How Ben Affleck Feels About His Infamous Armageddon DVD Commentary Years Later

Is the commentary track a lost art? For those who get their movies at home via streaming services, it certainly is. Unfortunately, the major services don't offer any sort of bonus features, while VOD purchases only come with a small selection of content. For those of us who still worship at the altar of physical media, the academic commentary track is alive and well, with every release containing at least one track examining a film. However, both groups have to endure the loss of what used to be a Hollywood staple: the cast commentary track for a recent film. While these continue to crop up on occasion, they've become exceedingly rare, which is bizarre for anyone who was around for the heyday of DVD. Heck, commentaries used to be such a prerequisite that in 2008's "Tropic Thunder," Robert Downey Jr.'s Kirk Lazarus (playing Lincoln Osiris) made a quip about not dropping character until he does the DVD commentary, and it was a joke that the majority of audiences didn't need explained to them.

To be fair, once contemporary commentary tracks from a film's cast and crew became the norm for a short while, they tended to be a fairly sanitized experience, with the studios' lawyers and PR firms keeping a close eye on what was being said. Thankfully, this was not the case with the early days of commentaries, and the shining example of this brief golden age is the cast and crew commentary track for 1998's "Armageddon." The track, which is featured on the Criterion Collection release of the film on DVD (yes, you read that correctly), is one of the most refreshingly frank commentaries ever recorded (even amongst the tracks for other films that were subsequently banned). The release contains two separate commentary tracks, and the second of these (featuring comments from NASA consultant Dr. Joe Allen, asteroid consultant Ivan Dekey, and cinematographer John Schwartzman) is just as bracing as its more infamous counterpart (including some wildly off-color comments from Schwartzman about shooting lead actress Liv Tyler).

But the main event is the commentary from director Michael Bay, producer Jerry Bruckheimer, and stars Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck, all recorded separately. While each man says some remarkably unvarnished things, it's Affleck's delightfully uncensored comments that have become the stuff of legend, something which the actor/director has now embraced, given his recent comments on his, well, old comments.

During the lead-up to the release of this month's "The Accountant 2," Affleck has been in the press revisiting the highs and lows of his career as he looks ahead to what's next. In between discussing his prior directing work and his appearance in films like the much-reviled (and memed, thanks to "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back") Dimension Films horror "Phantoms," Affleck has spoken about his candor on the "Armageddon" DVD. When being interviewed by GQ in March, the typically self-depreciating Affleck was amusingly self-congratulatory about his contribution:

"That is one of the achievements of my career on which I'm willing to pat myself on the back. I believe that may be at least top five all-time DVD commentaries. By the way, nobody said anything to me. I don't think any of the other people listened to it or gave a f—k until years later when it was played. And I was kind of shocked and appalled that I went on there and started being like ... I mean, that's all true. Everything I said was a hundred percent true, but that's the point. You're not supposed to go on there and tell all of the truth."

This week saw Affleck's turn inside the Criterion Closet, the headquarters in which the entirety of the Criterion Collection is stored, where various public figures are invited to come pick up some films and talk about their personal connection to them. During his time there, Affleck grabbed a copy of the "Armageddon" DVD and spoke about his happiness with the commentary track:

"In retrospect, now, I feel like maybe my best work in my career is the commentary on this disc. People approach me to talk about the commentary on this disc as much as they do, like, movies that I've been in. And it's because I didn't know any better than to be really honest ... It is an achievement that I am proud of and didn't intend to be as good as I now think it is at the time."

Judging by these comments, Affleck seems chuffed that he both got away with what he said on the track as well as his then-navieté about how to conduct himself in terms of commentaries and interviews. Sure, he has a twinkle in his eye when discussing the whole matter, but his admiration of the track and the moment in time it was recorded also feels genuine.

So, what were these comments that Affleck is so proud of and people are so enamored by? Well, other than the general no-B.S. tenor of his appearance, Affleck used his time on the commentary track to ask some basic, fundamental logic questions regarding the preposterous plot of "Armageddon." As he recalled during that GQ interview, he was merely relating his actual experience while making the film:

"I never expected, 'Oh, this is going to be genius.' I thought, I'm going to go do a big Hollywood action movie and I love it. And yes, during the movie, I was kind of surprised to find that sometimes they weren't all that interested in making sense ... but there's a sense of being small and of this thing being big. And so I felt like a little ant on the elephant when I would shoot my mouth off about the conversation I had with Michael [Bay], about why is it easier to train oil drillers to be astronauts than to train astronauts to drill a hole in the ground?"

Yep, it's the sort of smart-aleck (or should that be smart-Affleck?) comment that most folks can and do level at the more egregious Hollywood blockbusters, and for those who find Michael Bay's brand of largesse insulting to their intelligence, it's a breath of fresh air. Yet this candor is also something which makes Bay's film more endearing, not less. During the track, Affleck's comments as well as Willis' and especially Bay's paint a warts-and-all picture of how the blockbuster sausage gets made, with topics ranging from the film's dubious science to using helicopters in the background of a random establishing shot to spending thousands of dollars replacing Affleck's teeth (a story which Bay says Affleck is "gonna hate," and, unfortunately, Affleck wasn't recorded in the same room with him to comment on it). 

Despite how much one could poke holes in and poke fun at "Armageddon," the fact that it got made at all (and was super successful) is an art in and of itself, and Bay's director's cut is a film that displays some real gonzo heart amidst all the outsized jingoism. That cut, by the way, is also currently only available on the Criterion DVD. As Affleck himself says in his Closet video: "Criterion, when is the 4K coming out?"