First let me say, this is not a good movie. This is a movie you put on when you’re snuggled up with a long-term significant other and a crappy bottle of wine and are in the mood to obnoxiously comment on everything wrong with a movie. You will have plenty of material in this film. Like how tow trucks have plenty of work in a snow storm. But more. In case you haven’t seen it, I’ll explain the basic premise. Essentially, there is an asteroid hurtling towards Earth, and the best idea America’s brightest could come up with is to nuke it (obviously). But not just a regular shoot-a-nuke-into-space operation. No, no. We have to nuke it from the inside. Because of course we do.
So they think, we need some people who can really drill … then we can just teach them to be astronauts in a few days. Because teaching astronauts how to drill would have been too hard. Because drilling, according to Bruce Willis’ character, Harry, is an art, that can’t just be taught to regular, run of the mill, joe-shmoe astronauts in a few days. No. We need some real, experienced drillers on this mission. And that’s basically the premise. Send a bunch of guys up into space, onto an asteroid, so that they can drill a great big hole in it and pop a nuke down the hole, thus saving humanity, etc. There’s also a romantic subplot that no one cares about, but I won’t bother telling you about that because you really, really won’t care.
Happily, one of the dumbest parts of the movie actually involves an off-road vehicle. And I’m talking real off-road. This is some all-terrain nonsense at its best. It’s called the Armadillo (I guess after the adorably-armoured mammal), and it was created especially for the movie (because no one but Michael Bay could possibly come up with this). Basically it’s a big, tank-looking thing with like twelve wheels, and it contains (or is or has attached) a seriously powerful drill. You know, the one that’s going to drill through the asteroid so we can get the nuke into it. So anyway, there are two of these things on the asteroid, because two teams were sent up just in case something less-than-great befell one of them. Inevitably, this happens, and Bruce Willis’ team thinks that they’ve lost the other team. But Ben Affleck is on that other team, so we know they’ll be fine.
Bruce Willis’ team does land on the asteroid, but they overshoot their landing zone, like idiots, and end up on a super hard substance and, long story short, end up blowing up their Armadillo and one of their own guys in the process. But just when we think all is lost, over a space ridge comes Ben Affleck and what remains of the other team! (Owen Wilson didn’t make it.) The audience has just watched this shuttle launch itself over a canyon and essentially fly over what should have been an impassable chasm, defying all odds, and probably the laws of physics. Spoiler alert, Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck save the world. Yippee kai yay.
(Forgive the quality of this, but it’s the only footage I could find of the jump, and I just think you need to see it.)