The 2000 movie Gladiator was a semi-remake of Fall of the Roman Empire but with the story problems fixed up; so too did Armageddon solve the issues of this big budget flop. It's got the same concept - killer meteor is headed towards Earth, top level team of scientists get together to save the day (mostly Russians and Americans); there's also an impressive array of talent behind and in front of the camera, including Sean Connery, Natalie Wood,Henry Fonda and Brian Keith, plus some pretty nifty special effects.
But the movie has a massive problem which I think ensured it's underwhelming box office performance: the story. It starts well enough with Sean Connery being yanked off his yacht mid race and spirited away to a top secret meeting, and squabbles with the military (personified by Martin Landau), and colluding with the Russians. But far too much of the action consists of Connery and company sitting in HQ waiting for the meteors to hit and pressing buttons.
The great disaster movies had our lead characters in peril from the get go - The Poseidon Adventure had the boat crew upside down within the first 15 minutes, ditto the fire in The Towering Inferno gang. This only gets going towards the end when HQ is hit by a meteor fragment and everyone has to flail around in mud for a bit.
So despite professional acting, seeming high stakes of the concept and lots of footage of missles, plus some clever one liners, it's dull. It's funny that AIP of all studios made such a rookie error as to not focus on a few key characters in peril (which they normally always did, mostly due to low budget reasons) but maybe they were dazzled by high price talent.
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