The movie that never fails to make Michael B Jordan cry: “Gets me every time”
Michael B Jordan’s passion for filmmaking isn’t limited to just one type of genre.
Jordan is one of the few bona fide movie stars to have emerged in the past few years and has become an actor willing to take considerable chances. While Jordan just recently picked up the first Academy Award nomination of his career for Sinners, his success at the box office hasn’t ever been in question.
It may be easy to suggest that “blockbuster” films aimed at general audiences don’t have the same artistic merit as those that play exclusively to awards voters, but Jordan has consistently worked to satisfy both sets of viewers. Within his collaborations with director Ryan Coogler, Jordan made Sinners, Creed, and two Black Panther films, all of which acquired significant Oscar buzz and were resounding financial successes.
As Jordan proved when he made his directorial debut with Creed III, there’s power in telling the sort of exciting, rousing story that can get an audience engaged when they see it on the big screen. It should thus come as no surprise that Jordan named one of the ‘90s most prominent blockbusters as the film he had the strongest emotional response to.
“Armageddon gets me every time,” Jordan said. “I dropped tears in Armageddon big-time.”
Michael Bay has never been a filmmaker who has courted positive marks from critics, but it’s never prevented his films from being resounding successes with viewers. Armageddon is a movie that is easy to pick apart for its illogical premise, cheesy acting, and emotionally manipulative moments, but the willingness to embrace its ludicrous components is part of what makes watching it so fun.
Armageddon might be a spectacle-driven film that was marketed on its disaster scenes and outer space adventure, but its closing includes a surprisingly emotional moment that left many steel-hearted viewers in tears, including Jordan. In order to ensure that the asteroid shooting towards Earth will be properly destroyed, the oil driller Harry (Bruce Willis) stays behind and sacrifices himself in a heroic moment.
Willis’ earnest performance is a big reason why the scene works so well, but it’s also a result of the reaction of his co-stars; Harry is allowed to speak with his daughter Grace (Liv Tyler) over the radio one last time, and finally gives her fiancé, AJ (Ben Affleck), his permission to marry her. Although Harry and AJ had been at odds with one another for the entire film, Willis’ character is finally able to admit to Affleck’s sidekick that he is the son that he never had.
Perhaps the sheer fun of Armageddon’s early section disarmed viewers so that they weren’t expecting something so powerful at the end, but the film also had a screenwriting component that was lacking in Bay’s other films. The script for Armageddon was co-written by JJ Abrams, who, despite being frequently criticised, has shown an ability to create tender moments between characters in desperate situations.
Armageddon is the rare film that survived unanimously negative press to become a bona fide classic, and clearly didn’t damage the industry’s standards in the way that some of its nastier reviews suggested; if it was in any way responsible for getting someone like Jordan interested in both acting and filmmaking, Armageddon should be viewed as nothing but a triumph.
