Deep Impact vs. Armageddon

Em: 00:02:21

Hi, everyone. I'm Em, and welcome to Verbal Diorama, episode 343, deep impact versus Armageddon.

This is the podcast that's all about the history and legacy of movies you know and movies you don't. That could spend my life in this sweet surrender. I could stay lost in this moment forever.

Where a moment spent with you is a moment I treasure until the comet hits and I am in that cave bunker, baby. I'm sure podcasters get first dibs. Welcome to Verbal Diorama.

Whether you're a brand new listener, whether you're a regular returning listener, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for choosing to listen to this podcast.

I'm so happy to have you here for the history and legacy of Deep Impact versus the history and legacy of Armageddon.

And if you are a regular returning listener, thank you so much for continuing to listen to this podcast and supporting this podcast over the last seven years and 343 episodes.

It really, genuinely means so much to have you continue to come back and to continue to have your support, whether that is just listening to this podcast, a listen to this podcast is supporting this podcast, and I'm so very appreciative. So this episode and the last one have been very different to what I would normally put out.

They've been double episodes about twin movies, a phenomenon where rival Hollywood studios release almost identical movies in the same year. There won't be any more of these episodes. Not for a little while, anyway.

But I find twin movies just a deeply interesting concept that really seemed to hit its peak in the 90s. So the last episode was on Dante's Peak and volcano.

net ending events? Because in: 1998

Deep Impact is a comet which is icy with a tail from the outer solar system. And Armageddon is an asteroid, rocky and no tail. Just so you know. There is a slight difference between these two events.

And history has remembered Armageddon, but not particularly favourably. Deep Impact, on the other hand, has largely slipped under the radar as the other asteroid movie.

So I wanted to tell the story of each and about how they basically interweave with each other in so many ways. And we start with a comet on a collision course with Earth, the plan to save some of humanity, and a teen marriage with a climb up a hill.

Only one of these two movies got four Oscar nominations, and And it's not the one you think. Here's the trailer for Deep Impact..

Em: 00:08:31

Journalist Jenny Lerner is assigned to look into the background of Secretary Alan Rittenhouse, who abruptly resigns from government, citing his wife's ill health. She learns from his secretary that Rittenhouse was having an affair with someone named Ellie.

But when she confronts him, his strange reaction leads her to reconsider her story.

In fact, a comet discovered the previous year by high school student Leo biederman and astronomer Dr. Marcus Wolf is on a collision course with Earth. An extinction level event, or Ellie. A joint U. S. Russian team is sent into space to destroy the comet.

But should it fail, special measures are put in place to secure the future of mankind. Let's run through the cast of this movie.

We have Tea Leone as Jenny Lerner, Morgan Freeman as President Tom Beck, Robert Duvall as Captain Spurgeon Fish Tanner, Elijah Wood as Leo Biederman, Vanessa Redgrave as Robin Lerner Maximilian Schell as Jason Lerner Laura Innes as Beth Stanley, James Cromwell as Alan Rittenhouse Ron Eldard as Commander Oren Monash, Jon Favreau as Dr. Gus Partenza, Aleksandr Baluev as Colonel Mikhail Tulchinsky Mary McCormack as Andrea Baker, Blair Underwood as Mark Simon, Charles, Martin Smith as Marcus Wolf and Leelee Sobieski as Sarah Hotchner. Deep Impact was written by Bruce, Joel Rubin and Michael Tolkien and directed by Mimi Leder.

With all of the movies being made by Hollywood studios at the same time, you might think it's practically impossible to get a twin film situation. You can go for decades and not have Hollywood making movies about Comets and asteroids, and then in the mid-90s, have to turn up at once.

Now, in the case of many twin films, it could be a genuine coincidence.

If a character is in the public domain, like Robin Hood or Frankenstein, you're likely to find a few examples of the characters across studios because they're easy to adapt and known to viewers.

Or you could have one studio having an idea and a competing studio deciding to do something similar, to be the first to market and to guarantee dominance. Although that's not always the case. Olympus Has Fallen beat White House down to cinemas by three months.

