Armageddon is the ID4 of 1998. It has the graphics, it has the cast, and it has the destruction. The graphics are comparable to ID4 or Starship Troopers, with explosions, meteors, and spaceships. Bruce Willis is excellent, delivering what he does best, Billy Bob Thornton is realistic, and Ben Affleck is great. Liv Tyler has vast potential, pretty, talented, and very believable. So where does it go wrong? To pinpoint the small flaws, I have to compare it to Deep Impact. Armageddon is definitely more action packed, has slightly better graphics, lots of humor, and tries to give good drama, but, compared to Deep Impact, the drama is nothing. They needed more characters spread around on Earth to give it a better feel. The only other disappointing thing was the ending; there was no big boom-boom with the Earth. They could have had at least one more big impact, like that in Paris. Besides that one disappointment, Armageddon still delivers, and is everything I expected and hoped it to be.

Review by Erik Samdahl. Erik is a marketing and technology executive by day, avid movie lover by night. He is a member of the Seattle Film Critics Society.