The Legacy of
Armageddon for Me

Did you know that critics hated the 1998 sci-fi classic, Armageddon? The movie was a commercial hit, but critics' reviews ranged from mixed to downright negative. Roger Ebert, the legendary film critic, even put it on his list of most-hated films. It also earned seven Razzie nominations, which further shows how much they hated it.

This is ironic because the movie earned four Oscar nominations, too, most famously for its original song, Aerosmith’s “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing.” So all this is to say the jury is still out on whether Armageddon is actually good.

Personally, I loved it. I even liked the bad things critics hated about it. Sure, the science is absurd, Michael Bay's editing was frantic, and maybe it should've been shorter, but I don't care. I always have a good time watching it.

I'm also gonna admit I loved the melodrama. I agree with some that the movie gets corny at times, but I fall for it every time. The movie never fails to make me cry when Harry Stamper sacrifices himself so the rest of the crew can get back to Earth.

If anything, I think the cast was the best part. I especially loved Bruce Willis in it, and I consider it his second-best film, only after Die Hard. And it's ironic because he actually won the Razzie Award for Worst Actor of 1998 for it, along with two other films he made that year. The rest of the world clearly disagrees.

But I don't care! I loved the movie enough to track down the cast for autographs on my Armageddon movie poster. It started when I saw Willis, who has since stepped away from acting, star in the stage adaptation of Stephen King's Misery on Broadway in November 2015. I brought the poster that night and got him to sign it at the stage door afterward.

A few months later, I went to the New York premiere of Batman v Superman and finally got Ben Affleck's autograph on the same poster. He was pretty nice about it considering it was at an official event for his latest movie.

At the 2017 Golden Globes, I met Billy Bob Thornton, who won Best Actor in a TV drama for Goliath, his Amazon legal drama at the time. Like Affleck, he wasn't annoyed that I asked him to sign the poster of a movie he made almost 20 years before.

Over the next few years, I met the rest of the cast and got them to sign the same poster. I don't remember the exact year, but I will never forget seeing Liv Tyler at an event during New York Fashion Week. Everyone was screaming for her, fans and photographers alike, yet she still heard me call out to her.

Say what you want about this movie, the cast were very nice people when I met them. I'm sure they don't have great memories of it, with all the bad reviews and all, but they were good sports when I asked them to sign the movie poster. I hope they knew how sincere I was when I said that it's one of my favorite movies of all time.