But White House down took $20 million more at the box office. But in the case of Deep Impact versus Armageddon, just like Dante's Peak and Volcano, two remarkably similar ideas.

One a story about how humanity reacts to an extinction level event, and the other about drillers in space, but again, one a bit more accurate than the other. But it was still two studios fighting each other for dominance this time round, Paramount and Disney.

May: 1998

all the way back to the late: 1970

But in the 90s, thanks to independent Stay and Twister, disaster movies became cool again.

When Worlds Collide's storyline is about the coming destruction of the Earth by a rogue star called Belus, and the desperate efforts to build a space ark to transport a group of men and women to Belus single planet Zyra. Several screenplay drafts were completed over the years, but the project remained in development hell until they approached Steven Spielberg.

bought the film Rights to the: 1993

Spielberg planned to produce and direct the Hammer of God himself for his then fledgling DreamWorks studio, but agreed with Zanuck and Brown to merge the two projects, When Worlds Collide and the Hammer of God into one movie, and they commissioned a screenplay for what would become Deep Impact.

l Screenplay Academy Award in: 1991

mself, but commitments to his: 1997

Originally, the studio planned to wait for Spielberg, but then disaster struck, figuratively at least according to Deep Impact screenwriter Bruce Joel.

ddon, also targeting a summer: 1998

Bizarrely, these two weren't the only meteor based projects floating around Hollywood at the time either.

Another called Bright Angel Falling was originally penned by James Cameron and set to be directed by Peter Hyams and allegedly something that he'd been working on for half a decade.

The project was set up at 20th Century Fox, the screenplay for it was finished, and it also had a child protagonist who realizes a comet is on trajectory with the earth with three months before the end of days.

When word of Cameron and Hyams project came to light, DreamWorks poured more money and resources into Deep Impact and Disney spent even more on Armageddon. Bright Angel Falling would have been third out of the gate, and so it was ultimately cancelled.

Either way, the emergence of the Michael Bay directed Armageddon accelerated the Deep Impact side. Not wanting to wait for Spielberg to be available, the producers needed a new director.

Spielberg had worked with Mimi Leder on the Peacemaker, the first film distributed by DreamWorks, as well as being one of the core directors on er, the second longest running prime-time medical drama in American television history.

They brought in Mimi Leder to direct Deep Impact, with Spielberg staying on as executive producer, so the producers knew there was a competing movie on the horizon. But Leder was kept in the dark initially. She'd later find out that the press was trying to pit the two films against each other.

Leder wasn't actually a fan of science fiction, but she reasoned the story's scale would allow her to explore human drama on an epic level, focusing on relationships and families rather than spectacle. Spoiler alert. Michael Bay would do the opposite.

million years ago, in the: 1970

And because asteroids have higher levels of iridium, scientists quickly started wondering if the dinosaurs might have been wiped out by an impact event. The discovery of the Chicxulub impact crater around the same time further supported the asteroid extinction explanation.

And the demise of the dinosaurs was solved. Since then, there haven't been any similar events. Touch wood.

But there was a very direct real world catalyst that inspired both Deep Impact and Armageddon. And it happened just four years before their release.

was discovered in: 1993

But astronomers predicted that the comet was likely to collide with Jupiter. And as its orbit became more accurately established, the possibility of collision went from likely to certain.

With the collision expected to cause eruptions of material from the layers normally hidden beneath the clouds.

In July: 1994

nd of July: 1994

It generated massive media coverage and brought together teams of scientists and astronomers worldwide to witness the event. The biggest fragment struck Jupiter with the force equivalent of 6 million megatons of TNT.

The impact left scars on Jupiter's atmosphere, more visible than the Great Red Spot, persisting for many months. And Jupiter plays an important role in protecting the inner solar system from comets. It's called the Jupiter Barrier.

And the gravitational influence of Jupiter on passing interstellar and in system objects, which includes asteroids and comets. They're attracted to Jupiter and either captured in its orbit or destroyed through impacting the planet.

