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bedlamsbardI am pretty sure Volcano is one of the most perfect disaster movies ever filmed, along with Dante's Peak. Coincidentally, they both came out the same year, 1997, which was apparently a good year for disaster movies about volcanoes on the West Coast.
I haven't seen a lot of recent disaster movies because they either look entirely ridiculous or have been politicized or both, but Volcano manages to do something that I'm of the opinion is almost impossible in today's movies: despite the fact that it's about a volcano destroying half of Los Angeles, it's really a movie about the essential goodness and heroism of the human spirit against unspeakable odds. It's an uplifting movie. I come away from it feeling good, smiling even. It's apparently been criticized for being scientifically inaccurate, but its accuracy or lack thereof isn't an essential part of the movie: the whole idea isn't, "What caused a freaking volcano to erupt in the middle of Los Angeles?", but, "Okay, there's a volcano, I'll worry about why it's here later, right now we have to save lives." The whole movie is action/reaction, and it's extremely refreshing against the backdrop of a lot of more recent movies, where the message tends to be, "The human race caused every problem ever, and NOW MOTHER EARTH IS MAKING YOU PAY MWAHAHAHAHAHA."
I am pretty sure that if Volcano had come out in 2007 rather than 1997, Los Angeles would be completely destroyed, half the population would have died, and it would have been blamed on the federal and state government screwing around with California in a scientifically impossible way. And global warming. (I doubt the characters would have been significantly different, except that Tommy Lee Jones would probably have been killed by lava after declaring that they could reroute the lava flow to save lives, instead of emerging heroically from rubble after saving a baby. Also blowing up a building and a street.)
Sometimes it is very reassuring to know that sometimes, Hollywood makes movies about how fucking awesome people can be. (On the same note, Live Free or Die Hard (last night's movie!) was a great antidote to freaking Avatar.)
For the non-Pacific Northwesterners out there: damn straight that is a volcano in my icon. Out here, we make 'em pretty.
I haven't seen a lot of recent disaster movies because they either look entirely ridiculous or have been politicized or both, but Volcano manages to do something that I'm of the opinion is almost impossible in today's movies: despite the fact that it's about a volcano destroying half of Los Angeles, it's really a movie about the essential goodness and heroism of the human spirit against unspeakable odds. It's an uplifting movie. I come away from it feeling good, smiling even. It's apparently been criticized for being scientifically inaccurate, but its accuracy or lack thereof isn't an essential part of the movie: the whole idea isn't, "What caused a freaking volcano to erupt in the middle of Los Angeles?", but, "Okay, there's a volcano, I'll worry about why it's here later, right now we have to save lives." The whole movie is action/reaction, and it's extremely refreshing against the backdrop of a lot of more recent movies, where the message tends to be, "The human race caused every problem ever, and NOW MOTHER EARTH IS MAKING YOU PAY MWAHAHAHAHAHA."
I am pretty sure that if Volcano had come out in 2007 rather than 1997, Los Angeles would be completely destroyed, half the population would have died, and it would have been blamed on the federal and state government screwing around with California in a scientifically impossible way. And global warming. (I doubt the characters would have been significantly different, except that Tommy Lee Jones would probably have been killed by lava after declaring that they could reroute the lava flow to save lives, instead of emerging heroically from rubble after saving a baby. Also blowing up a building and a street.)
Sometimes it is very reassuring to know that sometimes, Hollywood makes movies about how fucking awesome people can be. (On the same note, Live Free or Die Hard (last night's movie!) was a great antidote to freaking Avatar.)
For the non-Pacific Northwesterners out there: damn straight that is a volcano in my icon. Out here, we make 'em pretty.
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Date: 2010-05-29 05:55 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-29 09:21 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-30 05:32 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-30 06:12 am (UTC)