49 Fun Facts About Armageddon

Who plays Harry Stamper, the oil driller who leads the mission to the asteroid?

Bruce Willis took the part for about $3 million, far below his usual fee, as the first of three films he owed the studio after an earlier production of his collapsed; The Sixth Sense was the second.

In Armageddon, the asteroid heading for Earth is said to be the size of which US state?

Texas is the size NASA gives its asteroid; the largest potentially hazardous asteroid yet found, 1999 JM8, is only about 7 kilometres across.

Michael Bay directed Armageddon for which producer, his partner on Bad Boys and The Rock?

Jerry Bruckheimer had produced Bay's Bad Boys and The Rock, and on Armageddon he hired the succession of writers who rewrote and polished the script.

Which real space shuttle is destroyed by the meteor shower that opens Armageddon?

Atlantis is torn apart in orbit by the first meteors, which go on to hit New York; NASA then works out that the asteroid behind them will arrive in 18 days.

In Armageddon, what are the two shuttles that carry the drillers to the asteroid called?

Freedom and Independence launch together, but Independence is wrecked by debris on the approach and crashes, leaving Freedom to land 26 miles from the drill site.

What is the mobile drilling vehicle carried by each shuttle in Armageddon called?

Armadillo is the name of both rovers: one is blown into space by a missed gas pocket, taking the driller Max with it, and A.J. arrives in the second to finish the hole.

In Armageddon, what does NASA call the deadline after which splitting the asteroid can no longer save Earth?

Zero Barrier is the point past which both halves would still hit Earth; when drilling falls behind, the president tries to set the bomb off from the ground, which would have wrecked the mission.

In Armageddon, how do the crew choose who stays behind to detonate the bomb by hand?

They draw straws and A.J. gets the short one, but Harry pulls out his air hose, forces him back into the airlock and takes his place, calling him the son he never had.

Which actor plays A.J. Frost, the young driller dating Harry's daughter?

Ben Affleck was cast before Good Will Hunting had even been released, so he was still little known when he landed the romantic lead in what became 1998's biggest film.

What did Armageddon's makers require of the actor playing A.J. Frost before filming began?

Get his teeth capped: the producer said the young actor had 'baby teeth' and had them fixed, and a gym regime, a tan and a haircut were ordered too.

Which future star of The Hangover auditioned for the role of A.J. Frost in Armageddon?

Bradley Cooper was still in graduate school and taped his own audition on a camcorder, reading the other character's lines himself and leaving gaps for his own.

Which veteran actor was originally considered for the role of Harry Stamper in Armageddon?

Sean Connery was the original idea for Harry Stamper, but the director decided on a younger lead after spending time with real oil drillers.

Who plays Grace Stamper, Harry's daughter, in Armageddon?

Liv Tyler's Grace makes her father promise to come home safe with her fiance; he keeps only half of it, and the wedding in the credits has his portrait among the guests.

Which band recorded Armageddon's theme, 'I Don't Want to Miss a Thing'?

Aerosmith, together since 1970, had never had a US number one until this ballad entered the Hot 100 at the top and stayed there for four weeks.

Who wrote 'I Don't Want to Miss a Thing'?

Diane Warren wrote the title down while watching Barbara Walters interview James Brolin, who said he missed Barbra Streisand even when they were asleep; she pictured a singer like Celine Dion performing it.

Which screen legend narrates Armageddon's opening account of the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs?

Charlton Heston's distinctive voice won him late-career work as a narrator: he opens Armageddon with the impact that ended the dinosaurs, a year after opening Disney's Hercules.

Armageddon's theme lost the Best Original Song Oscar to a song from which film?

The Prince of Egypt won with 'When You Believe'; the Armageddon ballad had a second life when Mark Chesnutt's cover topped the country chart in early 1999.

Which other 1998 film about an object hurtling toward Earth reached cinemas two months before Armageddon?

Deep Impact came first; its writer Bruce Joel Rubin said a Disney executive took notes on his script over lunch and then launched Armageddon as a counter-film.

Which city's destruction was added to Armageddon two months before release, to set its ads apart from a rival film?

Paris was added in May 1998, when studio chairman Joe Roth put $3 million more into effects shots so the television campaign would not look like the rival's.

Which arthouse-focused label surprisingly released a director's cut of Armageddon on DVD and LaserDisc?

The Criterion Collection issued it with an essay by Jeanine Basinger, Bay's old professor at Wesleyan, who called it 'a work of art by a cutting-edge artist'.

Which critic named Armageddon the worst film of 1998, 'an assault on the eyes, the ears, the brain, common sense'?

Roger Ebert gave it one star and named it the worst film of 1998, though he had weighed Spice World for the title; his co-host Gene Siskel gave it a thumbs up.

Armageddon lost the Oscar for Best Visual Effects to which Robin Williams film?

What Dreams May Come beat Armageddon and Mighty Joe Young to the award; Armageddon, the top-grossing film of 1998, went home with nothing from its four Oscar nominations.

Which fast-food chain partnered with the studio for Armageddon's tie-in promotion?

McDonald's ran the tie-in; the film was also advertised during Super Bowl XXXII for $2.6 million, and its all-too-real billboards set off a scare in Los Angeles.

Which theme park hosted an Armageddon special-effects attraction from its opening in 2002 until 2019?

Walt Disney Studios, Paris put guests inside the film's Russian space station as it broke apart; the show closed in March 2019 and a Spider-Man ride took its place.

Which actor plays Bear, one of Harry Stamper's drillers, in Armageddon?

Michael Clarke Duncan befriended the film's star on set, and that friendship helped win him the role of John Coffey in The Green Mile and an Oscar nomination.

