Sci-Fi (Almost) Sunday: The Core

First, I must confess, I have seen The Core before. Twice, in fact.

My first viewing of The Core was probably in 2004/5, a year or two after it had been released in cinemas and flopped incredibly. The television was being particularly uninteresting and this was the best they had to offer. The main memory I have of it was falling asleep half-way through out of boredom. Not exactly a great endorsment.

The second time I saw it was sometime in 06/07. In science class.
Everyone knows, watching a movie in class is always good, even when they're just boring educational nonsense, because sitting in a dark room, the teacher doesn't know (and usually doesn't care) if you're paying attention or not. I thought that seeing as I didn't see the ending last time, I should pay attention to parts of it. Plus our teacher said that this way we could learn about the different levels of the core of the earth. To this day, I couldn't tell you anything remotely sciency I learned from watching The Core. In fact, scientists voted The Core to have the worst basis in science for a science fiction movie.

Sciencey.

So it must have lots of other cool stuff to make up for the complete disregard for science, right? ...Not really. As far as disaster movies go, The Core is strong on the doomsday, but rather light on the explosions. The acting is decent, but not even Two-Face and Hilary Swank, I mean, Aaron Eckhart and Hilary Swank can make this movie any more than bearable. There's also "the guy who was in The Devil Wears Prada" (Stanley Tucci) as the movie's annoying guy, "the guy who's been in a dozen of my favourite tv shows" (DJ Stanley) as the computer nerd, and "that French guy from all those French films" (Tchéky Karyo) as the weapons specialist.

Two-Face talking about sciencey things. Next he plays a trumpet.

That's right, weapons. Because you see, the core of the earth is said to be made of molten metal, which spins around and around and around and keeps the planet doing whatever it is that keeps us alive, until one day it stops. So the plan is that they build a ship to take them to the core of the planet, so they can detonate some nukes to get it running again. Very sciencey. They conveinently skip through the 3 month building process, explaining it all in very simple terms, so in the end none of it really makes sense. Eventually they get there after lots of stuff goes wrong and lots of people die and they save the planet! Which is such a surprise.


Ultimately you're going to have to see it for yourself, just to witness the complete disregard they have for even basic science principles. And that's what makes it watchable, in the end. It's so bad it's bearable. Watching them trying to explain the vacuum inside the earth filled with amethyst is hilarious, and much fun can be brought from guessing who dies first (and next). And don't forget the whales (you'll have to discover that on your own).

And you thought I was joking.