Jupiter has been nicknamed the solar system's cosmic vacuum cleaner by astronomers who speculate that its gravity reduces the amount of objects reaching the inner solar system, protecting the smaller planets from impact events. Despite this fact, if Jupiter was vulnerable then scientists suggested that maybe Earth could be too.

Had the comet hit Earth instead, it could have created a global atmospheric disaster, much like the impact event that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. The event shook up both the scientific community and governments, hammering home the possibility of a world ending event coming from the sky.

Before The Shoemaker Levy 9 impact, the term planetary defense didn't exist. Nowadays there are teams of scientists tracking near Earth objects, which are asteroids that come within 30 million miles of Earth's Earth's orbit.

But back in the mid-: 1990

actually hired by the USGS in: 1950

And he studied volcanic processes and searched for uranium in Utah and Colorado, which is a lovely little nod to the geological events of last episode.

Springs in Australia in July: 1997

He was visiting an impact crater site in Australia at the time. After his death, some of his ashes were carried to the moon with the Lunar Prospector mission.

He is the only person to date who has technically been buried on the moon.

Joshua E. Colwell at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado in Boulder was also hired to consult on this movie. And and he was essential during the research phase.

Dr. Chris B. Luchini at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory also advised in the creation of models of the space debris and comets.

Gerald D. Griffin, the former director of NASA's Lyndon B. Johnson Space center in Houston, was the flight director in Mission Control who led one of the teams of flight controllers who were responsible for the safe return of the Apollo 13 astronauts. He's credited in the cast as the NASA official for the cast.

Leder decided to combine established highly accomplished performers like Robert Duvall, Morgan Freeman and Vanessa Redgrave with less established names like Tea Leone, Jon Favreau, Elijah Wood and Leelee Sobieski.

Morgan Freeman's casting as President Beck was controversial at the time due to widespread disbelief that a person of color could become President of the United States.

Mimi Leader later claimed that Barack Obama personally thanked her, suggesting that the film played some small cultural role in making the idea of an African American president feel conceivable to American audiences. President Beck is now consistently ranked among the best fictional film presidents ever put to screen.

Freeman wanted Beck to wear an earring, which leader turned down and all of Freeman's scenes as the president were filmed within a 10 day period. The Spaceship Messiah crew, a cocky young team of US astronauts with one Russian cosmonaut, reluctantly add a one to their ranks.

An Apollo era veteran played by Robert Duvall. His inclusion into the crew, much like Freeman's black US President, foreshadowed future events.

h, circling it three times in: 1962

ce Congressman Bill Nelson in: 1986

June: 1997

Mimi Lida wanted to show a worldwide response to the events, but the budget wouldn't stretch to filming in other countries, which is why the movie is so very US centric. Although just like Armageddon, Russia does also play a small part in saving the world.

The first on location shoot was in Manassas, Virginia on a newly completed piece of freeway not yet open to traffic, which provided the setting for a chaotic scene of panicking, desperate residents fleeing the mile high tidal wave that the comet's impact will produce, only to get caught in a traffic jam.

To film this scene, over 2,100 extras were used, along with more than 1,870 vehicles, cars, trucks, boats and campers spread out eight abreast on both sides of the freeway for over a mile and a half. Hidden discreetly in the traffic jam were large trucks filled with porta potties and refrigerated trucks with food and drink.

For the extras, twin tunnels on Kanan Doom Road in Malibu were used as the entrance to the Ark, the sealed habitat in which the lucky Social Security chosen Few Americans hoped to survive the devastating impact of the comet. Modelled after the world's largest underground business complex Subtropolis, the caves carved into the limestone shelves of Kansas City, Missouri.

The tunnels were fitted with giant ceiling doors and is meant to be one of several shelters built by the government. Each shelter intended to hold a million people, 200,000 people of importance and 800,000 civilians.

As well as national historical relics, art and a menagerie of animals to repopulate the earth. After the cataclysmic event, no animals over 50.

Though the two day shoot required a thousand extras and 200 animals, animal coordinator Jules Sylvester worked with every animal company in the business in order to get the impressive selection of wildlife that appears in the scene.

