On paper, the pairing of actor Bruce Willis and director Michael Bay would appear like a match made in heaven. Proper from the beginning of his profession, Bay demonstrated an affinity for casting film stars with massive personalities, and Willis was one of many largest personalities of the ’90s. The actor’s explicit model of machismo serves Bay’s rah-rah jingoism particularly properly in the director’s third characteristic, 1998’s “Armageddon.” Who else however Willis might make a normal viewers purchase the patently ridiculous premise that Willis’ oil drilling firm head, Harry S. Stamper, and his fellow drillers could possibly be given a crash-course in astronaut coaching in an effort to man a mission onto a “planet-killer” asteroid headed straight for Earth?
In “Armageddon,” as in lots of Bay’s movies, there’s a lot that may be critiqued; even the film’s defenders (yours actually included) admit that the premise is one which stretches the bounds of even B-movie credulity, irrespective of how scientifically potential it might be. So whereas it is not stunning that Willis has been vocally very crucial about “Armageddon” within the years following the movie, his beef has extra to do with what’s not within the movie as a lot as what’s, with the first subject being quite a few character-building moments that Bay faraway from the movie’s theatrical lower. Though Willis’ grievance is well-founded, there does exist an prolonged director’s lower of the movie that appears to repair this subject — nevertheless, you’d have to purchase a decades-old Criterion Assortment DVD in an effort to watch it.
Willis did not like that Bay sacrificed character for Bayhem
To be clear, Willis has made numerous complaints through the years about “Armageddon” and his expertise making it. As he informed The Morning Name (through Far Out) upon the movie’s launch in 1998, he thought that the film was “too MTV-camera cutty” and that “Billy Bob [Thornton] was under-used,” but in addition talked about how the spacesuits he and the opposite actors wore within the movie had quite a few points, with Ben Affleck apparently “seen bashing the entrance glass on his helmet with a rock as a result of he could not breathe” at one level. In a later interview with Ain’t it Cool Information that does not seem like on-line anymore, Willis apparently went on to say that Bay’s unlucky trademark screaming and shouting on set was not one thing he discovered nice, despite the fact that “we had been all massive boys and we bought by way of it.”
It was in a canopy story from 2002 in The New York Instances, a couple of theatrical manufacturing of “True West” Willis was starring in, the place the actor additional elaborated on his subject with “Armageddon.” Along with the disagreeable working situations and Bay’s signature fast-cutting type, Willis was not happy that a lot of his and others’ work was not included within the launch of the film:
“There have been so many scenes in ‘Armageddon.’ All the good performing scenes are on the slicing room flooring and had been sacrificed for this form of MTV model, Michael Bay’s imaginative and prescient of filmmaking. That is Michael’s selection as a filmmaker.”
All of this “MTV model” enhancing that Willis retains referring to is his approach of describing Bay’s signature “Bayhem” type of slicing, one thing which actually got here to fruition with “Armageddon” and has solely gotten wilder and extra intense within the movies he is made since. Whereas us Bayheads see Bayhem as a characteristic and never a bug, Willis’ level in regards to the theatrical lower of “Armageddon” sacrificing as a lot character for plot and incident is properly taken. The movie is so chock stuffed with stuff that even at 150 minutes it feels rushed! Despite the fact that Willis might produce other causes for not loving “Armageddon,” the explanations he states do seem to be sufficient for it to depart a nasty style in his mouth.
The Criterion Assortment director’s lower of Armageddon fixes a few of Willis’ points
One does surprise, nevertheless, what Willis thinks about Bay’s director’s lower of the movie, a model that up to now has solely been obtainable on the Criterion Assortment’s lengthy out of print DVD launch of the film. He actually has seen a few of it, as he was a part of the discharge’s group commentary observe (you realize, the one which’s gained notoriety through the years because of Affleck’s unfiltered feedback in regards to the movie). The director’s lower is barely three minutes longer than the theatrical lower, however that additional time permits Bay so as to add again in some key traces of dialogue and prolonged moments between characters. Two of essentially the most main additions are scenes involving Willis himself, one the place he and Thornton’s NASA head have a coronary heart to coronary heart, and one other the place Harry visits his father (performed by Lawrence Tierney) earlier than blasting off on his fateful mission.
It is fully potential that these scenes had been a few of the ones Willis was so bummed to see misplaced within the theatrical lower, as each moments, transient as they’re, additional develop each Harry’s character and the movie itself. Harry’s father even delivers a line of dialogue that completely encapsulates the emotional theme of the entire movie: “God gave us kids so we would have roses in December.” With the thrust of “Armageddon” being about how the older technology, at their finest, make sacrifices to permit for the youthful technology to outlive, this second and a pair others assist make the movie a much more touchingly emotional expertise than the theatrical lower’s all-spectacle-and-forced-heart. Who is aware of how a lot further footage should exist on the market (Disney, when you’re certainly placing out a 4K version, please put the director’s lower and every other supplies on the disc!), however the existence of the director’s lower positive does concurrently show and refute Willis’ level. Whereas it is too unhealthy the actor and Bay by no means labored collectively once more (think about Willis within the Cade Yeager function in “Transformers” as an alternative of Mark Wahlberg!), we’ll at all times have “Armageddon.”
