05 Feb 2024, 00:00

Liv Tyler and Ben Affleck embrace in a scene from the film 'Armageddon', 1998. Photo / Getty Images

"None of you have to go. We can all just sit here on Earth, wait for this big rock to crash into it, kill everything and everybody we know. United States government just asked us to save the world. Anybody wanna say no?"

They're the words of Harry Stamper (played by Bruce Willis) to his fellow oil rig workers in Armageddon.

With an asteroid hurtling towards Earth, the blue-collar deep-core drillers were asked by NASA to train up as astronauts in just 11 days and then fly into space and use their drilling skills to plant a nuclear bomb on the asteroid, hopefully diverting it off its dangerous course.

Released just two months after a similar disaster movie, Deep Impact, Armageddon was the second highest grossing movie in 1998 after Saving Private Ryan and was nominated for four Academy Awards.

To celebrate this much-loved — and much-mocked — movie, here's what you never knew about Armageddon 20 years after it was released.

DODGY PREMISE

Even Ben Affleck didn't think the storyline was actually believable and during the DVD commentary he revealed what happened when he asked director Michael Bay a particular question about the plot.

"I asked Michael why it was easier to train oil drillers to become astronauts than it was to train astronauts to become oil drillers," Affleck said, according to Film School Rejects. "And he told me to shut the f**k up, so that was the end of that talk."

ACTING TRICK

In one of the most emotional scenes in the movie, Harry [played by Bruce Willis] says a final goodbye to his daughter Grace [played by Liv Tyler] on a video call after he decides to stay on the asteroid to detonate the bomb.

Towards the end of the farewell, Harry starts crying. It was revealed in the DVD commentary that Willis was actually staring at pictures of his real life daughters when he recorded the heartfelt scene.

FREE TEETH

Director Michael Bay wasn't thrilled by how Ben Affleck's teeth looked on camera so he decided to pay for the actor to get a new set.

Affleck had to spend eight hours a day for a full week sitting in a dentist's chair to get his new pearly whites at a cost of $20,000.

NASA MYTH

It shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone that Armageddon isn't exactly scientifically accurate. There was a rumour that NASA used to screen the movie for their trainees who had to try to spot all 168 scientific errors in the film.

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Unfortunately, a NASA employee has since dismissed this as nothing more than an internet myth.

BAD BLOOD

Bruce Willis has made it clear that he didn't enjoy working with director Michael Bay. In 2007 when chatting to fans about his upcoming movie, Live Free Or Die Hard, Willis responded to a rumour that Bay might direct the film.

"Would have ruined DH4 [Die Hard 4]," Willis allegedly said. "Few people will work with him now, and I know I will never work with him again."

The actor added that "a screaming director does not make for a pleasant set experience".

Michael Bay responded to Willis' comments by saying: "I loved working with Bruce. He gave me a big hug one month ago at the GM party and we talked for 20 minutes. We even talked about working together again! I mean it would be sad if he felt this way — he's never one to hide his feelings — I say sad, in that he wouldn't be man enough to say it to my face."

SORRY, NOT SORRY

In an interview with the Miami Herald, Michael Bay apparently apologised for Armageddon.

The journalist alleged that Bay said: "I will apologise for Armageddon, because we had to do the whole movie in 16 weeks. It was a massive undertaking. That was not fair to the movie.

"I would redo the entire third act if I could. But the studio literally took the movie away from us. It was terrible. My visual effects supervisor had a nervous breakdown, so I had to be in charge of that. I called James Cameron and asked, 'What do you do when you're doing all the effects yourself?' But the movie did fine."

But Bay later took to his blog to say his quotes were taken out of context.

"I'm not in the slightest going to apologise for the third movie in my movie career, a film called Armageddon," he wrote.

"What I clearly said to the reporter, is I wish I had more time to edit the film, specifically the third act. He asked me in effect what would you change if you could in your movies if you could go back. I said, I wish we had a few more weeks in the edit room on Armageddon. And still today Armageddon, is one of the most shown movies on cable TV. And yes, I'm proud of the movie. Enough said."

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