Hey folks, Harry here... wasn't planning on running anything more on THE CORE, but Ted here is a GeoPhysics freak with his own radio show in California, and he wanted to write up a piece about some of the science of the film... how likely it can be true and what was utter bullshit... like the 1000 megatons bit... There are TONS OF SPOILERS, but as I mentioned in my GRAND CANYON piece, the movie has fun elements, but mostly it is very cookie cutter. However, the real end of North America thing that Ted mentions here... that's got me interested. Hmmm, must research this thing... Here ya go...
Hey Harry, long-time site visitor, first time poster. Call me Ted. Never felt I had a valid reason to share my opinions with you and your readership, but after seeing The Core, felt compelled to say something about this movie. I'm a talk radio co-host for a science news show, my academic background is in geology/oceanography (UC Berkeley). Love disaster movies, and am a nut for geophysics; needless to say I was long anticipating this movie. How often do you get to see geology itself as an antagonist?
However, I wasn't expecting to see an even remotely accurate depiction of earth science in this film. It's a movie, and I'm more than willing to suspend disbelief in such matters. Armageddon, Independence Day, you name it -- if you're into that kind of thing, you can enjoy them for storytelling value even if you like to nitpick scientific points of wild inaccuracy (Volcano notwithstanding that movie is a geologic and cinematic travesty).
From a science standpoint, The Core is pleasantly surprising. Regarding presentation of the facts, it's actually not too bad. This is not to say it doesn't take huge liberties for the sake of cinematic license - it does, naturally. But it does do a pretty good job, with some nice surprises in the way of geology. It may be the film's producers actually consulted some experts in the field, if that can be believed.
I'll try to keep this spoiler free. Not that there's much to spoil - I mean, anyone who's seen any disaster movie will know the general formula going in, and this movie doesnÃt screw with that time-honored tradition by throwing in 'twists' or having our heroes, god forbid, not save the earth in the end. The biggest surprise is the hefty running time of 145 minutes. I was expecting around 90 minutes, but no. Pretty much, this movie can be broken down into 1) figure out there's a problem with the core, 2) travel to the core, and 3) fix the core. No surprises there. 30 minutes for each segment would be standard treatment, but the movie didn't suffer for the length and I found myself enjoying it enough that I didn't get up to pee, even though the theater was so empty I wouldn't have had to crawl over 20 sets of toes to do so.
So, the core has stopped spinning due to a lightly-touched-on and little-explained secret weapon project designed to produce earthquakes in enemy countries. 'Somehow' this has stopped the core, and since stopping the core is the only purpose of this plot device, it is left at that, which is fine. Geniuses are called in to address the problem, a rogue scientist who just happens to have been designing a ship to travel into the earth is recruited, and bang, we're off to the core. Once there, nuclear weapons will be set off to get the core spinning again, and all will be right with the world. As per usual these days, we know this all from the trailers.
I came for the disaster, but I stayed for the science. As I said earlier, it's surprisingly not that bad. Depicting the interior of the earth, for long periods of screen time, is a daunting challenge I imagine if one wants to keep it fairly accurate while not boring the audience to tears. Rocks, even molten rocks, are not the most exciting of villains, and that's all we get in the way of bad guys. There's no-evil-people-trying-to- sabotage-our-heroes-only-to-get-thwarted-in-the-end in this film (which I did expect to see - they even set one of the characters up for it, but he turns out to be a hero too, which was another pleasantly surprising aspect). Rocks, and just rocks, are what we have to contend with here. And there are a lot of exterior (interior?) shots of the ship moving through various layers of the earth. They give you just enough Geology 101 to explain the different layers the ship is moving through, and make it good eye-candy while still sticking to what we know about geomorphology at these depths (which, as the characters often point out, 'we just don't know for sure what it's like down there' which is true, to a point).
