I think I may have gone too far in our Film at 11 podcast this week. I have, on more than a few occasions already, subjected my son Thomas to movies of dubious artistic merit. He’s usually a good sport about that. After watching Michael Bay’s Armageddon, however, the kid looked downright exhausted by the experience. I might have broken his spirit a little with this one.

In my defense, this was not Thomas’ first exposure to so-called “Bayhem.” He’d seen all five of the director’s Transformers movies, some of them more than once. I thought he’d be up for making fun of this nonsense. Unfortunately, because I hadn’t actually sat through Armageddon myself in many years (not since its debut on DVD), I’d forgotten just how punishingly long the movie feels, and how utterly pointless the majority of its scenes are. This may be the most “Michael Bay” of Michael Bay movies, in all the worst ways that could suggest.

I promise, in the next episode I do with Thomas, I’ll try to pick something respectable to watch.

Title:	Armageddon
Year of Release:	1998
Director:	Michael Bay
Watched On:	Amazon Prime Video (rental)
Also Available On:	Blu-ray Various VOD rental and purchase platforms

Video Streaming

I find it hilarious that Armageddon was once part of the Criterion Collection, on both the Laserdisc and DVD formats. Buena Vista Home Entertainment (in other words, Disney) released the movie on Blu-ray in 2010. Needless to say, I don’t own that disc. I swear I saw the title listed for streaming on either Hulu or Disney+ recently, but it’s not on either one currently. I had to pay for a rental , which in this case wound up coming from Amazon Prime Video. The movie’s actually on sale at the moment, and I could have bought a digital version for just over a dollar more than the rental, but having this in my permanent collection really didn’t interest me. I opted to save that buck and stick with the two-day rental.

I assume that the 1080p HD streaming copy comes from the same underlying video master as the Blu-ray. The 2.40:1 image looks adequate enough given its age and the fact that it’s been extra-compressed for streaming. Sharpness and detail are only fair most of the time, but Bay’s tendency to overuse close-ups and push his camera in tight on everything helps keep clarity sufficient. The director also favors boosted contrast and colors. In Armageddon, he especially goes heavy on orange filters in countless scenes, but thankfully this movie was produced before the teal fad in color grading took over. Blues are actually still blue here.

Annoyingly, in Amazon’s streaming copy, all on-screen subtitles have been replaced with Closed Captions in black boxes over the image.

The Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack has tons of surround activity that will zing through every speaker in your room with an upmixer engaged. However, I think the streaming compression has taken a toll on dynamic range. Michael Bay’s movies are famous for their aggressive loudness and booming bass, but even with the volume on my A/V receiver pushed pretty high, low-end rumble was disappointingly mediocre on the copy I watched. Overall fidelity of the track is also a little flat.

I can’t speak to whether the lossless audio on the Blu-ray sounds any better than this.

Related

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