Corrected entry: Gruber is around to help disarm the bomb but doesn't seem to be around to make the trip home.
Correction: Gruber's death from the "asteroid storm" is cut from many networks based on time. This event may have lead to why the nuclear bomb would have to be remotely detonated.
Corrected entry: In the scene where the window of the shuttle breaks and the air force pilot is sucked out we see him get hit by the other shuttle, fully intact. Realistically the rapid change from pressure to no pressure would cause him to blow up like a balloon and explode.
Correction: Bodies do NOT 'blow up and explode' in a vacuum. This is a science fiction myth. The pilot would die within minutes as his body fluids boiled due to zero pressure, and of course he would suffocate. But explode? No.
Corrected entry: In the beginning of the movie, in the scene when the oil well "blows out," pipe starts flying into the air and oil shoots out everywhere. It does not happen like this. When an oil well "blows out" while drilling, the drilling fluid would be the first to come out, followed by the oil. Besides, the crew would shut the blow out 'preventers' long before the fluid would fly out as forceful as in the movie. Also the pipe would not fly out unless no preventive measures were taken. In a subsequent shot, they show one of the roughnecks turning a valve to shut the well in. In real life, the blow out preventers would have to be closed by actuating a hydraulic closure ram.
Correction: They seem to forget that Harry stated the reason he shut down that well was because the blowout preventer was not functioning.
Corrected entry: This movie makes the same mistake several others do about the effects of nuclear explosions. Without an atmosphere, you get a very hot fireball and some radiation. there is no air to create a pressure wave which would blow the asteroid apart. At the most, you have a melted center and maybe the asteroid would collapse on itself if it had enough gravity.
Correction: The explosion of a nuclear bomb is done by the bomb itself, atmosphere can cause additional damage but isn't necessary for a nuclear bomb to work. The energy released by the chain reaction needs to escape and if its stuck in a tiny space it will break free, thus breaking apart the asteroid down its fault. That's why they drilled the hole in the first place.
Corrected entry: Peter Stormare became the first European to be allowed inside NASA, during a cast visit. Although Stormare's character in the film is Russian, the actor is Swedish.
Correction: Totally false. While I was unwilling to spend a lot of time researching this it only took me a matter of seconds at the NASA site to confirm there were 18 Russian cosmonauts on the MIR/NASA project that started in 1989, well before Armageddon began filming.
Corrected entry: As the shuttle comes into land near the end of the movie, everyone got out and went over to their families to hug and kiss them; whilst people in anti-radioactive suits came up to clap them... WHAT.?. Wait firstly, the astronauts have just been on alien grounds. Don't they need to go through some test to make sure they haven't made contact with alien viruses? And secondly, people in these suits don't just come out to clap (although some did go to the shuttle).
Correction: Actually, those suits provide protection from heat - those men are firefighters, not any sort of decontamination crew.
Corrected entry: When we see that AJ and the Russian have survived, we see a sweep through the wreckage of the shuttle. Pieces of wreckage are burning with little, earthly like flames, which are not possible without oxygen.
Corrected entry: I find it highly unlikely that all of those astronauts would have gleaming white teeth.
Correction: I'm not sure that "highly unlikely" would constitute a movie mistake. Highly unlikely still means it's possible in the context of the movie.
Corrected entry: Several NASA officials and space crew throughout the movie refer to distance measured in feet. The fact is that NASA several years ago switched to the metric system. NASA officials and space crew should therefore refer to distances measured in meters (as they do in Independence Day).
Correction: 1) Most of the NASA guys are old-timers. They are not going to stand around doing the mental arithmetic to convert back and forth between the measurements during a crisis situation, they are going to say what comes naturally. 2) The official NASA website is littered with metric and imperial measurements. 3) Aren't these the same guys who lost a Martian Probe because they were working in different units at the same time?
Corrected entry: When Bear is on the asteroid lifting the tubes to drop down the hole he is straining to lift them. Since there's minimal gravity on the asteroid, why is he straining? (01:57:20)
Correction: They still have mass you have to exert to lift. Weight is the force of gravity, but human energy still needs to lift and push mass.
Corrected entry: If "NASA doubles up on everything.", why didn't the nuclear bomb on Independence go off when it crashed? Colonel Sharp stops Stamper from hitting their bomb with a wrench since it would set it off, so why didn't the one on Independence detonate?
