Armageddon (1998)

This was the 2nd 'Big-Rock-Heading-for-Earth' movie of the year, following Deep Impact. It's also a follow-up to older films like Meteor (1979), the TV Movie A Fire in the Sky (77) and the way older When Worlds Collide (1951). There was also a famous novel, Lucifer's Hammer, in 1977, which helped to popularize the whole concept.
What's the concept? A large object from outer space devastates a large portion of the Earth, obviously affecting the lives of many people. Only, in this one, it's a lot of smaller objects hitting Earth; the big one (the size of Texas, btw; it just had to be Texas    - why not the size of Georgia?   )   stays out in space, where a group led by Bruce Willis are sent to blow it up. The biggest hit is on Paris, France, which gets destroyed; this quick scene was inserted after it was determined that the middle of the film was a bit slow and uneventful.

This was directed by Michael Bay (Transformers), who has been instrumental in morphing cinema into a lot of flash without much substance. During most of the film, the actors comprising the Earth-saving band of misfit astronauts (including Ben Affleck, Will Patton, Steve Buscemi, Michael Clarke Duncan and Owen Wilson) try hard to be wiseguys, edgy, irreverant, cutesy and flamboyant. This informs most of the scenes - they just try too hard - you can see them straining for all this in each scene. Willis has some kind of hard on about Affleck dating his daughter (Liv Tyler); I never got this; it just seemed like an excuse for such over-the-top scenes as Willis chasing Affleck with a shotgun. Then there's the cosmonaut who pops up midway, played by Peter Stormare, a bizarre performance which was supposed to suggest the results of isolation in space - again, way over-the-top. That said, Tyler gives the worst performance, plainly amateurish.
The whole concept within the concept - sending the worst bunch of misfits to save the world - is also meant to be irreverant and darkly humorous. The thing is, if anyone thinks about it for more than a few seconds, it just comes off as ridiculous. As the administrator at NASA, Billy-Bob Thornton was good playing against type as the straight-arrow type; he was the only one to underplay his role.
Director Bay made use of quick cuts and loud noises to help usher in that obnoxious style of filmmaking. The FX are OK, but all the stuff with the tiny rocks hitting the city near the beginning doesn't make sense - these would burn up in the atmosphere. Predictably, this flashy movie was the biggest grosser of the year, out-grossing Deep Impact. BoG's Score: 5.5 out of 10
That's Trivia: there was a parody trailer of such a disaster film way back in Kentucky Fried Movie (1977); it came closest to being an early funny version of this film because it was titled "That's Armageddon!" - featuring ex-James Bond guy George Lazenby and Donald Sutherland.