The Core (2003)

Earth's bowels are moving and humanity will be wiped away

What are some advantages to being familiar with Los Angeles?

You’ll know where all the good food trucks park. You’ll know the best spots for celebrity sightings. You’ll know the quickest road to take if you want to experience the beach and the mountains on the same day.

All of that is terrific, but knowing the layout of LA really comes in handy if you’re piloting a space shuttle to Cape Canaveral and, because of freak activity in the Earth’s electromagnetic field, you suddenly find yourself over California descending rapidly towards West Hollywood.

That’s the scenario NASA astronauts encounter at the beginning of The Core, a movie widely ridiculed as the most scientifically inaccurate of all time.

Fortunately, one of the astronauts aboard the shuttle is Beck Childs (Hilary Swank), a plucky young pilot who not only “knows LA”, she also brought a map of it with her to space and while everyone else is in shock, she quickly lands the shuttle in a shallow stretch of the LA river which viewers who know LA will recognize from scenes in Grease and Terminator 2: Judgement Day.

Having saved the shuttle, Beck Childs is now a hero and is recruited into a secret government mission to pilot a giant drill bit to the centre of the Earth? Why is that happening? Ah, let me explain.

The Plot: Chaos everywhere! All across the world everybody’s watch stops at the same time and pigeons are going bananas!

It gets worse! A lightening storm destroys the Roman Coliseum and a hole in atmosphere melts the Golden Gate Bridge!

Soon the Pentagon forces good guy scientist Dr. Keyes (Aaron Eckhart) and bad guy scientist Dr Zimsky (Stanley Tucci) to jointly determine what the trouble is and boy is the news ever not good!

Turns out that the Earth’s core has stopped spinning and if it doesn’t get moving soon the planet will lose its electromagnetic field which means the pretty lights of the aurora borealis will turn into mass extinction death rays.

Keyes and Zimsky both determine that the only way to fix this problem is to burrow a ship down to the Earth’s core and set off a really big nuclear bomb.

But how could you ever design a vessel that could tunnel to the core without melting?

Don’t worry, the Pentagon knows just the guy! Dr Brazzelton (Delray Lindo) is a scientist who makes ships out of “Unobtainium”,¹ a metal that converts heat into energy . The military writes him a check for 15 billion dollars and very soon the three doctors, Hilary Swank and two other characters who only exist to be killed off (Bruce Greenwood and Tchéky Karyo) are on their way to the centre of the Earth.

The Core was released in 2003, an epic, epic year for terrible movies. It was the year of The Real Cancun, From Justin to Kelly, House of the Dead, House of 1000 Corpses, Cat in the Hat and Gigli. And yet it was the Core that caught the attention of Dustin Hoffman when he started campaigning against bad science in Hollywood movies. A subsequent survey of 100 scientists labeled the Core as the most scientifically inaccurate film of all time!

But is the science in the Core really that bad?

Screenwriter John Rogers has written a spirited defense of his film where he claims to have used a lot of accurate facts and laments that he had to rewrite a script full of ridiculous stuff such as dinosaurs living in the mantle and characters swimming through lava in space suits. If you are interested in reading his argument, this is the link https://legacy.aintitcool.com/node/14288

Truthfully, watching the Core has led me to reflect on just how little I actually know about science and geology, especially when I reflect on the fact that I would have wanted the dinosaurs and lava swimming left in the movie. Those both sound pretty cool.

The Tea: Fill a magnetic tea ball with the loose leaf of your choice. Or fill it with Kool-Aid powder, don’t underestimate your ability to self determine.

The Snack: Lava cake is the obvious choice, but since the fate of life as we know it is at stake, up the ante by serving Baked Alaska, Bombe glacée or Layer Cake designed to look like planet Earth

1. Note: This movie used unobtanium six years before Avatar!