Fourteen years ago, the summer of 1998 was pummeled by a pair of big-budget disaster flicks. There was the sibylline Deep Impact, which featured Morgan Freeman as the president and a tidal wave that toppled the World Trade Center and the rest of the New York skyline. A month later, Michael Bay’s Armageddon wreaked havoc on cineplexes nationwide, and the sappy Diane Warren-penned, Steven Tyler-crooned “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing” played on a loop in most of our heads. While disaster porn was nothing new at the time, it seemed particularly crazy that two movies about the Earth’s intergalactic demise were released within months of each other.
