Synopsis: A massive asteroid is discovered heading for earth and a civilian drilling team is recruited for a mission to destroy it before it is too late.
Reaction: Visually great and containing a lot of action, this movie suffers from the fact that you don't connect strongly with most of the characters.
Director Michael BayMichael Bay had the actors write their list of demands on the papers that Bruce WillisBruce Willis read from.
The film opened on Liv TylerLiv Tyler's 21st birthday.
In the opening sequence, a little dog attacks some Godzilla toys. This was a friendly jab at the other big special effects movie of that summer, Roland EmmerichRoland Emmerich's American version of Godzilla which was released a month and a half earlier.
The convenient existence of a fault plane passing right through the asteroid is not unrealistic. Several asteroids are now believed to be "contact binaries", each apparently consisting of two separate lumps of rock that are just sitting on each other.
This was the first movie that the cast was allowed to use genuine NASA spacesuits. The cast are the only civilians to ever wear NASA spacesuits, which cost over 3 million dollars each.