I’m sure there have been reviews done on this movie when it was first run, but for those of us who can wait a couple months to see anything, I would like to pass on my thoughts about “The Core”. It didn’t suck. Not at all. In fact, as a sci-fi and apocalyptic fiction fan, I quite enjoyed it. Special effects were, as usual, incredible, the acting was solid, the characters weren’t completely one-dimensional, and the plot was interesting. What more could you ask for from a sci-fi movie? It was no Oscar contender, but it beat the pants off of “Armageddon”.
[Homer] That’s a damn lie and you know it! [/Homer]
The science in the core was so bad it dained my bramage, even from the previews.
I would have thought it was enjoyable. If I had been able to turn off my brain.
Normally I’m able to ignore the nonsense technobabble and the stunningly egregious technical/scientific errors. But The Core went so beyond that they I just couldn’t ignore it. I normally just “forget” about and sink into the movie.
A good example of this is Armageddon. Scientifically and technologically extremely improbably. Stuff that was flat out wrong. But still, I could get past that and “immerse” myself in the movie.
I just couldn’t do that for The Core. Actually laughing out loud in the theatre over the mistakes isn’t something I’ve ever done before. Did they hire a second grader as a technical consultant or something?
It doesn’t help that the two friends I saw it with are both Geology majors. It was a laugh a minute. They have a prof who often features the more scientifically improbable clips from “blockbuster” movies that involve geology. Ie. Dante’s Peak, Escape from L.A., etc… After the movie my friends were already taking bets on which clips the prof will be using in his class next year.
Yeah, the science was bad. Really, really bad. But the movie itself was a ton of fun. What I enjoyed most was the fact that the punchlines shown in the previews weren’t the punchlines; they were the straight lines, setting up even better punchlines. Paraphrased from memory:
General: “How much will it take to finish this thing in six weeks?”
Scientist: “Heh heh heh … I dunno … 'bout $50 billion.”
General: “Will you take a check?”
Other scientist, to General: “Put it on your credit card. You’ll get miles.”
Or, the way they played well off old movie cliches.
[spoiler]General: “The word ‘can’t’ isn’t in my vocabulary.”
Scientist: “Then you’d better get yourself one of those word-a-day calendars, 'cause this can’t be done.”[/spoiler]
Mostly, I liked that the character cliches didn’t play out exactly like I expected them to. Close, but some variation. And that it was just plain fun.
gah. Must remember to proofread next time. Spelling errors always seem to multiply the one time that I forgot to proof it first.
Well come on. Don’t leave us scientists in the dark. What was wrong with the science? 
We speculated on this back when it was just previews, but nobody that’s actually seen the film has nitpicked it.
The Bad Astronomer said he’d try to review it, but his site seems to be down right now.
I can understand the “enjoyable if you turn off your brain” phenomenon. I did, after all, like The Scorpion King enough to buy the DVD – a movie which ignores all laws of physics, geography, history, linguistics … the list goes on and on. But it’s good brainless fighting and lots and lots of Dwayne Johnson and Kelly Hu.
The Core however … sorry, just from the trailer I can’t fathom being able to sit through it. When I saw it the trailer got booed louder than the trailer for Rollerball had been.
Well the only comprehensive link I could find is The Bad Astronomer, and I get a message that it’s currently down due to exceeding its bandwidth.
However, off the top of my head, the most noteworthy Bad Science was:
[spoiler]
The core of the planet stopped spinning. For no real reason. And it stopped spinning very quickly. There is no real-world mechanism for this to happen.
Supposedly you can “re-start” the spinning with the explosion of a single nuclear weapon within the core.
If the core stops spinning the earth’s magnetic field ceases to exist. Probably correct, based on current models. But in the movie, this lack of a magnetic shield causes microwaves to fry the surface of the earth. This is wrong on several levels. First, in the movie these microwaves are very focussed beams that coincidentally hit major landmarks (the Colesseum, the Golden Gate Bridge), and not randomly over the surface of the earth. Second, the earth’s magnetic field DOES NOT block microwaves. Ever. They zip right through.
I mentioned the Golden Gate Bridge getting fried. In mid-span. In the movie this is shown with the two major “pillars” (in not sure exactly what they’re called) sort of melting inwards and leaning towards the center of the bridge. But a real suspension bridge that was suddenly missing its middle would buckle outwards, due to the stresses on the bridge.
They have to build a ship to travel to the core to blow up their nuclear bomb to restart the core. Riiiiiight. Needless to say the pressure and temperature at such a great depth would make this impossible. The (actual) core makes the Marianas Trench look like a kiddie pool.
