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Armageddon (view source)

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The plot: a peaceful summer afternoon in [[Big Applesauce|New York City]] is disturbed by meteorites falling, destroying all the recognizable buildings and [[What Measure Is a Mook?|killing a bunch of characters we're not supposed to care about]]. [[NASA]] reveals they're the pebbles before the boulder -- a meteor ''the size of Texas'' is going to hit Earth, and nothing, not even bacteria, will survive. The big brains at NASA have come up with a plan to save the world, but it takes experts to pull it off!
 
Or does it? Apparently, although NASA has yoinked the patents on drilling machines, even their [[This Ain't Rocket Surgery|rocket scientists couldn't put them together or operate them right]]. So NASA had to call in its creator -- [[Full-Name Basis|Harry Stamper]], the oil rig operator. Harry brings his daughter Grace with him, because he disapproves of her romance with rebellious hotshot AJA.J., whom Harry fired for having "hunches". On hearing what's at stake, Harry agrees to go up and do the job himself, but not without his own team. NASA has to seek out Harry's gang of lawbreaking ne'er-do-wells and get them ''trained in two weeks'' to go up to drill the meteor and break it into two pieces that will miss the Earth, or everyone dies.
 
If you want "Armageddon" in the Biblical way, see [[The End of the World as We Know It]]. If you wanted the [[Web Original]] story "Armageddon???", see [[The Salvation War]].
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{{quote|"You know, A.J., [[Exact Words|there's not a job on the planet]] that [[Teeth-Clenched Teamwork|I want you to work with me on.]]"}}
* [[Award Bait Song]]: Aerosmith's "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing" and "Leaving on a Jet Plane".
* [[Big Damn Heroes]]: {{spoiler|AJA.J., Bear and the Russian arrive in the second Armadillo just minutes after the first one gets thrown into space by a gas pocket}}.
* [[Bittersweet Ending]]: The world is saved. Grace and AJA.J. get married, and large photos of all the roughnecks who died on the mission, in their mission suits, are placed where they would've stood in the wedding party.
** The world is saved, but New York, Paris and Shanghai need some serious cleaning up (of ''course'', those things couldn't have landed, like, in the Rub Al-Khali or the Saharan Desert...).
*** They probably did, given the dispersal we're shown ''via'' the scientists' brainstorming sessions/computer screens, but watching empty deserts get hit by giant space rocks is [[Rule of Cool|much less exciting]].
* [[Brick Joke]]: After Rockhound is selected for the mission, we see him receiving a huge amount of cash from a loan shark. Later, he mentions offhandedly that he's not looking forward to returning safely to Earth because he blew it all on a stripper named Molly Mounds. The real payoff comes at the end, though, when Miss Mounds (who is [[Gag Boobs|well-named]]) [[The Glomp|greets]] Rockhound as he comes off the shuttle.
* [[But What About the Astronauts?]]: Subverted. Several of the "pebbles" hit a space shuttle and makes it explode, killing the people on board.
* [[Colonel Badass]]: thisThis trope welcomes Colonel Sharp (William Fichtner) and Colonel Lev Andropov (Peter Stormare) to its ranks.
* [[Colony Drop]]: Really big effing meteor.
** Interesting to note how similar the thing looks to the [[Mobile Suit Gundam|Asteroid Axis from the]] [[Trope Namer]]. Of course, that one's bizarre, spiny shape was due to having been carved up for minerals by space miners, while the one here has no excuse other than [[Rule of Cool]].
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{{quote|''"OK, say you do succeed in blowing up an asteroid the size of Texas. What if a piece the size of Dallas is left? Wouldn't that be big enough to destroy life on Earth? What about a piece the size of Austin? Let's face it: Even an object the size of that big Wal-Mart outside Abilene would pretty much clean us out, if you count the parking lot."''}}
** He's not far off. An asteroid the size of a house would destroy the better part of a city. If it's as big as a 20-story office building, it could wipe out an entire city and all its suburbs. A rock [http://science.howstuffworks.com/nature/natural-disasters/asteroid-hits-earth.htm one mile wide] would cause a mass extinction; a rock six miles wide wiped out the dinosaurs.
* [[Disaster Movie]]: natchNatch.
* [[Drop What You Are Doing]]: Chick's wife drops the phone she's on when she discovers {{spoiler|Chick is on the team to go try to destroy the asteroid}}.
* [[Eagle Land]]
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* [[Hollywood Science]]
* [[Homage]]: Internal, on a crazed Rockhound's part, to ''[[Dr. Strangelove]]''.
* [[Infant Immortality]]: kindKind of. It's a small dog who survives the opening destruction scenes, rather than a child.
** On the other side, they did show kids playing in Paris and Shanghai before these cities fell to [[Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies]]...
* [[Inkblot Test]]: to see if the roughnecks are capable of dealing with space travel.
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* [[In Space Everyone Can See Your Face]]
* [[Laughing Mad]]: After Rockhound goes quite nutty in space, Rockhound, during the dig, ends up utilizing a Gatling gun and starts shooting indiscriminately while laughing.
* [[Manly Tears]]: shedShed by AJA.J. and by most of the surviving roughnecks during Harry's big speech.
* [[Mathematician's Answer]]: In some markets, this film was advertised as starring "Oscar winners Ben Affleck and Billy Bob Thornton." While it is true that both these men won Oscars, neither of them won for acting.
* [[Melodrama]]: This isn't meant to win awards, so it doesn't try.
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* [[Redshirt Army]]: The other astronaut team {{spoiler|gets killed when their shuttle is hit by meteors. They never even make it to the asteroid}}.
* [[Riding the Bomb]]: See [[Homage]] above.
* [[Ridiculously-Fast Construction]]: The time Harry goes to NASA and accepts the mission (roughly one or two days), his crew spreads around the world, and AJA.J. even starts his own oil company.
* [[Rule of Cool]]
* [[Sanity Slippage]]: Rockhound ends up losing some of his sanity while undergoing the mission, eventually cumulating in him using a gatling gun to to shoot everything in sight.
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** Also justified in that they weren't trying to disable the bomb, as they still needed to use it. They just needed to disable the activated timer and stop the Pentagon ordered launch. It's also unclear if cutting the wrong wire would cause the bomb to detonate, or if it just wouldn't stop the countdown.
* [[With This Ring]]: Rockhound puts the mack on a hot blonde in a bar by informing her her shiny new engagement/wedding ring is not a real diamond.
** AJA.J. puts a dinky little ring on Grace after she accepts his proposal. You'd think that a skilled oil rig worker could afford a better ring, but considering his relationship with Harry, he may have [[George Jetson Job Security]].
* [[You Keep Using That Word]]: The title of the film ''Armageddon'' is actually incorrect, as the word refers to a place or a battle AT that place. A better title for the movie would've been ''Giant [[Good Name for A Rock Band|Rock Apocalypse]]''.
** Which, as pointed out above, also doesn't "the end of the world" as commonly thought, but "unveiling".
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