Animals marching in two by two, including lions, jaguars, hyenas, alligators, pythons, kangaroos, ostrich, buffalo, camels, elephants, zebras, cattle, chicken, birds and rabbits. At least they started with two rabbits. They probably didn't end up with two rabbits.

NASA's offices at Edwards Air Force Base were used for the ground sequences of the Messiah space mission. Space sequences were shot at Warner's Hollywood Studios and on stage 15 at Paramount, the largest sound stage on the lot.

for Deep impact began in June: 1997

Working with costume designer Ruth Myers, production designer Leslie Diller wanted the comet to look not Earth like and was inspired by a piece of crystallised sand called a desert rose.

An intricate rose like formation of crystal clusters of gypsum or barite that he'd picked up in Tunisia while working on Raiders of the Lost Ark years earlier. That single object became the visual foundation for the entire comet design.

The comet itself is depicted as nearly white in the film, but in reality, comets are among the darkest objects in the solar system, reflecting only about 3% of the light that hits them.

The producers were fully aware of this, but the special effects technology of the time made it essentially impossible to render a black object convincingly against black space. The comet face was constructed with a labyrinth of tunnels built beneath it to allow for lighting rigs and gaseous explosions.

Surrounded by an enormous fiber optic star field. The scale of the practical construction is easy to underestimate. Given how much of the final film is visual effects based.

The production leaned heavily on a blend of physical and digital work. Industrial light and Magic handled all the hero, disaster and space visual effects supervised by Scott Farah and Bill George.

While cis, Hollywood and Pacific title Mirage handled compositing work. It was one of ILM's flagship projects.

That year, ILM's model shop built miniature versions of the Messiah spacecraft and these hold up particularly well as well.

The scale looks convincing even as the craft swings close to the camera, with lighting and composites remaining consistent throughout the for the comet surface sequence, it was a genuine hybrid approach. Surface shots were done with large real life set pieces combined with virtual sets created from CG and miniatures.

Special effects coordinator Michael Lantieri's crew created an atmosphere of gaseous fog and steam around the comet set, going through a million cubic feet of liquid nitrogen every day. That gaseous atmosphere was both practical on set and and augment it digitally.

No real tsunamis were used in: 1998

That was a massive job and it mostly holds up and shows realistic massive waves. Using particle effects for white water and dividing the simulation space into voxels.

The interaction between the water and collapsing buildings is what particularly impresses professionals.

Looking back at it now, the whole tsunami sequence with a fragment plunging into the Atlantic Ocean and flooding coastal cities, was praised by astronomer Phil Plait as pretty accurate and far more plausible than a direct city strike, considering it's statistically much likelier for an object to hit ocean than land. Throughout production, the Deep Impact team were aware of the rivalry between it and the upcoming Armageddon.

An original line of dialogue in the script had President Beck say, life will go on. We will prevail. This is not Armageddon.

The final four lines were eventually cut when it became apparent that both movies would be coming out within two months of each other.

leukemia and died in November: 1997

or a total worldwide gross of: 35049

Deep impact unfortunately, didn't have much of a deep impact on critics. With a 45% on Rotten Tomatoes.

It was also nominated at the Stinker's Bad Movie Awards for Worst Supporting Actress for Tea Leonel and Worst Screenplay for a film GROSSING More than $100 million using Hollywood math, which it lost to Godzilla. It was also nominated for Best Science Fiction film at the 25th Saturn Awards, but lost to tying winners Dark City and Armageddon.

I bet that was a punch to the gut. Despite Deep Impact being a box office success and making $350 million worldwide.

n to direct Pay it forward in: 2000

Leder would say that when Pay It Forward bombed, the scripts simply stopped coming. Despite Deep Impact having been a genuine hit, it seems that it wasn't just Deep Impact that was overshadowed by Armageddon, but it's director too.

Speaking of Deep Impacts, this is a good time to segue into the obligatory Kianu reference of this episode. I did almost forget about this because of the weird way these episodes are structured.

I didn't actually put this in my notes, so I'm doing this on the fly during editing because that's how podcasts work.

