Maybe it has something to do with the Y2K panic, but in the summer of 1998, we were hit with two big-budgeted cataclysmic blockbusters back-to-back. In May, directed by and starring and , rained down on theaters. It was followed just two months later by the -helmed thriller led by the powerhouse trio of and. The two have almost identical plots, but one is just as good today as it was nearly 30 years ago, and there are reasons for that. Deep Impact made a deeper impact on audiences that enhances the overall tone. Most of the film is built around human relationships and the human condition as it might look if you knew the world would end. And in the end, it reflects how bleak and profoundly sad it is

Armageddon doesn't really touch on either of these, opting for a more vapid film that relies too heavily on the big names on the marquee (Willis, Thorton, Affleck, ), clicked quips, and smash-bang effects where almost everyone lives happily ever after. It's almost as if Bay believed he could "out-explode" his way to a better film,

In both movies, civilization is threatened by an asteroid hurtling towards Earth. As a last resort, NASA sent a team of humans up to the projectile to try to destroy the rock from within their coresIn Deep Impact, there is , while in Armageddon, it is decided to send the most prominent group of oil-drilling roughnecks to do the same. All humankind relies on the success of these last-ditch efforts, or else it will suffer the same fate as the dinosaurs millions of years ago. Much like 's from just a few years ago, these films study how we would react to such a threat but do it differently. The way that Deep Impact opts to take a deep dive. At the same time, Armageddon feels dated and tropey with cardboard cutouts for characters.

In Deep Impact, Robert Duvall leads a team on a shuttle called the "Messiah" to destroy the Wolf-Biederman Comet. and millions—including several main characters—succumb to the enormous tidal waves and flooding in the film's final sequences. The beauty of Deep Impact . Armageddon may have the more prominent, brighter marquee from top to bottom, but it leaves the characters too soon in favor of a bigger kaboom effect. It doesn't allow viewers to understand why they are the way they are or what motivates them to do what they do. The only resonating human relationship is between Affleck's character and his fiancee, played by

In Deep Impact, the audience is taken in a different direction, , including a daughter and her divorced parents, two young kids falling in love, a separated family, and the astronauts aboard the Messiah. That type of essential character development always has a longer shelf life than a more vapid, CGI-enhanced movie, and that's why if you're going to revisit one,Leder paints a bleak but far more accurate picture of the end of the world as we know it, accompanied by a mournful tone and sadness of knowing that Unfortunately, most apocalyptic movies don't study this, opting for a post-apocalyptic look at how those who remain struggle to continue forward or the disaster that ends the human race. In Deep Impact, the audience gets all of these thrilling visuals but also receives a handful of storylines that stick with you after the end credits roll.