That was a really bad movie.
For me at least, a movie just isn't a spectacle the way it used to be. Going out to see Top Gun: Maverick, and seeing The Batman at a drive-in cinema is probably the closest I've been to that feeling since the original Avatar. Maybe I'm not giving enough credit to the Avengers movies.
You no doubt are thinking of his famous anecdote of questioning Michael Bay about training oil drillers to be astronauts, as opposed to the other way around.
Bay's film's approach is correct, though. NASA had by then been flying payload specialists on the shuttle for more than 15 years, because it really is easier to train specialists in some subject to fly in space, than train astronauts an entire specialty for one flight.
Unobtanium that gets stronger under pressure and can also generate power, and to tap that power you just need to weld conductors to the hull and plug that into the engine and it goes, just awesome nonsense.
Also it's great to watch Stanley Tucci be sniffy and pert nonstop.
i recently (within a few weeks) watched this from beginning to end, and holy cow was i not impressed. to have so many actors of high report to end up such a horrible movie.
If your going to ditch science, may as well go all in.
Deep Impact is not a great film, but does a surprisingly good job of telling its story in a moving way.
Its archrival Armageddon is also not a great film, but is arguably even more effective at its job (that being "fun summer popcorn thriller").
But actually, I can rewatch that movie endlessly on repeat