11 Sci-Fi Movies That Got Science Completely Wrong
3. Armageddon – Were They Even Watching The Sky?
Discovering an asteroid the size of Texas just 18 days before it hit the Earth? What exactly were the world's astronomers doing in the months (or years) leading up the events of the movie?
1998 sci-fi disaster movie Armageddon is hopelessly riddled with plot holes.
Aside from the obvious "why not just teach astronauts to drill?", the biggest plot hole is actually one that would preempt the entire movie.
Armageddon tells the story of a drilling crew sent into space in order to break up a massive asteroid on a collision course with Earth.
The movie opens with NASA discovering the "Texas-sized asteroid" just 18 days before its projected impact, which would wipe out all life on Earth.
The truth of the matter is, an asteroid that big would have been visible for months, if not years, so what exactly were all of Earth's astronomers doing in that time? It's a little hard to believe that they were all looking elsewhere.
It's an error so large that not only does it make the plot seem suddenly ridiculous, but it negates all of Armageddon's emotional weight, too. It's really hard to care who might die saving the Earth when you know that if just one single astronomer looked into the sky it all could have been avoided.