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THE
CORE (Mar 2003)
Director: Jon Amiel.
Writers: Cooper Layne, John Rogers.
Starring: Hilary Swank, Aaron Eckhart, Stanley Tucci, Tcheky
Karyo, Delroy Lindo, Bruce Greenwood, Richard Jenkins, D.J.
Qualls.
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Earth-Hugger
Poffy
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Anthropocentric
Spin.
by
Jon Dunmore © 14 Aug 2005.
I
want to hurt this movie. Like it hurt me.
THE CORE opens with a Peter Gallagher clone sans Eyebrows dropping
dead at a board meeting – so begins a series of events
that establish the Earth's core has inexplicably stopped
spinning, causing electromagnetic anomalies. So scientists
must drill down and re-start the spin with The Universal
Solvent – nukes.
But
the spin begins long before they take the plunge…
Any rationalizing fools who entreat those of us with a modicum
of intelligence to "sit back, relax and enjoy this
entertainment" do not realize that we who rail against
movies of this ilk, do so not because of bogus science
per se, but because of the inconsistent bogus science.
We may not boast Geophysics degrees, nor do we aspire to
atom-splitting scientific accuracy – we just want consistency!
Example
1: If your movie maintains that pigeons use the Earth's
electromagnetic field for "long-distance navigation,"
why show pigeons disoriented whilst tooling around the few
hundred feet of Trafalgar Square.
Example
2: If your movie cites Real Science to explain the impossibility
of generating enough energy to start the planet's core re-spinning,
why not establish that it takes that same impossible amount
of energy to stop the core in the first place? More
on this later.
This
movie has less "science" in it than STAR WARS – and STAR WARS has NO science in it.
At
a militia symposium, geophysicist Josh Keyes (Aaron Eckhart,
playing your average "biscuit-thrower" college
professor: disheveled hair, attire and lifestyle; upon arriving
home, throws biscuit to dog which has no name – Hollywood
stereotype created by Mel Gibson in LETHAL WEAPON), cites Physics 101, yet none of the generals seem to have
even a sixth-grade education, as they stare dismayed at
his demo of burning a peach with a spraycan, to illustrate
– get this! – how the Sun would burn Earth
were it to lose its electromagnetic covering. The stupidity
meter could go no lower at that point.
Movies
of this ilk are constructed around one or two thrilling
sequences upon which the burden of the storyline is draped
uncomfortably – such a scene was the introduction to
Major Rebecca Childs (grotesquely gorgeous Hilary Swank)
as her crew emergency-land Shuttle Endeavour in the
LA Aqueduct. The movie's pitch was all about sonic-booming
over Dodger Stadium and navigating through overpass bridges
like technofied T-Birds from GREASE. Magnificently-staged,
the thrill meter hit climax – consequently, it was
all downhill from there.
Stanley
Tucci's suavely turtle-necked Dr. Conrad Zimsky is simply
to insult Dr. Carl Sagan. Ironic that we meet Zimsky exiting
his "Einstein Seminars," even whilst this movie
leaves Einstein's most rigorous theorem
(E=mc squared) in a deep hole.
Tchéky
Karyo, as Frenchman Serge, is the only likable character.
Of the admittedly talented cast, his performance alone is
so poignant that we're truly saddened to see him die. (His
end was pre-ordained; he was, after all, French.) In the
grandest of hackneyed traditions, only the Attractive American White Couple survive whilst every one of the dubiously-titled
"terranauts" onboard the drilling craft goes down.
Gorgeously
grotesque D.J. Qualls is computer-hacker, Rat, called in by the gubmint to communicate with the drilling craft from the surface; an "unlikely
hero" character who is really one of those rootless, amoral beings
who make our online lives unbearable with viruses
and identity theft and their wholly unnecessary existence
- rather than being put on a pedestal, these people should be dumped down a deep crevasse.
There's
the Square-Jawed American Pilot (least-known of the principals,
Bruce Greenwood – ergo, first to die); Delroy Lindo,
as Token Black Dude, Dr. "Braz"; Richard Jenkins (from SIX FEET UNDER - is that some kind of bad joke worse than the puns I've been making?) and Alfre Woodard as the preposterously
miscast Flight Director. The actors did their best, but
the blathering catastrophe of the script kept them low. In a movie this bad, one suspects that either Karyo or Tucci
filled a role that F. Murray Abraham was too busy to fill because he was too busy digging himself into a hole on some other bad movie.
Braz
constructs their drilling craft with a substance called
Unobtainium (stop that laughing in back!), which, he tells
us, converts heat and pressure to energy, so the deeper
it gets, the stronger it gets….er, I think the misinformed
"scientist" meant to say that energy in
the form of heat and pressure is converted to mass by
the Unobtainium. (Remember that "E=mc2" thingy?)
Was the "science consultant" on this movie an actual scientist or a guy that read too many comicbooks?
- and, more importantly, may I book some time to put him six feet under?
The script was made of Unobtainium. The deeper it got,
the more energy it expended in keeping us from frying in
outrage.
Note that "implausible" = fiction; "impossible"
= fantasy. A drilling craft outfitted with a laser that disintegrates solid rock to nothingness: implausible.
Humans sustaining diamond-crushing pressure in the Earth's
mantle - no matter what they're wearing, let alone
wafer-thin spacesuits: impossible. Throughout the film,
Impossibility outweighing Implausibility makes THE CORE Science Fantasy, not Science "Fiction," so cease
associating it with a once-legitimate term.
When
physics knowledge was at a groundling stage, scientifically-inept
tales like JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH were
acceptable, but these days, even the common rabble are well-versed
in general physics, so it is inexcusable that knowledge
be so denigrated, ignored and subjugated to the inadequacies
of feeble-minded technicians with big budgets, who promulgate
ANTI-knowledge with their idiotic product…
Deep
in the plot, where everyone takes turns saying something
scientifically illiterate, Zimsky reveals that a man-made
device, "Destiny," is responsible for the stalled
core. I'll say this once: nothing man-made can output
the amount of energy needed to stall a planet's core.
What part of "nothing man-made" don't the film-makers
understand? If these arrogant, anthropocentric, bacterial
mites were to explode every nuclear weapon the government
denies possessing, it would still not affect the planet's
spin, orbit or sturdiness; it would not even wipe out "all
life," but the great percentage of larger organisms
that depend on photosynthesis in their food chain (mainly
plants and mammals).
Conceited
humans refuse to acknowledge One True Fact: the PLANET will
be fine – whether or not the core spins at all; whether
or not humans exist at all. You're only "saving"
it for your own selfish ends…
As
the Attractive American White Couple are rescued,
Rat cries, "The earth is healing itself!" - Well,
uh, it was never really "sick," rodent - obviously
jubilant that he can now stop working for The Man and go
back to creating viruses and stealing identities online,
like the worthless piece of excrement he always was.
But
before he hacks into the World Wide Web for spiritually
bereft reasons, he does it one last time "nobly"
- to promulgate the biographies of the "heroes" who died
whilst defying physics laws through uninformed dialog. Whilst
we vainly try to clear our e-mail logjams, that's all we
need - more spam.
Can
I start to hurt you now, to let the real healing
begin?
END
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THE
CORE (Mar 2003)
Director: Jon Amiel.
Writers: Cooper Layne, John Rogers.
Starring: Hilary Swank, Aaron Eckhart, Stanley Tucci, Tcheky
Karyo, Delroy Lindo, Bruce Greenwood, Richard Jenkins, D.J.
Qualls.
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