Guest blogger Red Beard writes:
I left the humidity of Washington, DC yesterday to return to the beautiful weather of Southern California. (Sadly I left the even more beautiful future Mrs. Red Beard….sigh).
On a lot of flights that across the country, there is inflight entertainment. In the case of Delta, there are small TV screens in the back of the seat in front of you. It may be the same in other airlines, but I’ve only been flying Delta lately. When I turned on my little TV I found the FX channel and Armageddon was just beginning.
Remember when you were a kid and you thought Michael Bay was awesome? There was Bad Boys, then The Rock and finally Armageddon. There were in many ways the holy trinity of action films for teenagers in the mid to late 90s. When you’re 15, as I was, Michael was a badass. (Little known fact, Michael Bay is actually a pretty good photographer on his own.)
Bay does slow motion in a way that most filmmakers envy. He has a great style and knows how to make an action film. I’m not going to lie, I still like all three of those movies.
As you grew up his movies got worse and worse. There was Pearl Harbor, Bad Boys II, The Island, Transformers and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. All sucked. And Michael Bay has become a joke to most movie lovers. Sure he has made nearly a billion dollars with the Transformers franchise, but money does not make a movie good.
So on my flight, I was pretty excited to see Armageddon. It had been at least 10 years since I’d watched it beginning to end. So I strapped in, literally, for the ride. Not surprisingly, the film holds up, except for Bruce’s southern accent. Which is all anyone can really ask for when they make a movie. There’s nothing worse than rewatching a film from your childhood and realizing what a piece of shit it was, and that you’re an idiot for having liked it. (Dolph Lundgren’s The Punisher anyone?)
In Armageddon, during the scene where the Independence and Freedom shuttles are trying to land on the asteroid, my flight all of a sudden got a little bumpy. Then just as the Independence is crashing my flight got extremely bumpy. This quickly became the scariest flight I’d been on. The flight attendant was in the aisle a few seats up from me. The plane starts shaking. She grabs the seats beside and starts screaming, “Everyone put on your seat belts, now!” Meanwhile, I got Bruce Willis yelling in my ears about the Independence. Back to the flight attendant who’s swinging all over the place. She hits some dude in the face with her butt. Still the Independence is going down, and it doesn’t look too good for Freedom either. Then Steve Buscemi’s terrified face pops up and I fear that I have the same face as him at this moment.
I look out the window and it’s cloudy and dark. I’m extremely nervous. I’m holding tightly onto the arms of my seat. Then the Independence crashes on the surface in flames. It looks like no one could have lived. Right after that, Freedom crashes on the surface of the asteroid and a few moments later my flight is smooth again. Everything’s fine. Me, the lady beside me, Will Patton, Willis and the flight attendant all let out a sigh of relief.
I shit you not, this really happened. I was freaking out. It added a whole new dimension to Armageddon. Something I never expected. So I decided 3D is for wimps. The real excitement is watching a space movie about the end of the world in an environment where you feel like you might actually die.
Imagine watching Top Gun or The Right Stuff in a pitch-black movie theater in the sky. We could have special airplanes that allow no light in. A big screen at the front of the cabin, everyone strapped in, and a crazy pilot at the controls mimicking the action on screen. Now come on, you have to admit, that’d be pretty amazing, and scary as all hell.
How many of you would watch a movie like that?
Red Beard is a screenwriter, founder of, and contributor to WeHaveBeards.com, a blog about movies, TV, literature, music, and food—basically all the important things in life. You can also visit his Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/WeHaveBeards.