On paper, the association of actor Bruce Willis and director Michael Bay would seem to be a match made in paradise. From the start of his career, Bay demonstrated an affinity to launch cinema stars with great personalities, and Willis was one of the greatest personalities of the 90s. The particular brand of machismo of the actor serves particularly well Bay’s Rah-Rah Jingism The director’s third feature film, “Armageddon” in 1998. Who else but Willis could make a general public buy the clearly ridiculous premise that the head of the Willis oil drilling company, Harry S. Stamper, and his Foreurs colleagues could receive an accident course in training in training Astronaut in order to manage a mission on an asteroid “planet-killer” headed directly to earth?
In “Armageddon”, as in many Bay films, there are many things that can be criticized; Even the defenders of the film (yours really included) admit that the premise is that which extends the limits of the credulity B-Film, whatever How scientifically it can be. So, even if it is not surprising that Willis was vocally very critical about “Armageddon” in the years that followed the film, his beef has more to do with what not In the film as much as what is, the main problem being many moments of creating characters that Bay has withdrawn from the theatrical cut of the film. Although Willis’s complaint is well founded, there is an prolonged cut of the film’s director which seems to solve this problem – however, you will have to buy a collection DVD of criteria of several decades in order to look at it.
Willis did not like this character sacrificed from the bay for Bayhem
To be clear, Willis has made a lot of complaints over the years concerning “Armageddon” and his experience by doing so. As he said the morning call (via far) At the end of the film in 1998, he thought that the film was “too MTV-Camera Cutty” and that “Billy Bob [Thornton] was underused, “but also talked about the way in which the space combinations that he and the other actors wore in the film had many problems, with Ben Affleck” seen denigrating the front glass on his helmet with a rock because ‘He couldn’t breathe “at one point. They were all big boys and we went through it.”
It was in A 2002 coverage story in the New York TimesAbout a theatrical production of “True West” Willis played in, where the actor developed his problem with “Armageddon” more. In addition to the unpleasant working conditions and the quick cutting style of the bay, Willis was not happy that a large part of his work and others were not included in the release of the film:
“There were so many scenes in” Armageddon “. All the big actor scenes are on the floor of the cut room and were sacrificed for this type of MTV version, the vision of Michael Bay of cinema.
All this “MTV version” montage to which Willis continues to refer, it is his way of describing the “bayhem” cutting style of the signature of Bay, something that was really materialized with “Armageddon” and A only become wilder and more intense in the films he has made since. While the American Bayheads see Bayhem as a functionality and not as a bug, Willis has on the theatrical cup of “Armageddon” sacrificing so much character for the plot and the incident is well taken. The film is so full of things that even at 150 minutes, it feels rushed! Even if Willis May have other reasons not to like “Armageddon”, The reasons he declares seem sufficient for her to leave a bad taste in her mouth.
The Cup of the Director of the Armageddon criteria collection solves some of the Willis problems
One wonders however what Willis thinks of the Bay director of the director of Bay, a version that has so far been available only on the release of the DVD from the Criterion Collection of the Collection of Criteria of the Film. He has certainly seen a part of it, because he was part of the piece of group comments from the exit (you know, the one who has gained notoriety over the years thanks to the non -filtered comments of Affleck on the film). The director’s cut is only three minutes more than the theatrical cut, but this additional time allows Bay to add certain key lines of dialogue and prolonged moments between the characters. Two of the most major additions are the scenes involving Willis himself, one where he and the head of Thornton de la Nasa have a heart to heart, and another where Harry visits his father (played by Lawrence Tierney) before triggering himself on his fateful mission.
It is quite possible that these scenes are some of those that Willis was so disappointed to see lost in the theatrical cup, because the two moments, as short, develop more Harry’s character and the film itself. Harry’s father even provides a line of dialogue that perfectly sums up the emotional theme of the whole film: “God gave us children, so we would have roses in December.” With the push of “Armageddon” being on the way in which the older generation, at its best, makes sacrifices to allow the young generation to survive, this moment and some others help to make the film a much more emotional experience than that The entirely heart of the theatrical and forced cut. Who knows how many additional sequences can still exist (Disney, if you indeed turn off a 4K edition, please put the director’s cup and any other material on the disc!), But the existence of the director’s cup prove and refute the Will. Although it is a pity that the actor and Bay never worked together (imagine Willis in the role of Cade Yeager in “Transformers” Instead of Mark Wahlberg!), we will always have “Armageddon”.