Years ago, at the first Dixon Dinner I attended, I actually disputed Chuck’s assertion that Armageddon was a better movie than Deep Impact (with both of us agreeing that the two films were awful, but which was better?).

Deep Impact wasn’t an action movie the way Armageddon was, but I felt a much deeper connection to the characters. Let me amend that: I felt a deeper connection to all characters aside from the main one, the MSNBC reporter played by Téa Leoni. Téa seems absolutely incapable of playing a likeable character, which was the downfall of the otherwise-wonderful James L. Brooks film Spanglish. I mean, I hate movies that try to justify infidelity, but this was the first movie where the wife was so unredeemably unlikeable and the alternative of dumping her seemed like a better life for all concerned that I cursed Adam Sandler’s character’s choice. But otherwise, I connected with Deep Impact and felt it played out as a realistic drama.

Armageddon, meanwhile, was a hyperkinetic eyesore filled with derivative characters, unnecessary constant action and predictable plot points, interspersed with mawkish, symbolic slo-mo scenes of Americana filmed like a Kodak commercial. Michael Bay does those so well. Remember Pearl Harbor’s trailer, with girls wearing angel wings running past Santa Claus, Boy Scouts hiking, kids playing baseball and a woman hanging laundry (I can’t believe he didn’t choose to have her setting out a pie on a windowsill) just before the Japanese arrive to blow the harbor to Hell? By the end of this movie, when kids are running around in a red wagon with cardboard pieces to make it look like a space shuttle in total hero worship of the guys who just saved the planet, I swore an oath to someday hunt down Michael Bay.

It’s in the works. I’m biding my time.

Because Deep Impact is a drama, it has a clear feeling of tragedy. Armageddon, meanwhile, never pauses for a second to dwell on the onscreen carnage. The beginning of the film has meteorites striking New York City, and I was horrified by the scenes of skyscraper tops sheared off and people falling from them up to the camera…but it’s okay, Bay won’t show you the awful splat because he’s too busy spending time showing the struggles of one guy to save his little dog. It’s okay. The dog makes it. I’m at a loss. WHAT is this guy THINKING that he believes the audience will be concerned about the dog? I’m still upset about that poor guy screaming as he plummets from a skyscraper where, moments before, he was probably working at his desk thinking he was in for a boring day. I’m sure there are worse ways to die, but that one sure frightens me.

Three years later, I’d be proven right.

Armageddon proved that it was possible to show Paris being wiped off the face of the Earth and still not get a thumbs up from me.

Just in case you had any doubts as to the worse film, read this agony booth review of Armageddon, which took seven people reviewing it in small chunks just like The World’s Deadliest Joke from Monty Python in order to make it through while staying sane.