Ben Affleck should do DVD commentaries more often. What a ledge. pic.twitter.com/gQ3abVpcDu
— s.vie.u (@reine_ecran) June 14, 2016
This clip is clearly old, considering it comes from the DVD commentary for Armageddon, but it seems to be making the rounds anew this week and honestly, I hadn’t seen it before. It makes a strong case that Ben Affleck should do all DVD commentaries. In it, Affleck describes a scene from 1998’s Armageddon. Which, if you’ll remember, is a film about a team of Texas oil drillers who have to learn how to become astronauts so that they can land a space shuttle on top of an asteroid and drill it open to put bombs in it. I think? Something like that.
Actually, I’ll just let Ben Affleck describe it.
I asked Michael why it would be easier to train oil drillers to become astronauts than it would be to train astronauts to become oil drillers, and he told me to shut… shut the f*ck up. So that was the end of that talk. […]
Now here’s where we demonstrate that, because Bruce is gonna tell the guys that they did a bad job of building the drill tank. See, he’s a salt-of-the-earth guy, and the NASA nerdonauts, don’t understand his salt-of-the-earth, his rough-and-tumble ways.
Like somehow they can build rocketships, but they don’t understand like, what makes a good tranny. […] Like eight whole months, like that’s not enough time to drill a hole, but in a week, we’re gonna learn how to be astronauts. “Oh one whole week? Now you know how to fly into space? I need my guys.”
“Why do you need ’em? They’re the best!” […]
I mean this is a little bit of a logic stretch, let’s be honest. They don’t know jack about drilling? How hard can it be? Aim the drill at the ground and turn it on.
As I’ve often said, everyone in the Michael Bay movie universe is either a slut or a clown. Sluts are to be shot from sexy angles and glorified like walking Ferraris. Bruce is obviously the slut in this scene, with Michael Bay really selling his rugged toughness. Which means all the NASA guys have to be clowns, a bunch of comical, sexless nerds who don’t know their dicks from a space drill.
It doesn’t get talked about enough that Ben Affleck’s breakout moment was winning an Oscar for screenwriting, and then immediately got to play man candy in Armageddon and Pearl Harbor. I’m sure he was paid well for his troubles, but I imagine the amount of jokes he had to stifle while reciting Michael Bay movie dialogue for months at a time could fill 10 DVDs worth of commentary.