Which Fargo and Reservoir Dogs actor plays the geologist Rockhound in Armageddon?

Steve Buscemi, known for independent films, became a blockbuster character actor with two parts in a row: the killer Garland Greene in Con Air, then Rockhound.

Which Swedish actor plays the Russian cosmonaut Lev Andropov in Armageddon?

Peter Stormare's Lev escapes his exploding space station with A.J., survives the shuttle crash and rides the rover to the drill site; the Swede has also played a German, an Italian and a Frenchman.

Which actor plays Dan Truman, the NASA chief who recruits Harry Stamper in Armageddon?

Billy Bob Thornton came to the year's biggest blockbuster from Sling Blade, the small independent film he wrote, directed and starred in, which had won him a screenwriting Oscar.

Which future Frat Pack comedian plays the geologist Oscar Choice in Armageddon?

Owen Wilson made Armageddon the same year as the indie drama Permanent Midnight, and his Oscar is among those killed when their shuttle crashes on the asteroid.

Which Oscar-winning script doctor polished Armageddon's script without credit?

Robert Towne, the writer of Chinatown, was one of four uncredited writers, with Paul Attanasio, Ann Biderman and Scott Rosenberg, whom the producer hired in turn for rewrites and polishes after the script was green-lit.

Which future co-creator of Lost shares the screenplay credit on Armageddon?

J. J. Abrams, who later directed two Star Wars films, shares the 'screenplay by' line with Jonathan Hensleigh; a Writers Guild arbitration also gave Tony Gilroy and Shane Salerno a rare 'adaptation by' credit.

Leicester students calculated that Armageddon's bomb would need to be how much stronger than the Tsar Bomba?

A billion times: the physics students worked out that splitting the asteroid so both halves cleared Earth would take 800 trillion terajoules, far beyond any bomb ever built.

What did Armageddon's director tell his young lead when asked why drillers were trained as astronauts, not the reverse?

To shut up, in blunter words, is how the actor recalls it on the DVD commentary: he asked why NASA would not just teach astronauts to drill, and that was the end of that talk.

Which 2022 film did Neil deGrasse Tyson say overtook Armageddon for violating the most laws of physics per minute?

Moonfall took the title when Tyson told Stephen Colbert in 2023 that it had displaced Armageddon, his previous record holder; one offence was a shuttle firing its engines with no fuel tank attached.

After which real event were stills from Armageddon's opening scene passed off as satellite images?

The 2003 Columbia disaster prompted the hoax, which used frames of the film's exploding shuttle; the FX network pulled Armageddon from that evening's schedule and showed Aliens instead.

Which former Yes guitarist composed Armageddon's score?

Trevor Rabin left Yes in 1995 and turned to film scores; Con Air came just before Armageddon, with Remember the Titans and National Treasure to follow.

Which band recorded 'Remember Me' for the Armageddon soundtrack album?

Journey recorded 'Remember Me' as their first song with Steve Augeri, the singer who had just replaced Steve Perry; the album reached shops a week before the film.

As a boy, Armageddon's director Michael Bay blew up which of his toys with firecrackers so he could film it?

A train set: Bay filmed the blaze on his mother's 8mm camera, the fire department was called and he was grounded, a story his old professor retold when defending Armageddon in print.

Armageddon's UK DVD record of about 100,000 copies was beaten later in 1999 by which film?

The Matrix passed it within weeks of release, with 107,000 discs sold and eleven shopping days still to go before Christmas 1999.

In the Bible, the word Armageddon appears only once, in which book?

Revelation 16:16 says only that the kings of the earth are gathered at the place 'called in Hebrew' Armageddon; the verse describes a mustering, and no battle is fought in it.

The word Armageddon comes from the Hebrew for the mountain of which ancient city?

Megiddo, with Hebrew har for 'mountain', gives the name; the hill town stood where a pass opens onto the Jezreel plain, and the word was probably chosen for its fame as a battlefield.

Which king of Judah was killed by Pharaoh Necho at the ancient city that gives Armageddon its name?

Josiah marched out to block the Egyptian army on its way north and was killed there; his servants carried the body home to Jerusalem in a chariot.

In Islamic theology, the end-times battle equivalent to Armageddon is known in Hadith as what?

Al-Malhama Al-Kubra means 'the Greatest Battle', a war foretold in hadith for the end times that comes shortly before the Dajjal, the false messiah, emerges.

After New York is hit in the opening, a later meteor strike on which city makes the asteroid public in Armageddon?

Shanghai is destroyed mid-film and the secret can no longer be kept; both shuttles launch soon after and dock with a Russian space station to refuel.

Which Eddie Murphy film did Armageddon knock off first place?

Dr. Dolittle fell to second as Armageddon took $54.2 million in five days, a softer start than Men in Black's a year earlier; Armageddon still ended 1998 as the top-grossing release worldwide.

Which film knocked Armageddon off the top of the US box office in its second weekend, in July 1998?

Lethal Weapon 4 opened to $34 million as Armageddon slipped to $23.5 million; in Australia it was There's Something About Mary that ended Armageddon's two weekends on top.

At which studio lot in California was Armageddon's principal photography shot?

Filming ran from August 27, 1997 to January 29, 1998, a schedule Bay later called unfair to the movie.

Which future Harry Potter villain plays NASA scientist Ronald Quincy in Armageddon?

Jason Isaacs, later Lucius Malfoy, was first offered a bigger part but took the small role of Quincy so he could also shoot the thriller Divorcing Jack.

Armageddon's star took the film as part of a three-picture deal compensating Disney for which collapsed 1997 project?

Broadway Brawler was shut down twenty days into filming after its star had several of the crew fired; rather than sue, Disney settled for three films at a cut rate.