Hello. I saw the thread about how this sub always talks about the same small subset of films, so I thought I'd write a post about a movie that isn't discussed as often. I'll start by presenting basic, factual information about the film, and I'll follow by explaining why I like it, and what I think its main strengths and weaknesses are. Keep in mind that I am not a professional movie critic, and therefore I'm not going to attempt to make a deep meta-philosophical analysis of the movie's narrative themes and how it relates to human history or psychology. I'm only going to present my personal impressions about the movie's storyline, special effects, and, of course, the science behind the events of the movie.
The Core is a 2003 American science fiction disaster film directed by Jon Amiel and starring Aaron Eckhart, Hilary Swank, Delroy Lindo, Stanley Tucci, Tchéky Karyo, DJ Qualls, Bruce Greenwood and Alfre Woodard. The film focuses on a team whose mission is to drill to the center of the Earth and set off a series of nuclear explosions in order to restart the rotation of the Earth's core. The film was released on March 28, 2003 by Paramount Pictures.
Synopsis: Geophysicist Dr. Josh Keyes (Aaron Eckhart) discovers that an unknown force has caused the earth's inner core to stop rotating. With the planet's magnetic field rapidly deteriorating, our atmosphere literally starts to come apart at the seams with catastrophic consequences. To resolve the crisis, Keyes, along with a team of the world's most gifted scientists, travel into the earth's core. Their mission: detonate a device that will reactivate the core.
Budget: $85 million (source: Wikipedia)
Box office: $74 million (source: Wikipedia)
Some stills from the movie:
The storyline:
The basic premise of sending humans to the center of the Earth is one of my favorite premises in science-fiction, and one I would like to see picked up by more major productions. There are always new movies about sending humans into space - think Interstellar or The Martian - but rarely any major, live action movies about sending humans to the center of the Earth. For all its faults, a major reason why I like "The Core" is that it is one of the few movies that simply picks up that premise and does (in my view) a decent job of putting it into practice. Movies about deep water exploration, such as "The Meg" and "Underwater" are also among my favorite kind of sci-fi movies for the same basic reason. They show humans (often a mix of scientists and explorers) venture into the depths of our planet, and I think it's a premise that holds a lot of promise for good storytelling, good cinema, and good box office numbers, if created and marketed correctly. The idea of sending humans into the Earth in literature dates back at least to Jules Verne's "Journey to the center of the Earth", which was published in 1864. (I'm not a literary historian, so please forgive my ignorance of potentially older major works of literature with that premise)
Main strengths:
- Interesting premise
- Bold conflict (the core of the Earth stops spinning)
- Bold resolution (the good guys have to bring in nuclear weapons to restart it)
- Good pacing. The movie has a total run time of 2:14:58. The main adventure inside the Earth doesn't begin until 1 hour into the movie, and ends at around the 2 hour mark, so half of the movie is spent on fleshing out the characters in the beginning and laying the ground for the main action.
Main weaknesses:
- Bad filler scenes (Rome; Golden Gate Bridge)
The two scenes in Rome, where a lightning strike destroys the Coliseum, and in San Francisco, where solar radiation burns a hole through the atmosphere and destroys the Golden Gate Bridge, are undeniably the two weakest scenes in the movie. They are obvious fillers to show the nefarious effects of the Earth's immobile core on the globe. The CGI is bad (more on that later), and the plot points are ridiculous (a lightning strike can't destroy the Coliseum, and solar radiation can't destroy the Golden Bridge in two minutes)
A word or two about the characters.
The Core has good character introductions. Aaron Eckhart's character is introduced as a physics professor teaching university classes, Hilary Swank's character is introduced as an astronaut flying the space shuttle, Delroy Lindo's character is introduced as an engineer developing cutting-edge technologies in the desert, Stanley Tucci's character is introduced as a renowned scientist too sure of himself, Tchéky Karyo's character is introduced as a nuclear physicist, and Bruce Greenwood's character is introduced as the astronaut pal of Aaron Eckhart's character.
