I saw THE CORE! [not completely OT]

[Arnwyn]

Never could bring myself to watch Armageddon, I have to admit. The fellow sitting next to me HAD seen it, however, and was unequivocal in declaring The Core much, much better. His statement on that was: "This is actually a good movie."

Well, that's definitely promising. I had the misfortune of seeing Armageddon in the theatres, and I was *not* entertained. I thought The Core looked real Armageddon-like, but I am certainly buoyed by your comments, along with jonrog1's comments that the quality of The Core is quite a step up.

 

[FraserRonald]

In case anyone is interested, Sci Fi Dimensions has a relatively positive review at:

http://www.scifidimensions.com/Mar03/thecore.htm

I've been looking forward to this movie just based on the premise. I know little enough about science to be bothered by it. I hate turning off my critical faculties when I watch a movie--if it can't entertain me without treating me like an infant, I'm not interested, TV does that well enough--but jonrog1 has calmed my fears in that regard.

Besides, it's got Hilary Swank. Hilary Swank people!



edit for spelling

 

[Nail]

.... If you're reading and posting on these boards, you pretend to fight orcs in your basement. I'd ask for a little suspension of disbelief.

lol.

....see, its lines like this that come out of this guy. Go ahead: Tell me you don't want to hear more stuff like this. Try to tell me this sort of script wouldn't be worth seeing, instead shot-down by supposed science slip ups.......

BTW, and not that it's worth all that much, but this advanced-degreed geologist says that the science seems mostly plausable. And really, how much more RL science do you want from a movie?

 

[HalWhitewyrm]

You know, in all honesty, I wasn't even gonna give this flick even the benefit of the doubt. I'm not one for disaster movies, and while the shot of the Colosseum being detonated to kingdom come is cool, I've seen it a gagillion times already in all the trailers. Add to this that my wife simply hates blockbuster-type films, and the result is no Core for me, thank you.

HOWEVER...
The notion that one of "us" co-wrote the script is very, very cool. I haven't read the story hours in question, but I'll take a look. But simply the fact that it was a member of this commuity, both the ENWorld and the gaming in general, is reason enough for me to give it a chance now. Now in the theatres, though; at $9.00 a pop, my wife and I choose extremely carefully what we go see (and yes, we are the kind that does prefer to go see The Hours over Bringing Down the House or your Big Movie of the week). But once it comes out on DVD, I'll saunter over to my buddy's house with the big TV, the nice sound system, and while his wife and mine go do something wife-y, we'll sit down and cheer every time a natural disaster destroys a world landmark.

All kidding aside, my most sincere congrats to jonrog1.

 

[Xeriar]

Yes, after a while -- that's the theory of one of the mechanisms which in fact keeps the reversal stable. The idea is that the normal process has been at least temporarily disrupted. Not long enough to terminally affect the planet -- but planetary time is a bitch compared to biologic time. The big old timeclock planet couldn't care if the EM field hinked up for a year. We, on the other hand, would take whooping like a red-headed stepchild.

Well, I was giving a thought off the top of my head, my knowledge of geology isn't that thorough.

The nukes are used ... well, you're obviously physics-savvy enough. Tipping-point theory. Forget the mathematical term, but the old physics degree is a bit rusty.

I know what you mean, it still seems a rather small amount of explosive, in my opinion (considering the attempt).

Yeah, I wonder why that is. Space movies never take this kind of tech heat. Maybe once you've clean-and-jerked suspension of disbelief for the loss of bone density, etc., everything else is cake.

Well, I ragged on Firefly a bit for having purple lightning in space, arcing, even, though I still love the show (and hope it will come back *whimper*).

Armageddon was so terrible I don't even prefer to bother.

Mistype. I three-finger type (which is weird for a professional screenwriter, I know) and I flip b's and m's all the time. All my "from"s come out "form"s, too actually, which spellcheck never catches.

I suspected so, sorry for the quip. You are remarkably well informed on your writing, especially considering what can be said for a certain movie we've named above.

Ayuh. But living under one of those "eddies" would be a bitch. We use colloquialisms for the audience but that's essentially what we say -- although once again, we're going on the assumption this is not a standard-case scenario.

It's what makes a movie, it seems.

Speaking of junk science ...

There was a creationist getting his masters degree at SDSM&T (my school for awhile). I'm constantly amazed at how such intelligent people can get... clouded.

See, why couldn't the previous criticisms of the science been this literate? Instead I got an idiot living in his mom's basement name-calling.