Correction: A crash wouldn't set a nuclear bomb off; it takes a very precise set of events to occur for that to happen, which a crash couldn't possibly replicate. Nor, for that matter, would hitting one with a wrench, which Sharp undoubtedly knows, but with the fate of the Earth riding on that bomb, he can't risk Stamper damaging it. The easiest way to ensure that he doesn't do it again is to tell them that it might actually go off. It's not true, but Stamper and his men aren't going to know that.
A better question would be why they couldn't remote detonate the Independence nuke from the ground at the same time they try to activate the Freedom nuke.
Corrected entry: Liv Tyler's real-life dad, frontman of Aerosmith Steven Tyler, wanted to do the song "I Don't Wanna Miss a Thing" especially because his daughter was in the movie.
Correction: I am an Aerosmith freak and I know this is not true. I've seen 2 separate interviews by Steven Tyler and in both he said he did NOT want to record the song because it was too sappy. He only agreed after watching the ending sequence where Liv grabs the screen and says "Daddy" while she is crying. The ironic thing is the song became the first no. 1 hit Aerosmith ever had.
Corrected entry: If the asteroid has a new rotation axis after passing the Moon the drill teams wouldn't have missed their drill sites by just about 20 miles, they would have ended up elsewhere, but not near their landing zone because the landing zones would be elsewhere obviously.
Correction: The rotation may not have been that much, so it wouldn't move very much between the time it passes the Moon and the time they land. Plus, the were probably on computer guidance and the computer would compensate for any rotation. He missed their landing side because he had to pull up to miss a big hunk of the asteroid sticking up. So, he over shot it, not off left or right.
Corrected entry: Considering their space suits are made to measure, where did the Russian get his special anti-zero gravity suit from?
Correction: The suits they use on the asteroid could be universal as we can see two unused suits in the scene when Harry and AJ takes the elevator down for the last time.
Corrected entry: When Rockhound realized that they're not gonna make it, he shoots the gatling gun. Guns need oxygen to produce a spark to fire a bullet, yet they are in space.
Correction: Fires can't burn in the oxygen-free vacuum of space, but guns can shoot. Modern ammunition contains its own oxidizer, a chemical that will trigger the explosion of gunpowder, and thus the firing of a bullet, wherever you are in the universe. No atmospheric oxygen required.
Corrected entry: The shuttles sling-shot around the moon to gain speed. This is a manoeuvre undertaken to save fuel. Nevertheless, we see the shuttles using full after burners on the ride around the moon.
Correction: They don't have time to waste simply allowing gravity to accelerate them, so they combine a gravitational slingshot course with the full acceleration from the engines. Allows them to get up to the required speed faster and using less fuel than using the engines alone, but, given the time pressures that they face, they can't afford to shut the engines down and coast on gravitational acceleration alone.
Corrected entry: When the team lands on the asteroid, one of the team members lets a stream of sand fall from his hand. The sand blows in a slight breeze...
Correction: Considering they said before the shuttles took off the atmosphere would be extremely unpredicable, and that there are explosions going off all around them, it's perfectly reasonable for there to be a "breeze".
Corrected entry: The asteroid is the size of Texas, yet has Earth gravity as shown when pipes are dropped on the ground and don't float at all. The only time there isn't earth gravity is when they need to fly.
Correction: There is gravity on the asteroid, but not the same as Earth. The equipment and astronauts are lighter, just as they would be on the moon, but not light enough for them to simply float away.
Corrected entry: Shortly before Stamper detonates the nuke we see a computer screen at NASA which shows the asteroid nearly at "Zero Barrier". Only 1 minute later, the screen is visible a second time and the two halves of the asteroid are already beyond the tangent where it would have hit earth on a straight flight. Earlier in the movie it is said that it'd take the asteroid about 3 hours and 57 minutes to get from zero barrier to hit earth. So it's impossible for the two halves to be beyond that line. (02:12:45)
Correction: This is far too obvious to be a mistake. There is no indication that thei "1 minute" was in real time. We see the screen with the two halves when the guys at NASA are celebrating. They are only celebrating after they are sure the two halves are clearly going to miss Earth.
Corrected entry: What happens to all the rubble extracted from the hole they dig? There must be tons of the stuff, but there's no sign of it...
Correction: The dirt and rocks are being ejected from the hole with enough force for it to keep flying upward in the microgravity. After all the characters need special jetpacks just to make sure the force of their footsteps doesnt throw them off the asteroid.
Correction: Gruber is killed during the 'asteroid storm' shortly after the disarming of the bomb.
XIII