If you're not aware, the obligatory Keanu reference is something that I like to do every episode and I like to try and link the movie or movies that I'm featuring with Keanu Reeves for no reason other than he is the best of men. And I was thinking, what does Keanu mean to this podcast?

Well, he's had a very deep impact on this podcast because he's featured in pretty much every episode. And then I thought to myself, what would this podcast be like without the obligatory Keanu reference? Well, it would be Armageddon, wouldn't it?

And so that's the easiest way to link Keanu Reeves to these two movies. And bring on the Bayhem, I guess, because this is the first appearance for a Michael Bay movie on this podcast.

Because who needs astronauts who have trained their whole lives for a space mission? Intelligent, capable, disciplined at the peak of their physical fitness, and mentally and emotionally prepared for space travel.

Being taught how to drill when you could just teach drillers how to become astronauts. Here's the trailer for Armageddon.

Em: 00:36:51

After New York City is damaged by hundreds of small meteorites, NASA discovers an asteroid the size of Texas is on a collision course with Earth.

They recruit the world's best deep core driller, Harry Stamper, to train astronauts who will go to the asteroid, drill into the center and detonate a nuclear warhead. Harry says he can't train men to drill in 10 days.

So he brings his own team of roughnecks to learn to become astronauts in 10 days and get the job done. Let's run through the cast. We have Bruce Willis as Harry S. Stamper, Billy Bob Thornton as Dan Truman, Ben Affleck as A.J.

Frost, Liv Tyler as Grace Stamper, William Fichtner as Colonel Willie Sharp, will Patton as Chick Chappie, Steve Buscemi as Rockhound, Owen Wilson as Oscar choice Michael Clark Duncan as Bear Curline, Ken Campbell as Max Lennart, Clark Brolley as Freddie Noonan, Jessica Steen as Jennifer Watts, Peter Stormare as Lev Andropov and Keith David as General Kimsey.

Armageddon has a screenplay by Jonathan Hensleigh and J.J. abrams, adaptation by Tony Gilroy and Shane Salerno, story by Robert Roy Paul and Jonathan Hensley, and was directed by Michael Bay.

So meanwhile, over at the other world ending event movie, the team at Armageddon had basically taken the idea and they were also going to run with it. But they had a considerable disadvantage starting later.

o films together, Bad Boys in: 1995

Bay's success on those films led to a strong partnership and friendship with Bruckheimer, and Armageddon was essentially the next natural step in that collaboration. It wasn't a case of Bay being hired for a project already in development. He was in the room when the concept was conceived.

He was working with executive producer Jonathan Hensley after the Rock and couldn't find a story he liked.

So Hensley pitched this crazy asteroid destroying the world movie, Bad Boys, and the Rock had already established him as a director with a demonstrable eye for popcorn hits. And he brought exactly the sensibility that Bruckheimer wanted.

Maximum spectacle, kinetic energy, and the music video grammar that could make an audience feel the scale of a disaster. Or rather than simply observe it.

Armageddon was Bay's first attempt at a truly gigantic blockbuster with massive set designs, cgi, an all star cast, and the level of action he was used to in previous movies. Nine writers worked on the script, only five of whom received credit.

Robert Roy Poole, who wrote the original draft, Jonathan Hensleigh, who wrote the draft that was greenlit by Touchstone, Plus Tony Gilroy, Shane Salerno and J.J. abrams. Yeah, that J.J. abrams. Others who contributed without credit included Paul Attanazio, Anne Bideman, Scott Rosenberg and Robert Towne.

e to mess around. Thanks to a: 1997

Bruce Willis was committed to making three more movies for Disney, the first of which was going to be Armageddon. The second was the Sixth Sense, the third was the Kid, so he was cast in the movie as Harry Stamper.

Liv Tyler initially turned down the role of Harry's daughter Grace. Several times she changed her mind because she was scared of it and then wanted to try it for that very reason.

Her casting would lead to Aerosmith's involvement on the soundtrack. Her real life father is the lead singer, Steven Tyler.

