10 Most Annoying Movie Plot Holes Ever
4. Armageddon- NASA Really Isn’t That Stupid
Ben Affleck’s commentary on this 1998 sci-fi click says it all. He claims that he raised the point that it would be much easier to train astronauts to work a drill than it would be to train oil drillers to be astronauts, a point which Michael Bay did not take to very kindly.
Basically the plot is that a giant asteroid is due to impact Earth in 18 days and wipe out all humanity, so NASA wants to send some drillers to put a big hole in it to insert a nuclear weapon and blow the stray projectile to pieces. Simple enough, right?
This high-stakes situation would call for immediate, calculated action. So why the hell would they think to use drillers with no astronaut experience? The drilling crew have to go through 12 days of training, which instantly takes over 60% of the very narrow survival window out of the equation for drilling.
Surely you would take a trained crew, spend a couple of days teaching them how to drill and then send them out to complete the mission. Not only would it leave you more time in space to allow for mistakes and unexpected calamities, but it would reduce the overall risk of said calamities in the first place!