I don't have a clue how ol Wolf Larson saw ARMAGEDDON, but... well here it is. Mighty odd that I got this the same day I got the test screening results for DEEP IMPACT. However, I do believe this spy to be on the level. If there was no test screening how could Wolf Larson see the film? Oh I imagine someone is assembling a rough cut right about now. Though I know for a fact that a BIG effects sequence has yet to be filmed, and is being done this week. But here is Wolf Larson's contribution into the world of Big stuff a-hitting us films. Man, I want to see this film.
Love your site. Since I recently saw a rough cut of Armageddon, I feel obliged to send in a review to give something back. Don't use my full name, just call me Wolf.
Armageddon, scheduled to open July 1, is going to be one of the biggest movies of the year. I recently saw a rough cut, with unfinished special effects and an incomplete ending. It's a Jerry Bruckheimer film, so don't expect a re-invention of the wheel, but it's got a great cast, some high drama, and (as far as I can tell) it's going to show us movie junkies some things we've never seen before.
SPOILER ALERT!
SFX are incomplete, but it looks like the film will open with a meteor colliding with Earth and killing all the dinosaurs. Jurassic Park meets Deep Impact.
CUT TO: Dan Truman (Billy Bob Thornton, playing Ed Harris in Apollo 13) presiding over Mission Control as a meteor shower destroys the Space Shuttle. A comet the size of Texas is coming to Earth and must be stopped before it destroys all of mankind.
Who else to send, but oil driller Harry Stamper (Bruce Willis) and his motley crew to fly to the asteroid, drill a deep hole, drop a bomb, and nuke it? Complicating things, oil worker A.J. (Ben Affleck) has the hots for Harry's daughter Grace (Liv Tyler), so we get a scene where Harry comes after A.J. with a gun, like some scene out of 'Lil Abner. What the hell were they thinking? My friend thought it was funny.
After this come a series of extended scenes, which go on way too long, detailing the recruitment and training of Harry and his guys ("How do we poop in space?"). Udo Kier appears in a cameo as a NASA shrink. Needless to say, Steve Buscemi (as Rockhound) gets most of the funny lines, and Harry and his gang know far more than the supposed experts.
In the past, Michael Bay has taken some heat for preferring style over substance and action over character, so it seems like he's going overboard to compensate here. It takes 90 MINUTES! into the movie for the two Space Shuttles to finally blast off. Of course, this is when the story really takes off, and a lot of the footage is really extraordinary.
Be forewarned, the movie I saw ended up being 3 hours long. I hear they're going to release it close to that length. That's too long, if you ask me, but hang in there, your patience will pay off.
The two Space Shuttles dock with a Russian space station, manned by Lev, a lone cosmonaut pining away for the glory days of the Soviet Union. The claustrophobic danger (and dark humor) aboard the decrepit space station marks the next level of this action/adventure. When the space station starts to malfunction, the movie takes Apollo 13 and turns the volume up to 11.
From there, our teams fly to the asteroid, where they crash-land and become seperated. The asteroid, the worst place imaginable, offers its own obstacles to Harry and his team. Physical and personal obstacles lead to a series of intense decisions and confrontations. (DELETED TO NOT SPOIL FILM) Of course, Harry and his surviving crew are not about to give up.
The movie I saw was still very unfinished (we're talking guys playing with G.I.Joe astronaut dolls in place of some SFX), but this movie goes a step or two beyond the average action movie. By the end, some people have died and (DELETED TO PRESERVE THE MYSTERY) Since all I saw was a cliffhanger, it sure has me wondering what happens.
At any rate, the first half of the movie is pretty typical Bruckheimer action stuff. But the second half promises to show some new things, both in terms of SFX and drama in an action picture. Personally, I can't wait to see the finished film.
