Product Description

From the blockbuster-making team who produced and directed PEARL HARBOR and THE ROCK (Jerry Bruckheimer and Michael Bay) comes the biggest movie of 1998 -- ARMAGEDDON! Starring the explosive talents of Bruce Willis (DIE HARD), Academy Award(R)-winners Ben Affleck (GOOD WILL HUNTING) and Billy Bob Thornton (SLING BLADE), Liv Tyler (INVENTING THE ABBOTTS), Steve Buscemi (CON AIR), and Will Patton (INVENTING THE ABBOTTS), ARMAGEDDON is a meteor storm of action-adventure moviemaking that has you on the edge of your seat forgetting to breathe! When NASA's executive director, Dan Truman (Thornton), realizes the Earth has 18 days before it's obliterated by a meteor the size of Texas, he has only one option -- land a ragtag team of roughneck oil drillers on the asteroid and drop a nuclear warhead into its core. Spectacular special effects, laugh-out-loud humor, great characters, riveting storytelling, and heartfelt emotion make ARMAGEDDON an exhilarating thrill ride you'll want to experience like there's no tomorrow.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1990 in DVD
• Brand: Disney
• Released on: 1999-01-05
• Rating: Unrated
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Formats: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Widescreen
• Original language: English, Spanish
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 150 minutes

Customer Reviews

No anamorphic version? For shame!
Although I think the movie is an over-loud, completely illogical and fairly disorienting piece of Hollywood claptrap, as far as big Summer blockbusters go it's hard to beat Armageddon. But I wanted to add a large, hairy and potentially sales-limiting aside to all the other reviews. If you're upgrading to a widescreen TV thinking this DVD will showcase the new technological wonders of prograssive scan and 16x9 flat screens you'll be sorely disappointed when you find that there is no anamorphic version on this disc. That's right, friends, even with all the other extras, they couldn't be bothered to include the one feature that truly showcases the cinematography and special effects (which are, let's face it, this film's halmarks cuz it sure ain't the acting and script). On a widescreen TV, Criterion's Armageddon provides black bars above, below and side to side yielding a postcard view of the "big screen" action.

Excellent collection of material
The Criterion Collection release of Armageddon is a treat. It offers 2 commentary tracks, one featuring the director Michael Bay, actors Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck. Producer Jerry Bruckheimer has comments on several interesting things. Affleck's commentary is sometimes very funny. The other commentary track features the Director of Photography and special effects people.

The commentary includes interesting details, including background information on the characters and filming locations. Note: The commentary is raw and sometimes laced with profanity, although the movie itself is rated PG-13, for reasons explained in the commentary.

Although it's not much, this collection is also a Director's Cut and has a couple scenes added, notable of which is Harry Stamper's character visiting his father before launch. Some other scenes are cut slightly differently, adding some depth to the story.

The Gag reel on the second disk is extremely funny, raw, and not your typical "behind-the-scenes" documentary.

The second disk also features a tremendous amount of information on the special effects and includes many different trailers and promo material. The Aerosmith song video is also included.

While the story can be nit-picked, it's still very exciting and enjoyable.

Overall, if you liked the movie, the Criterion Collection release is the DVD to have.

an incredible release by Criterion
This review is for the Criterion Collection DVD edition of the film.

This is the largest packed special features release by criterion to date at the time of release. Being the case, both the film and the special features will be reviewed.

The film is about Earth being threatened by an asteroid that would cause the end of every life on Earth. There are some opening scenes of a metoer shower over New York City.

Chapter 3 on the DVD is one that some may want to skip. There are two scenes that may hit too close to home for some people. In one scene, a meteor is shown hitting the World Trade Center, and in another scene shows the World Trade Center with the top ¼ of one of the towers destroyed and the rest of it on fire.

The film has good acting with an all-star cast. The movie has some excellent special effects. The film has many errors though. there are too many to mention in less than 1,000 words.

The Criterion edition is a director's cut with scenes not shown in theaters.

The special features are really good. There are 2 discs in this set one of which only has special features. Disc 1 has TWO aduio commentaries. One is with director Michael Bay, actors Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck, and producer Jerry Bruckheimer. The other is with cinematographer John Schwartzman and two scientific consultants. one from Nasa and the other an asteroid expert.

On disc two, there are deleted scenes, outtakes and blooper reel, (You may want to note that the blooper reel contains profanity rarely heard even in some R rated films and will offend some people.), Storyboard images, analysis of Visual effects and production design, Trailers and TV spots, and the music video of the song "Don't want to miss a thing" by Diane Warren and performed by Aerosmith.

Overall this is high quality and is one of the more well-known films that have been given the Criterion treatment.