Michael Bay says sorry for Armageddon

Michael Bay has apologised for his 1998 sci-fi actioner 'Armageddon'... but perhaps not in quite the way you might hope.

The director, now best known for his effects-laden 'Transformers' series, says that issues with the studio caused the film to be taken away from him before he was happy with it.

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“I will apologise for Armageddon, because we had to do the whole movie in 16 weeks,” he told the Miami Herald.

“It was a massive undertaking. That was not fair to the movie. I would redo the entire third act if I could. But the studio literally took the movie away from us. It was terrible.

“My visual effects supervisor had a nervous breakdown, so I had to be in charge of that. I called James Cameron and asked ‘What do you do when you’re doing all the effects yourself?’ But the movie did fine.”

The film starred Bruce Willis as a grizzled oil driller tasked with being fired onto a descending meteor with his motley crew of riggers in order to save the Earth.

Ben Affleck, Liv Tyler, Steve Buscemi, Billy Bob Thornton and Owen Wilson also starred.

Though it was a decent commercial success for Bay and producer Jerry Bruckheimer, grossing $553 million (￡362 million), it was roundly panned by the critics.

The eminent Roger Ebert, who died last month, branded the feature 'an assault on the eyes, the ears, the brain, common sense and the human desire to be entertained'.