Bad science is a universal feature of films. Bad geology is less common (probably due to the fact that geology is hardly a subject to get the heart rate racing) but when it is found it is often so wrong that geologists everywhere wail at the cinema screen in frustration. Here is my countdown of some of the biggest howlers.
HONOURABLE MENTION; QUANTUM OF SOLACE
The moment where 007 picks up a rock and looks at it before confidently concluding that river used to be here. The excitement! James Bond, the coolest man in the entire world, is a secret geologist! Archaeology has Indiana Jones as its champion, palaeontology has Ross from friends, physics has Mr Fantastic and all geology had Professor Lidenbrook (and admit it - you haven't even heard of him). No longer! Now we can claim James Bond as one of our own.
#5 JURASSIC PARK
Along with Harry Potter, Friends and Sharkey and George, Jurassic Park holds a special place in the hearts of my generation. For that reason I was somewhat reluctant to include the film but, despite such sentimentality, it has to be acknowledged that the film is based on some seriously dubious science. Firstly Jurassic Park is a misnomer as, while some of the dinosaurs do belong in the Jurassic, most of the dinosaurs featured in the film are actually Cretaceous in age. It is difficult to see how one mosquito could have bitten dinosaurs separated, in theory, by over 150 million years. Secondly many of the biological features of the dinosaurs are simply wrong. All valid points but, I admit, pedantic ones and ones only geologists and palaeontologists would care about. The bigger issue with Jurassic Park is the concept of cloning dinosaurs from DNA extracted from a 200 million year old mosquito trapped in amber. This simply is not possible. However as many films are based on impossible premises and it would be churlish of me to pick on this revered film which is why, despite its bad science, it only sneaks into number five.
#4 THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW
Because climate change is that quick.
#3 TREMORS
The monsters in this film, according to the romantic interest (who is a geologist and should know better), “predate the fossil record”. That would be the fossil record that stretches back 3.8 billion years when all there was anyway were single celled organisms that didn’t even breathe oxygen?
#2 ARMAGEDDON
A nuclear bomb, provided it is big enough, can solve any sort of problem in America. You need to get rid of some aliens? No problem, just send a nuclear missile screaming their way. That’ll show the little green buggers not to mess with the good old US of A. There’s a meteor heading your way? No worries. Just send a load of oil riggers (oil riggers? The USA spends billions on their military and space agencies. I think someone in the American government needs to take an urgent look at how all that money is spent. Clearly they aren’t getting value for money if the best people they have are a bunch of rednecks) into space with a nuclear bomb, which (after sufficient setbacks and drama of course) will blow the meteor into bits which will conveniently and harmlessly tumble past Earth. Surely, even if the meteor could be blasted into bits, wouldn’t the problem shift from dealing with one big meteorite to dealing with numerous smaller meteors which are now highly radioactive?
#1 THE CORE
The Core is a towering example of how to take seize an exciting idea (in this case journeying to the centre of the earth), fail to consult any geologists (despite the main character is one and surely geologists are the kind of people who would know about the centre of the earth), and create a film that is so incredibly inaccurate even my sister commented on it. I can get over the whole travelling to the centre of the earth. It’s a film after all and I’m not that much of a pedant (well, for a geologist anyway). I can accept the concept of the collapse of the earth’s magnetic field. I can even tolerate the use of a nuclear bomb to restart the Earth’s core. After all this is an American film and as I already have pointed out nuclear bombs are the answer to all of America’s problems. Even Russia. No, The Core earns its enviable number one spot due to one scene and one scene only. Imagine it. The small (and good looking) crew are powering through the Earth’s mantle in their unobtainium ship, protected from the massive temperatures and pressures as they swerve past thrillingly large diamonds. Then, alas! They soar into a massive void and crash into a mass of huge crystals. A void? In the Earth’s mantle? Had the film producers even talked to a geologist? Clearly not for then the crew go out of their vessel and inspect the damage to the engines. This got one of my geologist friends so riled up he threw his (thankfully empty) pizza box at the screen. For the non-geologist the pressures in the mantle are in the range of a million times that at the surface and the temperature is at least a couple of thousand degrees. Not an agreeable environment for humans. In fact, at those conditions, a human would be simultaneously crushed to the size of a matchbox and vapourised. And how do the plucky crew protect themselves? By donning suits that appear to be made of canvas. Enough said.
