If You Thought "Armageddon" Was a Bad Movie

[Gangster_Octopus]

Armegeddon could have been so much better.

[RickJay]

@Baldwin

I blame “Star Trek”. I think they did a lot to popularize the habit of just making up impossible astronomical events or objects as plot devices. And there are plenty of interesting disasters that really happen in space that could be used. Somebody should make a movie about a gamma burst. That’s scary stuff.

Boy, that would be an exciting movie.

EXT. - SPACE

A huge red star, seen from just behind an alien planet, explodes in a blinding flash of light. As the light subsides, a shock wave blows the planet to smithereens.

INT - AN OBSERVATORY

Two astronomers are talking.

SMITH

Say, Jim, Star x18363 looks different. Could we be about to witness anearby supernova?

WILLIAMS

I sure hope not.

EXT. - NEW YORK CITY - EVENING

Seen from the ground, a star suddenly lights up in the sky.

Everyone drops to the ground, dead.
THE END

[Bryan_Ekers]

@Christopher

I must object to the Armagedon bashing. The second I saw that NASA scientist walking around the model of the earth with two space shuttles on a stick, I recognied comedy gold.

When they laid out their plan to spin the shuttles around the moon and come up behind the asteroid, I leaned over to a buddy and said “Then they’ll flash their lights at the asteroid and hope it pulls over.”

[msmith537]

@Omi no Kami

See, the tragic thing is that they could’ve taken a lot of the stupid out of their premise with just a little more suspension of disbelief: instead of having a dwarf star rearend the moon, just say “After a shuttle mission returns with what they suspect is an alien artifact, strange disasters begin happening on Earth”.

So did you actually see the movie “Supernova”?

@Christopher

I must object to the Armagedon bashing. The second I saw that NASA scientist walking around the model of the earth with two space shuttles on a stick, I recognied comedy gold.

Let’s keep the laughing to a minimum. I know it’s not to scale.

Also, “Armageddon” was a great action movie. Ok, so Carl Seagan didn’t consult on the astrophysics of it. But it has all the elements one would want in the live action cartoon that is a Michael Bay film. If there was a Fujita scale for awesomeness in disaster films, Armageddon would be around a 4 or 5.
The Core sucked balls because everyone involved in it, in fact, suck balls.

[OtakuLoki]

I see that the Ground Level Liquid Stupid is on the move, and has contaminated the drinking water of the LA Basin.

[Anne_Neville]

@RickJay

Boy, that would be an exciting movie.

EXT. - SPACE

A huge red star, seen from just behind an alien planet, explodes in a blinding flash of light. As the light subsides, a shock wave blows the planet to smithereens.

INT - AN OBSERVATORY

Two astronomers are talking.

SMITH

Say, Jim, Star x18363 looks different. Could we be about to witness anearby supernova?

WILLIAMS

I sure hope not.

EXT. - NEW YORK CITY - EVENING

Seen from the ground, a star suddenly lights up in the sky.

Everyone drops to the ground, dead.
THE END

That’s the problem with real disasters like gamma-ray bursts and comet/asteroid impacts. It’s hard to get a movie out of them where something interesting happens but everybody doesn’t die by the end…

@OtakuLoki

I see that the Ground Level Liquid Stupid is on the move, and has contaminated the drinking water of the LA Basin.

Nah, the LA Basin is the original source of the Ground Level Liquid Stupid. I say this as someone who used to live in the SF Bay Area.