25 years of Armageddon, a film more personal than it seems for Michael Bay

The conflicted father-daughter relationship between Liv Tyler and Bruce Willis is inspired by his own experience as an adopted child, never recognized by his dad.

Armageddon celebrates its 25th anniversary on August 5, 2023. Its eventful production, and deserves to be detailed: during the summer of 2015, First had celebrated 40 years of blockbusters by writing about the creation of a large summer production per year since the release of the Sea teeth, in 1975. For the year 1998, it is this catastrophe film of Michael Bay which had been chosen. Flashback.

Honest Armageddon Trailer: “Everything Goes Boom, Even The Movie Title”

In 1998, i.e. three years after his first feature film bad boys, Michael Bay enjoys astronomical credit in Hollywood. Thanks to his mentor the producer Jerry Bruckheimer (who will produce his first five films), he is considered the wonder boy who knows the magic formula to please the public. He has an undeniable sense of direction that he seasons with a personal touch based on large-scale destruction, student humor and, incidentally, surface patriotism. Since you can’t please everyone, he is quickly targeted as representing all that is excessive, immature and detestable in Hollywood.

In fact, Bay is a direct and rambunctious heir to Spielberg (who would later produce him). Like his model, he can be considered an author who leaves personal touches from film to film. Among these, one of his enduring obsessions is the conflicting relationship of children with their parents (and especially their fathers), which refers directly to his own experience: Bay was adopted shortly after his birth, and as soon as he was old enough to do so, he went in search of his biological parents, without ever finding his father. At one point, he believed he had identified him in the person of John Frankenheimerbut genetic tests have scientifically denied the hypothesis.

In Armageddon, Liv Tyler is a version of this recurring girl figure who blames her father for his absence or neglect. On this occasion, Bay treats the character of the father with notable indulgence, since, in the guise of Bruce Willis, Harry redeems all his faults by sacrificing himself (to save the earth). Of course, this family quarrel may seem secondary in a film that destroys New York, Shanghai and Paris, but when we find variations of it in the author’s other films, we cannot ignore its importance.

In one of Rock’s most memorable scenes, Claire Forlani finds his father (played by Sean Connery) and tries to forgive her for abandoning her when her mother died. Here again, we sense a desire for reconciliation between the father and his daughter, but the situation will take a hostile turn in The IslandOr Ewan McGregor And Scarlett Johansson are children without parents who confront their surrogate father, the man responsible for their existence (Sean Beanwho starred in Ronin of John Frankenheimer).

After The Island, Bay seemed resigned to making peace with a father he would never know in his lifetime. Finally, until the release ofAmbulancein 2022, and his duo of adopted brothers formed by Jake Gyllenhaal and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, who were raised together but have two opposing visions of life, who will collide the day a bank robbery goes wrong .

Ambulance: Michael Bay signs a supersonic and overexciting B series (review)

Armageddon is typically a turn-of-the-millennium film, programmed to exploit the fears associated with the approach of the year 2000. It was produced around the same time as Deep Impact (which had a similar plot), but made more money: 201 million compared to 140. At the time of its release, it was Disney’s highest-grossing live-action film.

Gerard Delorme

Trailer ofArmageddon :

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