to a master shot, then a medium shot, then a low dutch angle shot, then a close-up, then a high angle, then a spinning dolly shot, and so on. It's completely random and not motivated. Shots, usually......well, most of the time.......well, all of the time, are motivated. Low angles imply dominance, high angles imply subjugation, cutting from a medium shot to a close-up imply some important detail is being conveyed, etc. Bay is all about dynamic motion. He is not patient or methodical. Just shoot it in multiple super-cool hip ways and we'll figure it out in the cutting room later.
                           And, of course, I'm no scientist but calling this movie far-fetched is an understatement. I mean, okay, there's a huge asteroid heading for Earth, which is bad, but there's also thousands of littler asteroids racing in its wake (and there are scenes where major cities are devastated by these tiny asteroids). Even if you blew up the big one, the aftershocks and the debris would still hurtle toward Earth and still cause major catastrophes. And the fact that oil drillers have to take a week-long crash course on how to become astronauts, even though that takes years of training, endurance, and stamina (if they were up there in the unprepared state they're in, they'd be puking and passing out every five seconds).
                           The first two thirds of the film are an uneven mishmash of manufactured drama (you could also call it 'padding' if you wish, since the movie is two and an half hours long) and painfully unfunny humor. I would be lying if I said I didn't enjoy it somewhat, more in the third act when its gets deliriously ridiculous. Space shuttles chasing after an asteroid where the chances of not being hit by hurtling debris are minuscule. When they land on the asteroid itself, it's not as jagged and uneven as you'd expect, but has perfectly paved trails and has zero gravity whenever its convenient. And, in the dumbest scene in the entire movie (maybe in movie history), Ben Affleck and friends drive their mobile drilling machine over a giant canyon where there's zero gravity (they establish early on that the asteroid has unpredictable gravitational fields and I'm surprised this doesn't come into play here) and it's disorientingly opaque in its editing. It's just three idiots screaming, hoping this thing lands somewhere (this was not a well-thought out plan).
                             Writing about bad movies, I've come to realize, is easier than writing about good movies. It's easier to criticize than to laud. I guess that says something about human nature. I didn't hate this film, as painfully saccharine, ill-conceived, and illogical a lot of it is. It's a perfect archetype of what people imagine a Michael Bay film to be. And for what it's worth, there is a deranged comic artfulness to how he approaches the end of the world. The world is not just on fire, it's EXPLODING. Most directors would handle an apocalyptic situation with gravitas and pathos. Bay prefers to flamboyantly tap-dance on the charred remains of humanity. He's the Busby Berkeley of cinematic destruction. And like Ginger Rogers in Gold Diggers of 1933, he's crooning, "We're in the money, we're in the money...."
                             Meanwhile, we're all sitting on the dock of the Bay, wasting time.