It's neat in that it seems that weapon would have harnessed entropy itself on a large scale, somehow. That's like Heisenberg compensators and Warp Drive

I might be more skepticle if I didn't live through the past ten years.

Anyway, right again. Geologic time isn't a factor here. Who cares if tectonic instability occurs after we're all dead?

You don't know some of the geologists I do, it seems.

As to 1.) we're postulating that the exposure's going to be a lot higher than even the most extreme functional conditions. Broken system. That leads to 2.) the problem in the movie's not from the reversal -- but chaotic reversal's the first suspect, and what the extrapolated effects are based on.

Now, you put those relativistic guns back in those holsters, son -- you think I need that explained? I'm aware of that estimate, but personally I think we're going to have a bitch of a time coming up with the practical mass-driver idea.

It wasn't necessarily for you, sorry. Many things can be googled, but I find that that particular term usually suffers from more advanced explanations than it needs to.

Considering what we've done in the past twenty years, the next two hundred will have to prove interesting if we survive them.

And, I need to say again, all this matters not a whit to our average viewer. It's a fun ride a lot of people are digging. I just sleep better at night knowing I'm not treating the audience like chimps.

Ooooh pretty lights!

 

[Fast Learner]

jonrog, did you catch Hilary Swank on The Daily Show last night? She was extremely positive about the film (well, yeah, she's promoting it), especially pointing out how cool she thought it was that the film was "putting the science back in science fiction."

Of course then she went on to explain how the electromagnetic field around the core of the Earth had stopped spinning. I guess she's not responsible for putting the science back in.

I saw the film at a test screening here in AZ back in January. I really enjoyed it and definitely thought it was well written, especially the dialog. The actors were all excellent, as well, and the special effects were great.

The only suspension of disbelief issues I had were (a) the non-rigid "space" suit scenes (pretty sure that's instant crushy), and (b) the radio signals somehow reaching the surface (and vice versa). I felt everything else was nicely explained, even for a geek like me.

Well done!

 

[Sixchan]

Jonrog - I wasn't originally planning to see this movie, but now I might just change my mind - if only to check out you 1337 writing skilz

Well done!

I was planning on encouraging people not to see the movie. A talking ad for the Core was crashing my browser on a site on every page. But now I think I'll go see it. But I swear, I'll kill the first person who says "Electrical Superstorms" to my face. It'll be gone by tommorow though.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/

 

[dexterace]

(You can go as fast as you want, a trillion times the speed of light, or whatever, but the rest of the universe still sees you plodding along at .9999999... of c) [/B]

I just wanted to comment on this statement. You CANNOT go faster than the speed of light. What you are referring to of course is that the person travelling very fast is noticing length contraction in the direction of movement as compared to a map that was made by someone at rest (from the Earth). Of course that person on the earth will just see your time slow down, etc. Therefore, it's possible to travel around the Milky Way Galaxy in your lifetime, just that when you come back to Earth (if it's still there) it could be millions of years later. So it appears that you are travelling faster than the speed of light when you really are not. It is incorrect to say that you can go faster than the speed of light, because of one reason. If I were travelling in a fast spaceship and tried to go as fast as I could, I could still turn on a flashlight (or headlights, etc) and measure the beam's speed to be always the speed of light and that beam WILL be travelling faster than the spaceship (in vacuum). Everyone will agree, no matter what speed they are moving, that a beam of light will travel at the same constant speed (and that speed will always be faster than anything with mass).

 

[Dinkeldog]

Thanks, Dexterace, for reminding me why three quarters of physics was enough to send me happily skittering to my electrical circuits courses.

 

[Schmackboy]

CORE SCIENCE

Staggering to me that jonrog1, just trying to do a good job, could take so much guff from our RPG compadres. Sheesh, the guy worked his d20 off to entertain you with the most accurate science the studio system would allow him. Cut the man and the movie some slack. No one gets worked up over the science in that movie about the giant monkey discovered on an uncharted island or the other one where they shrink a submarine down and inject it into the President's bloodstream. Holy mackeral.

Now, for the know-it-alls, here's a little bit of vindication for Mr. Rogers:

From http://www.aintitcoolnews.com/

A big brained Geologist type examines the science and the story of THE CORE!

