Trivia / Armageddon (1998)

• Actor-Inspired Element: Ben Affleck came up with the idea for scenes of A.J. and Grace's wedding to be filmed on Super 8. His personal Super 8 camera was used for the shoot, and he held and operated it for all the shots he wasn't acting in. The cake fight was improvised, and the cast threw most of it at Michael Bay.
• Adored by the Network: This movie seems to be on American TV every other day. Ranging from channels such as AMC and USA Network to MTV and the Lifetime Network.
• Backed by the Pentagon: NASA in this case. Hard to believe but it's true this did have NASA scientists as advisers and the movie was able to shoot in the NASA facilities. The only NASA place that isn't real is the control room which was designed for the film. Though the real Mission Control room does appear in the film. Also the Pentagon.
• Breakaway Pop Hit: Aerosmith's "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing", their first ever #1 hit.
• California Doubling: The New York City scenes at the beginning were actually filmed in the Spring Street Financial District of Los Angeles. They actually manage to cover this up seamlessly for the most part, except for one shot of a guy in his car where you can see palm trees in the background.
• Contractual Obligation Project: This was the first of three pictures Bruce Willis starred in for Disney (the other two being The Sixth Sense and The Kid (2000)) because of a planned film with him starring, Broadway Brawler, being shitcanned early in production due to Willis' behavior on set (Disney nearly sued Willis until Willis' agency brokered a deal); since $28 million had went down the drain on the scrapped movie, Willis took a significant cut in pay for this film to pay back Disney.
• Creator Backlash:
  • In an interview with Miami Herald, Michael Bay said "I will apologize for Armageddon", and explained how being forced to film the whole movie in 16 weeks caused the crew's performance to suffer, but later added on his website's forum that his words had been taken out of context and he actually was proud of the movie.
  • Ben Affleck seems to get red in the face anytime its brought up, such as on Real Time with Bill Maher.
• Creator's Apathy:
  • According to Ben Affleck on the DVD commentary:
    I asked Michael why it was easier to train oil drillers to become astronauts than it was to train astronauts to become oil drillers and he told me to shut the fuck up. So, that was the end of that talk.
  • Regarding the line of "they don't know jack about drilling":
    I mean, this is a little bit of a logic stretch, let's face it. "They don't know jack about drilling"? How hard can it be? Aim the drill at the ground and turn it on.
• The Danza: William Fichtner as Colonel William "Willy" Sharp.
• Deleted Role: Lawrence Tierney was cast as Harry's father for a scene in which he says goodbye before the mission, but it was cut.
• Directed by Cast Member: In the Latin American Spanish dub, Javier Rivero was the ADR Director and Oscar Choi's voice actor.
• Distanced from Current Events: FX had planned to air it on what happened to be the day the Columbia was destroyed. It was replaced with Aliens.
• Dueling Movies: This film and Deep Impact are, possibly, the Trope Codifiers. Financially speaking, Armageddon won big time while Deep Impact got better reception and was deemed more realistic.
• DVD Commentary: A rather amusing one, wherein Ben Affleck spends a good portion of the time riffing on and making fun of his own movie.
• Executive Meddling: The original script did not include the romantic subplot between A.J. and Grace, and instead had more emphasis on Truman. It was added after the success of Titanic (1997) with teenage girls. Most of the romantic scenes were written by Scott Rosenberg and were filmed late in production.
• Fake Russian: Peter Stormare, from Sweden, portrayed the loony cosmonaut. Of course, considering it's Peter Stormare, whose characters often steal the whole damn movie despite having limited roles, said loony cosmonaut is one of the best characters in the movie.
• Money, Dear Boy:
  • The reason why Billy Bob Thornton was in this movie, which he wasn't shy to admit as soon as his contractual obligation to advertise the movie ended. He did say, however, that he didn't think it was that bad of a movie.
  • When asked why he did the film, Steve Buscemi replied, "I wanted a bigger house".
  • Lawrence Tierney repeatedly turned down the part of Harry's father, until he was offered a substantial pay raise.
• Off-the-Shelf FX: According to Bruce Willis, Cocoa Puffs occasionally stood in for space debris.
• Real-Life Relative: Liv Tyler stars in the film, while her father recorded its monumental pop hit.
• Referenced by...: Dragon Ball Z Abridged referenced the movie in "DBZA: Lord Slug" when an giant asteroid coming towards the planet. Also some Actor Allusion of Steve Buscemi in Reservoir Dogs.
• Shoot the Money: Pay attention to the number of, sometimes gratuitous, shots of helicopters. They were getting the most out of those rentals.
• Similarly Named Works: Incidentally, there's a Hong Kong sci-fi film starring Andy Lau also titled Armageddon, released a year before this one. It's closer to a sci-fi romance film however.
• Spared by the Cut: Demolitions Expert Gruber's death scene is frequently omitted from TV airings of the movie.
• Throw It In!: Michael Clarke Duncan improvised the line, "Come and get Papa Bear!" This later became one of his nicknames.
• Uncredited Role: Lawrence Tierney as Harry's father.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Arnold Schwarzenegger was considered for the role of Harry. This is the second consecutive Bay directed film in which Schwarzenegger was offered one of the lead roles but turned it down, with the other being The Rock (a decision he later regretted). The role went to Bruce Willis because of the aforementioned legal issues between him and Disney.
  • Milla Jovovich, Denise Richards, and Robin Wright were all considered for the role of Grace.
  • Céline Dion was originally asked to sing and record "I Don't Wanna Miss a Thing" but passed on it, leading to Aerosmith to record and sing it instead.

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