The song I Don't Want to Miss a Thing was written by Diane Warren, and she originally envisioned it being performed by someone like Celine Dion. It became Aerosmith's biggest hit by far, their only US Number one. And it revived their fortunes entirely.

nds of South Dakota in August: 1997

ctual shuttle launch in April: 1997

The technical challenge was extraordinary. NASA's post fueling lockdown protocol meant nobody could be within 4 miles of the pad for 24 hours.

But Schwarzman had cameras positioned within 150ft of it. Those cameras had to sit unattended in Florida heat and humidity for up to 48 hours and still fire perfectly on cue.

Because NASA banned the crew's own triggering system to protect the launch electronics, A special code was written into the shuttle's own computer launch sequence to fire Schwarzman's cameras 45 seconds before main engine ignition.

And then Michael Bay apparently saw a poster of a night shuttle launch on a NASA bathroom wall, was struck by the image and rewrote the script to include one of those too. So Schwarztman had to return to Kennedy Space center six weeks later to do it all again at night.

actual launch date in January: 1998

August: 1997

And you're probably wondering, well, how did Armageddon get permission to film in such intimate and secure places?

And that's really all down to Jerry Bruckheimer, because his relationship with the US government and military, built through films like Top Gun, gave Armageddon access that Deep Impact. Filming at the same time simply didn't have. Schwarzman described it as carte blanche. Everywhere they went.

It meant no waiting for permits or workarounds that they could shoot at actual NASA facilities, including oil rigs and air bases as scheduled. NASA gave them access worth an estimated $19 billion. This included access to the neutral buoyancy lab.

A 65 million gallon 40 foot deep pool used to train astronauts for weightlessness. And the use of two ten million dollar spacesuits. The scenes on the oil rig were shot on an actual oil rig off of the coast of Galveston.

The asteroid surface sequences were shot on stage two at Walt Disney Studios. And that required excavation of 30ft of soil and beneath the stage floor to achieve the extreme topography that gave the set roughly 90ft of height.

And because of its bold shape and atmospheric effects, very few sky replacements were needed in post, which saved time there too. 13 Different effects houses worked on the film concurrently. Overseeing all of them was visual effects supervisor Patrick McClung.

eak. McClung knew that CGI in: 1997

Dreamquest's miniatures team built a model of the asteroid's exterior measuring 28 by 15ft. While the interior model ran 80 by 25ft, complete with 35 foot long spikes at the tail.

The jagged spires were hand carved from huge blocks of styrofoam. Fitted over steel armatures, then painted to match the full scale asteroid set on stage two.

McClung divided responsibility with Dreamquest Images, Richard Hoover and the division of labour was deliberate. Anything requiring heavy 3D imaging went to Dreamquest.

Because they had a powerhouse digital department fresh off of George of the Jungle and Mighty Joe Young. All of the approach shots to the asteroid with their interactive gases requiring enormous rendering time fell to them.

The Shuttle, Miniatures, Independence and Freedom were built at 1 20th scale, making them 6ft long.

They were fabricated from epoxy and fiberglass and they incorporated design elements from military fighter jets and featured a six point mount required for motion control filming sequences. A separate quarter scale shuttle model was also built, which is enormous by miniature standards.

For specific shots like the planetary surface landing and the cargo bay door opening. The key to making it work was blending the practical with the digital rather than choosing between them.

McClung's team shot miniatures of the shuttles and asteroid against green screen, then composited these with the 3D computer generated graphics. The challenge was matching all of that to Bay's characteristic dramatic pans and tilts. And this is Michael Bay.

His camera was always moving and so it was important to create seamless sequences that he'd be satisfied with. Dream Quest took the exterior asteroid shots. Tippet Studio handled the rock storm sequence.

Digital Domain and Mat World Digital collaborated on the Paris Explosion.

Digital Domain composited the blast itself with Mat World providing the aftermath shot and Cinesight handling additional digital visual effects and animation.

Disney Studios Chairman Joe Roth personally expanded the film's budget by $3 million just to add the Paris sequence for a TV ad campaign specifically to show the difference between Armageddon and Deep Impact. Midway during production, a real life event happened too.