The biggest complaint I overheard grumbled by fellow theater-goers on my way out, as well as voiced by my wife (who I at least got the opportunity to geek out with and explain things to afterward) was that the ship they used was just totally impossible. Not true. In fact, if we really wanted to, we could probably have built a ship similar to the one shown in the film about twenty years ago. Temperatures and pressures much higher than those encountered in the earth's core are regularly contained, and have been for some time, in experimental fusion reactors (like the ones at Lawrence Livermore Labs) for some decades now. It could be done, there's just no good reason to go to all the expense to do so in reality. And while such a ship could, and I stress could (it would be prohibitively expensive and would require not-insubstantial materials research and development), it was amusing that they just came out and said that the ship was made from a material called 'unobtanium.' Yes, unobtanium. The old sci-fi put-down, they just came out and said it. I chuckled.
Sure, using nuclear weapons to jump-start the core was a cop-out, but I can't think of a better one as far as telling a story goes. The 1,000 megatons they used in this movie would in reality be just another drop in the bucket in the naturally-occurring whitenoise of magma displacement in the earth's interior. 1,000 megatons is nothing on a planetary scale. (Read up on the Yellowstone supervolcano if you're interested in not going to sleep tonight. This puppy is set to blow real soon and take out most of North America with it - yes, really.)
The disappointments in this movie were not so much from the science but from the over-doing of the formula. OK, so six people, tops in their fields, go into a highly-experimental untested ship on a suicide mission to save the earth. We all know that they're not all coming back alive - who doesn't see that coming? What annoys me here is that, of course, the two youngest, most attractive, and most single two are the ones who survive, and of course all the other four crewmembers have to die. And they all die the same damn way! You know, as-bad-luck-would-have-it-I'm-here-in-this-compartment- and-what-I'm-doing-is- absolutely-essential-to-get-everyone-to-The-Next-Step-In- Saving-The-Earth-but-I-can't- finish-what-I'm-doing-without-getting-killed-so-you'll- just-have-to-consign-me-to-my-fate-and-tell-my-wife-I-love-her-and-briefly-gnash-your-teeth-over-my-death-but-then-quickly-get-on-to-killing-off-the-next-poor-sap. All four of the people who die do so in this fashion. Tired. Can we please have a disaster movie where they all make it back alive? Or, as in Deep Impact, where they all (the people trying to save the earth, anyway) die?
Another annoying character element was the computer geek kid hired by the Powers That Be to keep the whole project secret. This felt totally tacked-on and was meant to appeal to what? The computer geek movie-going contingent? Hell, if they really want to see this movie they'll have already downloaded the screener before it even hit the theaters. It was pretty lame, not to mention that he's addicted to Hot Pockets, which 'help him concentrate.' I don't mind the occasional shameless product promotion, but Hot Pockets? Come on.
However, on the characterization angle I did appreciate that they didn't try to throw in a needless love interest aspect. This movie is about saving the earth, pure and simple. Even when the last two crew members are looking at certain death (even though they survive in the end) but just happen to have a few minutes of expected life remaining and just happen to be isolated and cocooned in a cozy little unobtanium bathtub and both just happen to be a good-looking and unattached male and female, they do not get it on. I found that refreshing, if for nothing else than that it was unformulaic.
One final thing. Being a smoker myself, it was nice to see the badguy-turned-goodguy scientist refuse to give his theory for last-ditch saving of the earth until he was allowed to smoke a cigarette inside the ship 2,000 miles beneath the planetÃs surface, and when he finally lights up, utter 'Thank god.'
That's about it. A fun film that gives you just a little bit more than what you expect, and these days, that ain't so bad. Disaster fans should like it, and while it's not (and makes no claims to be) totally scientifically accurate, it does a surprising job of trying to stick to the facts. By the way, the website's kinda neat too, with a fairly entertaining earth-ship flightsimulator, and a cool flash version of the proto-videogame Pong. (The computer geek character plays Pong in the movie - I just think it's neat that you can play it instantly now on the net on some movie site, when back when I was a wee lad there were lines around the college bar in my hometown to play the real thing, yet I date myself)
Take care, man, I love your site, as do many other people. Keep up the good work and for the love of god don't listen to all the a$$hole posters who put you down and talk crap, you are doing a service and are making something of your life, and that's all that counts. Visiting your site is one of the simple pleasures in my life and the lives of many others, I'm sure.
Shameless plug ThisWeekInScience.Com - that's my (and a couple other peoples') radio show, out here in northern california.
All the best,
Ted
