Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Armageddon

My movie review for Armageddon

Movie Genre: Action-Adventure

Grade: A+, by Matthew Felsted

It is a catastrophic emergency that brings the main characters together in the film Armageddon. They are united in an urgent quest to save the world. A shower of meteorites alerts the world in an instant of the presence of an impending threat. Instantly, the vast destruction of the fore running shower alerts local authorities, where the news rapidly proceeds to climb up to the Pentagon, confirmed by the Navy, and disseminated through out the entire world by the press. The leadership theme is characterized by strict and formal military authority once it has reached the Pentagon, where a quick judgement call rules out the possibility of a hostile attack, delegates information and shares authority with Nasa. As a contrast from the formal and strict authority of the Pentagon, Nasa orders it’s organizational power on expertise.
The crisis proved to be a threat so great that it is believed an impact from the main asteroid would eradicate virtually all life on Earth. To discover how to deal with the threat the primary expert at Nasa called a meeting of the most gifted astrophysicists and they each took turns speaking and presenting ideas until finally one man spoke up and suggested drilling a hole in to the asteroid and detonating a nuke to split it and divert the resulting debris from Earth.

The main characters are all “rough necks”, oil rig field workers that handle drilling operations in all major environments. They were hand selected by the experts at Nasa.
The main characters do not exercise their true leadership roles and responsibilities until they are put in a rocket and sent up towards the asteroid.
Five main themes are present in the film. After reflecting on the themes, I have narrowed the prevalent ones down to the following: the Achiever, the Activator, Analytical, Command, and Maximizer. Each major player in the film is selected as part of an elite group, with nearly all of them having the Achiever theme. A select few key members serve as the Activators, the main expert at Nasa that gets everyone started and working together, and also Harry Stamper, the boss of the rough necks. The Analytical crew includes the astrophysicist that comes up with the solution to drill into the asteroid, and one of the unusual members of the rough neck group. The member is an MIT grad, that received a double doctorate (according to him) by the age of 22, and has an unusually high IQ. Again, Harry Stamper is in the Command theme, and the overall space agency is has a bent towards the Maximizer theme of leadership. They thoroughly searched all around the world to find the top experts, and then maximized their talents through accelerated and rigorous training.
To quickly review the dominant themes presented in the movie: The Achiever (mit grad genius, Nasa board of experts all graduated top of class), Activator (main expert, the boss), Analytical (Mit Grad), Achiever theme Command (Harry Stamper), and Maximizer.



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