December: 1997

ility of hitting the Earth in: 2028

October: 2028

And this just fueled the production to make a full on maximalist asteroid movie with all of the scale and all of the ambition. But the time constraints on this movie were huge. Armageddon had to be shot and edited in just 16 weeks and it was practically impossible.

The severe pressure got to everyone.

The visual effects supervisor ended up having a nervous breakdown and Michael Bay had to manage the visual effects work himself, calling James Cameron for advice. Bay actually ended up apologizing publicly for the situation. A rare moment of humility for a man known for his hubris.

With the final budget being $140 million, it was Disney's most expensive film at the time.

July: 1998

he named it his worst film of: 1998

Armageddon Quadruple Oscar nominated, Armageddon was nominated for best Original Song for I don't want to Miss a thing. Best Sound Best Sound Effects Editing and Best Visual Effects.

Visual effects supervisor Patrick McClung was convinced they'd win the Oscar for Best Visual Effects, but then they lost to what dreams may come. McClung was gutted and headed back to the Armageddon table at the event, only to find the whole crew had left furious at their loss.

Armageddon was also nominated for seven Razzies Worst Picture, Worst Director, Worst Actor for Bruce Willis, Worst Supporting Actress for Liv Tyler, Worst Screenplay, Worst Screen Couple and Worst Original Song. Bruce Willis won Worst Actor and as I mentioned, it did beat Deep Impact to be named Best Science Fiction Film at the Saturn Awards.

Technically it was a tie, but it did win. Perhaps the most remarkable footnote is that the movie is enlisted into the Criterion Collection known for releasing Art House Cinema.

They put out a director's cut of the film, which included commentary by Bay himself, as well as additional scenes, including a scene between Harry Stamper and his father, played by Lawrence Tierney.

Film scholar Jeanine Basinger, who talked Bay at Wesleyan University, wrote an essay calling the director's cut a work of art by a cutting edge artist who is a master of movement, light, colour and shape.

In the commentary track, Ben Affleck says he asked Bay why it was easier to train oil drillers to become astronauts than it was to train astronauts to become oil drillers. Let's just say Michael Bay told him to be quiet, but in a more sweary way.

Where scientific accuracy is concerned, just like Dante's Peak and Volcano, you have one movie that attempts accuracy, in this case Deep Impact, and the other that blatantly ignores science. The asteroid, being the size of Texas in Armageddon, is just ridiculously large.

ntially hazardous asteroid is: 533191

It's so scientifically inaccurate that reportedly NASA shows Armageddon to its management training hires, and they have to pick out all of the inaccuracies in order to get hired.

Near the end credits, there is actually a disclaimer stating the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's cooperation and assistance does not reflect an endorsement of the contents of the film or the treatment of the characters depicted therein.

y other movie ever. Until the: 2022

Armageddon is the American exceptionalism movie where the blue collar average Joe oil rig worker can save the world. In an era where tough guy leading men with the norm and could open a movie on their name alone.

Bruce Willis built his career on being the everyman hero. Strong and capable, but vulnerable and emotionally resonant.

But you can eschew scientific accuracy when your movie is literally all about how kick ass it is to be a working man in America. Even if one of your member literally admits to being a statutory rapist. It's all good though. This is boys will be boys mentality.

They have 18 days to save the world and they're gonna drill baby, drill. Are we sure Donald Trump didn't write this script?

Michael Bay is a big kid with all these toys and so this is just a team of big kids with their big toys. Deep Impact is another story altogether. Bruce, Joel Rubin and Michael Tolkien's script is a somber, pragmatic take on the risk of mass extinction.

Events take place over a year and the public is shown going through the various stages of grief. Where Armageddon shows immediate chaos and panic, Deep Impact slowly builds on the tension, fear and desire for someone to come in and fix things.

Armageddon treats the US government as if it was staffed by idiots waiting for drillers to come in and fix things. In Armageddon, when asked why NASA didn't find the asteroid earlier, the response is it's a big effing sky. As if we only ever monitor a bit of it.