So to deal with this, they build a ship out of an indestructible metal :rolleyes: called “unobtainium”. This in itself is a joke, because all comic book/movie “indestructible” metals (eg. adamantium from X-Men) have been collectively nickname “unobtainium”. No one would ever call a real metal that. This somewhat suggests that the moviemakers are poking fun at themselves, realizing this is a joke. But they’re taking themselves waaaaay to seriously for me to consider this.
When they’re in the core, their electrical power system fails. The brilliant-eye-candy scientist figures: “Hey! Our electricity is out. But there’s so much HEAT around us in the core! Heat = Energy! Energy = Electricity! We’ll just hook the electrical wiring up to the ship’s hull and power it that way!”
don’t mind me, it’s just Waenara retching in the corner[/spoiler]
There’s many other flaws in the movie’s science, but they’re too numerous to go from memory. Like I said, the Bad Astronomer review is very good, and it covers all of this stuff and more.
PS I love how the smiley shines through the mystical fog of the spoiler box. Very appropriate in this case.
…like the one poor schmuck who didn’t see the big turd coming from a mile away, suffering alone in a darkened theatre.
Waenara, I have to differ with a few of your comments in the above dissection of the movie. I’ll do so in a spoiler box, like so:
The core of the planet stopped spinning. For no real reason. And it stopped spinning very quickly. There is no real-world mechanism for this to happen.
It’s stated pretty clearly in the movie that a device made by the slimy scientist to create seismic disturbances for use in warfare caused the earth to stop spinning. Which fulfils the b-movie convention regarding impossibilities; if one mad scientist can break it, another mad scientist can fix it.
Supposedly you can “re-start” the spinning with the explosion of a single nuclear weapon within the core.
I had problems with this one, too, but I was pleased when the eventual solution was detonating several devices to create an augmented waveform. Also ridiculous, but more detailed.
If the core stops spinning the earth’s magnetic field ceases to exist. Probably correct, based on current models. But in the movie, this lack of a magnetic shield causes microwaves to fry the surface of the earth. This is wrong on several levels. First, in the movie these microwaves are very focussed beams that coincidentally hit major landmarks (the Colesseum, the Golden Gate Bridge), and not randomly over the surface of the earth. Second, the earth’s magnetic field DOES NOT block microwaves. Ever. They zip right through.
I believe that they referred not only to microwaves, but to cosmic rays. And exaggerated their effects greatly. The randomness of the occurrences was due to fluctuations in the magnetic field prior to collapse. And the reason that the populated areas got hit is that nobody reports on a section of the Sahara getting fried.
I mentioned the Golden Gate Bridge getting fried. In mid-span. In the movie this is shown with the two major “pillars” (in not sure exactly what they’re called) sort of melting inwards and leaning towards the center of the bridge. But a real suspension bridge that was suddenly missing its middle would buckle outwards, due to the stresses on the bridge.
Yeah, that’d be what happened. Too bad you weren’t a consultant on the project; it would have been fun to watch the cars being slingshotted off the bridge.
They have to build a ship to travel to the core to blow up their nuclear bomb to restart the core. Riiiiiight. Needless to say the pressure and temperature at such a great depth would make this impossible. The (actual) core makes the Marianas Trench look like a kiddie pool.
The properties of unobtainium were such that, as the pressure and temperature increased, the strenght of the hull did so as well, and produced electricity to boot. All explained in the shipbuilding montage sequence. Impossible? Sure. Explained? Well, in the context of the movie, yeah.
So to deal with this, they build a ship out of an indestructible metal called “unobtainium”. This in itself is a joke, because all comic book/movie “indestructible” metals (eg. adamantium from X-Men) have been collectively nickname “unobtainium”. No one would ever call a real metal that. This somewhat suggests that the moviemakers are poking fun at themselves, realizing this is a joke. But they’re taking themselves waaaaay to seriously for me to consider this.
They took themselves seriously, or you took them seriously. I laughed my butt off throughout this movie. It was a hoot.
When they’re in the core, their electrical power system fails. The brilliant-eye-candy scientist figures: “Hey! Our electricity is out. But there’s so much HEAT around us in the core! Heat = Energy! Energy = Electricity! We’ll just hook the electrical wiring up to the ship’s hull and power it that way!”
As I explained, Unobtainium generated electricity when exposed to heat and pressure. Clearly stated in the film. Also stated as being why, at the end of their trip, they didn’t have any power and spent a while stranded in the ocean. Not enough pressure to generate the power to run the engines.