I like the way the characters are fleshed out and evolve over the course of the story, at least for a two hour and fifteen minute movie. Josh Keyes begins as an innocent, and frankly naive, scientist teaching undergrads in university, but over the course of the story sees his leadership role grow inside the team. He risks his life several times to save his crew mates, is one of only two survivors at the end (out of six original crew members), and single-handedly comes up with the solution to get back to the surface.
Rebecca Childs begins as a star astronaut who seemingly knows everything about everything (she fixes a piece of equipment Keyes couldn't fix and adjusts his tie before a conference), but even she has to make space for the other crew members to use their specific expertise to solve problems that she can't solve later in the story. She is humbled, in this sense, without losing any of her excellence.
Edward Brazzelton starts off as a bit of a crazy engineer who likes to play with technology to develop cutting edge prototypes of various things and almost single handedly designed the vehicle that takes everyone inside the Earth. Later in the movie he sacrifices himself to save the Virgil (the vehicle in question) and his crew members.
Conrad Zimsky has probably the most interesting character development of all. As I said earlier, he begins as a renowned scientist too sure of himself. He gives prestigious lectures, works as a consultant for the government, and has a mini celebrity cult around him. When the heroes realize that their main plan wouldn't work, he loses it and shows that he is afraid to die more than anything. When he comes to his senses, he draws upon his knowledge to find a way for the heroes to accomplish their mission, and later sacrifices himself to save Keyes. In his final moments, he is alone in a capsule and speaking to his audio recorder when he drops it and says, "What the fuck am I doing?", and starts laughing, just before he dies. In his final moments, Zimsky realized that some of the things he had been doing were pointless, and laughs at the absurdity of his own situation and in the face of his imminent and unavoidable death, which is a complete change of character from the all-serious and pretentious character he was at the beginning.
Serge Leveque starts as a French nuclear physicist who likes to drink with his buddy Keyes and make jokes. Later in the movie he sacrifices himself for the sake of the crew and gives his daughter's coloring books to Keyes so that they could remember him. Keyes loses it in the cockpit and asks Childs why she had to shut the door.
Bob Iverson begins as an astronaut, and the commander of the Space Shuttle. As he is the first character to die, he doesn't get as much development as the other characters. Overall, he fits the type of the cool-headed, quiet professional.
The special effects
The special effects are one of the main weaknesses of this movie. The effects on the main vehicle are decent, and better than the rest of the film, because it's the most widely seen asset in the movie, so it better look good (at least relative to the rest). But the effects for the inside of the Earth, especially the mantle and the core, as well as various rocks and other bits, are clearly dated, and look more like a video game than a photorealistic version of events.
It's true that we don't really know what the inside of the Earth looks like. We have a rough idea of what it's made of, but we don't have any actual pictures or videos to compare the movie to, so I'll give the movie credit for trying to imagine what the inside of the Earth looks like based on the available scientific knowledge (if any geologist is reading this, please don't kill me, I'm perfectly aware that even the movie's depiction of the inside of the Earth is not completely accurate according to scientific knowledge). Still, even if you take the movie's representations of this environment at face value, the effects just aren't good enough compared to today's standards.
The science
The scientific realism (or lack thereof) of The Core is the main criticism of this movie among popular critics and some scientists. I'm not a scientist. I don't pretend to be a geologist or an earth scientist, so I'm in no position to argue with the science. I'll start off by saying that, yes, "The Core" has some significant scientific inaccuracies. But I want to argue that, in my view, these elements aren't nearly as unforgivable as they've sometimes been made to be. As I wrote in the intro of this post, I only wanted to convey some of my basic personal impressions. If one tried to make a movie about sending humans to the center of the Earth with currently available technology and scientific knowledge, the movie would never happen. It is science-fiction set in the early 2000s. Most importantly, the movie makes an honest attempt at explaining some of the technology that enables the heroes' journey and where it came from.
Overall, I think "The Core" is an underrated piece of science-fiction, and I wish more movies picked up the theme of sending humans deep inside the Earth, perhaps with more scientific realism. The movie has a bold storyline, is well paced, and has good character introductions and development. On the other hand, it suffers from some bad science, bad looking special effects in some places, and bad filler scenes.
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