Hey Harry, long-time site visitor, first time poster. Call me Ted. Never felt I had a valid reason to share my opinions with you and your readership, but after seeing The Core, felt compelled to say something about this movie. I'm a talk radio co-host for a science news show, my academic background is in geology/oceanography (UC Berkeley). Love disaster movies, and am a nut for geophysics; needless to say I was long anticipating this movie. How often do you get to see geology itself as an antagonist?

However, I wasn't expecting to see an even remotely accurate depiction of earth science in this film. It's a movie, and I'm more than willing to suspend disbelief in such matters. Armageddon, Independence Day, you name it -- if you're into that kind of thing, you can enjoy them for storytelling value even if you like to nitpick scientific points of wild inaccuracy (Volcano notwithstanding that movie is a geologic and cinematic travesty).

From a science standpoint, The Core is pleasantly surprising. Regarding presentation of the facts, it's actually not too bad. This is not to say it doesn't take huge liberties for the sake of cinematic license - it does, naturally. But it does do a pretty good job, with some nice surprises in the way of geology. It may be the film's producers actually consulted some experts in the field, if that can be believed.

I'll try to keep this spoiler free. Not that there's much to spoil - I mean, anyone who's seen any disaster movie will know the general formula going in, and this movie doesnít screw with that time-honored tradition by throwing in 'twists' or having our heroes, god forbid, not save the earth in the end. The biggest surprise is the hefty running time of 145 minutes. I was expecting around 90 minutes, but no. Pretty much, this movie can be broken down into 1) figure out there's a problem with the core, 2) travel to the core, and 3) fix the core. No surprises there. 30 minutes for each segment would be standard treatment, but the movie didn't suffer for the length and I found myself enjoying it enough that I didn't get up to pee, even though the theater was so empty I wouldn't have had to crawl over 20 sets of toes to do so.

So, the core has stopped spinning due to a lightly-touched-on and little-explained secret weapon project designed to produce earthquakes in enemy countries. 'Somehow' this has stopped the core, and since stopping the core is the only purpose of this plot device, it is left at that, which is fine. Geniuses are called in to address the problem, a rogue scientist who just happens to have been designing a ship to travel into the earth is recruited, and bang, we're off to the core. Once there, nuclear weapons will be set off to get the core spinning again, and all will be right with the world. As per usual these days, we know this all from the trailers.

I came for the disaster, but I stayed for the science. As I said earlier, it's surprisingly not that bad. Depicting the interior of the earth, for long periods of screen time, is a daunting challenge I imagine if one wants to keep it fairly accurate while not boring the audience to tears. Rocks, even molten rocks, are not the most exciting of villains, and that's all we get in the way of bad guys. There's no-evil-people-trying-to- sabotage-our-heroes-only-to-get-thwarted-in-the-end in this film (which I did expect to see - they even set one of the characters up for it, but he turns out to be a hero too, which was another pleasantly surprising aspect). Rocks, and just rocks, are what we have to contend with here. And there are a lot of exterior (interior?) shots of the ship moving through various layers of the earth. They give you just enough Geology 101 to explain the different layers the ship is moving through, and make it good eye-candy while still sticking to what we know about geomorphology at these depths (which, as the characters often point out, 'we just don't know for sure what it's like down there' which is true, to a point).

The biggest complaint I overheard grumbled by fellow theater-goers on my way out, as well as voiced by my wife (who I at least got the opportunity to geek out with and explain things to afterward) was that the ship they used was just totally impossible. Not true. In fact, if we really wanted to, we could probably have built a ship similar to the one shown in the film about twenty years ago. Temperatures and pressures much higher than those encountered in the earth's core are regularly contained, and have been for some time, in experimental fusion reactors (like the ones at Lawrence Livermore Labs) for some decades now. It could be done, there's just no good reason to go to all the expense to do so in reality. And while such a ship could, and I stress could (it would be prohibitively expensive and would require not-insubstantial materials research and development), it was amusing that they just came out and said that the ship was made from a material called 'unobtanium.' Yes, unobtanium. The old sci-fi put-down, they just came out and said it. I chuckled.

Sure, using nuclear weapons to jump-start the core was a cop-out, but I can't think of a better one as far as telling a story goes. The 1,000 megatons they used in this movie would in reality be just another drop in the bucket in the naturally-occurring whitenoise of magma displacement in the earth's interior. 1,000 megatons is nothing on a planetary scale. (Read up on the Yellowstone supervolcano if you're interested in not going to sleep tonight. This puppy is set to blow real soon and take out most of North America with it - yes, really.)

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But then again, what does a Berkeley geologist know?