I know there’s no accounting for taste, but criticising the movie for being scientifically inaccurate is kind of silly, seeing as you knew it wasn’t going to be Geology for Dummies going into it. But it was internally consistent; in its own little fantasy world of physics, it made sense. And that’s all I ask of science fantasy. If I can enjoy H. G. Wells, despite the fact that his science was wrong, I can certainly sit back and let movies like The Core wash over me.
It may have been bad science, but it was decent storytelling. And I’ll take storytelling over science in my movies any day. Heck, I enjoyed The Core about three times as much as The Matrix Reloaded, mostly because TMR spent half the movie shoving explanations for its pseudoscience down my throat. If you’re gonna make a science fantasy movie, don’t focus the entire movie on the science. Get it out of the way, and tell the damned story, already.
End of rant.
The trailer gave plenty of warning. Well, I guess my friends and I are a little bit MST3K bad-movie-watching masochists. We pretty much picked it because nothing else at the theatre looked good that one of us hadn’t seen already. And them being Geology students just made it seem like fate. At least I only wasted $5 (CDN) on it. And a gift certificate at that.
My previous post was supposed to go after Larry Mudd. MrVisible snuck in on me there. To follow up on his post:
I know that they tried to rationalize most of their science within the framework of the movie. And kudos, I guess, that they even did that.
But to pick one example:
If the unobtainium hull generates electricity when under heat/pressure, why didn’t they engineer the electrical system to run off that in the first place?
Don’t get me wrong, I can definitely laugh at a cheesy SF movie with the best of them. We did go see it after all. And being internally consistent is better than nothing, but I think it’s always better when they do a better job at incorporating REAL science into a movie. Like with the bridge example in the earlier spoilerboxes, things can be plenty cool without having to make up random stuff.
I love SF in general. But I hate it when people say “Well, it’s just SF. Writers can’t be expected to get all the science right.” But then when the writing is also less than stellar, some people say “Well, it’s just SF. You can’t expect great writing.” I just think that too often people combine the two, and you end up with a not-so-great plot, AND lack of real science.
Guilty pleasure stupid movies are sometimes fun. But I’d hope they’d aspire to more than that.
Here’s the previous thread about The Core, with lots of comments and reviews about the science and lack thereof.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=173305
I actually meant to add into my OP that this wasn’t any kind of scientific tour-de-force. If I want an accurate lecture on geology, I know where my local university is. I went in to be entertained, and entertained I was. For those of you saying that the trailers looked horrible and you have no intention of seeing it, I felt exactly the same way. The trailers do absolutely nothing for this movie - I expected “Armageddon - In the Earth This Time!” and was pleasantly surprised.
For those of you who can’t shut off your superior brains long enough to enjoy a bit of sci-fi fluff, well, I had an enjoyable Saturday afternoon watching the movie, and you didn’t. I think that puts me ahead.
Well, I can’t shut off my brain, but it seems I’m more forgiving than most people. While a lot of the comments people make are true, there are things like, “Unobtainium doesn’t really exist.” :rolleyes: I guess I’m more bothered by internal inconsistencies than by inconsistencies with real science; I don’t get upset with all the science fiction that allows for FTL travel, for instance.
Actually, my last post is kind of unfair. Disaster movies should try to be more realistic than your average science fiction movie, but they can get away with being less realistic than your average spy movie. Bad science alone cannot ruin a film for me. (Bad math, though, you’d better watch out.) 
Because it didn’t generate enough power for both the engines and the lasers needed to cut through the rock. And the power plant they had installed was sufficient for both. Additionally, the hull wouldn’t produce electricity until there was sufficient pressure and temperature, which couldn’t be obtained until they had power, which couldn’t be obtained until they had sufficient pressure and temperature…
But once you’ve established an impossible premise, like a movie about going to the core of the planet, you may as well make it fun, because the scientifically-inclined aren’t going to enjoy it no matter what you do.
Why? What’s wrong with fun?
I agree that it’s nice when the science is done better. And I agree that when science and storytelling are both absent (Like, say, for instance, in the Lost in Space movie) it sucks. But I’d rather see a movie that tells a good story and has weak science, than one that has good science and a weak story.
I liked it. As long as you watch it as Sci-Fi, it’s fun. They didn’t go breaking any rules that they had set forth for themselves, no deus ex machina or anything. If I’d gone in thinking “You can’t travel to the core of the earth…pbbbbbt!” I wouldn’t have liked it.