Deep Impact's strength is found in its government, particularly Morgan Freeman's President Beck, who actually tries to act in the best interest of the public. Deep Impact depicts a world just like our own, where people aren't always kind, but they can show off their pure humanity when put to the test.

When Harry sacrifices himself in Armageddon and he does it to benefit his daughter more than humanity itself, it's just a happy byproduct that he also saves the world. And maybe Deep Impact's earnest attempt to give us an authentic, scientifically accurate ish depiction of a world ending event was its downfall.

It's the better movie, but it's not the better experience. Death is treated as death should be, with existential dread and terror. People die in Armageddon, but it's with much less emotional resonance.

Which do I prefer? It's a really tough question because I like both of them. I think Deep Impact is better marginally, but Armageddon is slightly more of a fun watch.

It's a typical Bay quick edit, big bad boom, and it's more memorable.

one of my favourite songs in: 1998

I remember buying it on CD single and if we didn't have Armageddon copying Deep Impact in the first place, we would never have had Aerosmith come in to sing the theme tune. Now where's Diane Warren's Oscar? 17 Nominations and not a single win, not even for this banger. Thank you for listening.

As always, I would love to hear your thoughts on Deep Impact or Armageddon. And thank you for your continued support of this podcast.

The next episode of this podcast is not another epic versus World ending event Double of Movies. I've done two episodes like that and it's hard work doing an episode on two movies, especially when there's so much to say about their productions.

However, I thought it would be nice to go back to something a little bit more romantic and a little bit more period.

And being truthful, originally this month I was going to do some Disney live action remakes and I had a plan of the Disney live action remakes that I wanted to do and I actually ended up talking myself out of Disney live action remakes because most of them I don't actually really like all that much.

But the one that I really wanted to do was Cinderella and then I thought, oh, it'd be so much fun to do an episode on Cinderella and an episode on Ever after, which is my personal favorite Cinderella movie.

And then I had this idea of these double episodes with these twin films and I was like, I don't feel like I can do two episodes on twin films and then two episodes on Cinderella movies.

So I ended up this is a really long winded way of saying that I the next episode is Ever after because it's my favourite Cinderella movie and I think it's just such a wonderfully brilliant way to tell the Cinderella story by removing the supernatural elements of the story and basically treating it as historical fiction and setting it in Renaissance era France is also one of my favourite Drew Barrymore performances as well. So complete tonal Whiplash. Just like something Michael Bay would do in one of his movies.

I am tonally whiplashing from the end of the world to Ever After A Cinderella Story. So join me next episode for the history and legacy of Ever After.

Thank you for listening to Verbal Diorama, a totally free and independent podcast that relies on listener support. If you want to show your support in multiple different ways, you could leave a rating or review wherever you found this podcast.

You could tell your friends and family about this podcast or you could find me and follow me on social media and you can share the podcast that way. I am @verbaldiorama across social media where you can share posts like posts, comment on posts.

It all helps really to get the word out there to hopefully get other people to know this podcast and know the recent episodes that I've put out. I genuinely love doing this podcast and anything you could do to help would be so appreciated.

A huge thank you to the incredibly generous patrons of this podcast. I could not do what I do without their support.

To Simon, Laurel, Derek, Cat, Andy, Mike, Luke, Michael, Scott, Brendan, Ian, Lisa, Sam, Jack, Dave, Stuart, Nicholas, Zoe, Kev, Danny, Stu, Brett, Xenos, Sean, Ryno, Philip, Adam, Elaine, Aaron, and Steve. Please consider joining them and supporting this podcast on Patreon if you have the means to.

If you want to get in touch, you can email verbaldiora@gmail.com you can also go to verbaldiorama.com and you can fill out the contact form. You could say hello, you can give feedback or you can give suggestions as well. I would genuinely love to hear from you.

You can also DM me on social media as well if that's an option available to you. I love to hear from people and I always try to respond as quickly as possible.

Thanks again for listening and thanks for supporting independent podcasting. It means more to us then you know. And finally all my bags are packed.

Em: 01:02:13

Bye.