I'm glad Professor Questa invoked Newton's 4th Law. I can't bear to think about what would have happened if he didn't.
There's quite a bit of kit that needs to be rebuilt from scratch. We lost 2 mole pods and the RAD. I should have plenty of parts to rebuild the pods, but the RAD uses more specialist components, so I might have to ask Virgil if he can pick some up. Therefore rebuilding the RAD might take a little longer (although I can't complain too much if it means that Scott can't throw me out of Thunderbird 1 again. Although when has that ever stopped him?)
I would also like to reach out to Professor Questa and see if I can help him get more funding for his research. Especially now that we know that Hromundarfdinhurmindur is active, it's very important to have someone monitoring it.
Also, MAX keeps playing melancholy music around the lab, so maybe I'll have to invite the Professor and Fritzy to the island, even if just to get MAX's spirits up.
This was a color wheel thing I did. It's currently the profile pic for my main account. Made this at the start of 2024, should probably update my profile pic now haha
I was going to do a whole disaster movie themed weekend but in the end I only watched four of them (and all ones I'd seen before). So over the next few weeks there might be some disaster movie discussion as I make my way through my extensive list of the greatest disaster movies of all time (although, on the Vulture list of the greatest disaster movies of all time, it does not include Twister, like… I'm sorry, but is that masterpiece not considered a disaster film?).
I decided to start with Dante's Peak and pair that with Volcano, as they were both released in 1997. I do not own DP and haven't seen it since… the 90s? Maybe? If not the 90s, then the early 2000s. And because I wanted to watch it – I was determined to watch it on Friday night – and my usual source of movies for free yielded me nothing, I actually rented it through YouTube and I've gotta say, in a pinch – not bad! Yeah, it cost me $4 but the quality was great and I was able to watch the movie I specifically wanted to watch that night.
Anyway, let's get into the nonstop thrill ride that is Dante's Peak, starring Pierce Brosnan, Linda Hamilton and literally nobody else notable!
Plot:
Pierce Brosnan is the best volcanologist in the biz. He works for… Geology USA! (I forget the official title so I'm giving it a jazzy new one) as a dude who goes out and investigates volcanoes, so, literally, a volcanologist.
Anyway they get a report about this supposedly dormant volcano Dante's Peak, which overlooks the town of… Dante's Peak. And I want to say this is in upstate Washington perhaps? But honestly, I'm not really sure. Could be Oregon. One of those north-western states. Green, lush, picturesque, mountainous, complete with a quaint, small American town where everything is about to go to FUCKING SHIT.
So Pierce rocks up into town and Linda Hamilton is like, "Tear me off a piece of that," and I'm like, "Get it girl."
She's the town mayor so she takes him on a sightseeing tour, complete with her two obnoxious children, and they go up to meet her ex-mother-in-law who actually lives on the mountain. It's up there that they decide to go for a swim when they find two people who have been goddamn boiled to death in a volcanic hot spring.
Honestly, the scene of those two poor bastards boiling to death is really the only thing seared into my memory of this movie. When I think of this movie, I think about those two experiencing one of the worst deaths of all time, and I know they're not real but people have died that way and it would suck so hard.
Anyway, Pierce is like, "There's something wrong with your mountain, let's call a town meeting.” So they have this meeting and the townspeople are like, "are you guys fuckin' serious," and then Pierce's boss rolls in all, "all right guys I feel like James Bond has gotten a little too carried away on this one," and Pierce is like, "well I do NOT agree so I will hang around town to prove that I am right and you are wrong (and also to bang Linda Hamilton)".
Then… what the fuck happens? I watched it five days ago and I'm blanking, because all the ridiculous stuff happens towards the end and the first two-thirds of the movie are pretty boring.
Okay, so the boss dude who doesn't believe Pierce is like, "this volcano ain't doin' shit, we're packing up and leaving," and Pierce is very, very mad about this but happy enough to flirt with Linda Hamilton, and that's when they discover that the town water has turned to sludge.
WELL. Pierce is HOPPING MAD at this point, let me tell you, because god damn it he was RIGHT and everyone else was WRONG.
So they call a town meeting and they're like, "Listen guys, the volcano is about to fuck yo shit up," and the townspeople are like, "Our volcano is dormant, that means it's DEAD, that means NOTHING BAD WILL HAPPEN," and Pierce is like, "Guys, seriously," and THEN there's a massive earthquake because TIMING IS EVERYTHING.
There's a bit of a stampede, and everyone runs out to the front of the town hall/high school (wherever it was they were having the meeting), and sure enough, Dante's fuckin' Peak is blowing up like a mother-fucker. The townspeople immediately descend into PANICCCCC and start piling into their cars to try to escape, meanwhile there's a huge earthquake going on, buildings are falling down, shit is descending into madness and then Linda Hamilton is all, "I left the kids at home. Gonna need to get the kids."
So Pierce is like RIGHT LET'S GET THE KIDS, and then of course it's chaos on the roads, and shit is collapsing – I mean, things are deteriorating – and of course when they get to the house the kids aren't there. Why? They went to rescue Grandma up on the mountain because she was too stubborn to leave.
And like, this is the most realistic thing, because often in disasters people ARE too stubborn to leave, but like… fuck that. I'll be taking my cats and noping THE FUCK OUT OF THERE, thank you very much. Honestly, if I was living in this town, I would've left the second the geologists turned up. Ain't no volcano is gonna get me.
So they're driving up this mountain, and the earthquake is still happening, and the volcano is still erupting, and then they make it through just as half of the mountain collapses behind them, but there's Grandma's house, still bloody standing (of course, everything else is collapsing but not Grandma's house, and the kids have made it there totally unscathed – like sure, okay, sure a volcano is going off and this fucking 12 year old drove a truck up the mountain during a massive earthquake but sure, okay, they're fine. So they reunite but then, what's this? FUCKING LAVA.
Fucking lava, flowing down the mountain like a motherfucker. And the road is cut, so they can't get out that way, and they don't have a car, but they do have a boat and a lake, so they pile into the boat and start across the lake. But what's this? The fucking lake is ACID.
It's basically a game of what can go wrong will go wrong at this point.
So the boat is taking on acid water, and they're trying not to burn themselves, but they're getting closer to the dock on the other side of the lake and the propeller disintegrates. And then Grandma, who SINGLEHANDEDLY GOT THEM ALL INTO THIS MESS – yes Grandma I'M READING YOU TO FILTH – gets out and drags the boat ashore, burning the fuck out of herself in the process.
Because ACID.
I mean like, they probably could've made it without her doing that? They really didn't have far to go.
Can I just say, at this point – if Pierce Brosnan had not come to this town, literally all of these people would've died horrible volcanic deaths.
Then they've got to walk down the mountain – the lava stopped at the lake, I guess? – and Grandma dies, and then they find a truck which Pierce hotwires – he's amazing – and they're tootling down the hill when all of a sudden LAVA. FUCKIN' LAVA AGAIN.
You'd think this volcano was erupting or something with all this fuckin' lava, I mean, I don't know.
And then, in possibly the most ridiculous part of the movie, PIERCE BROSNAN DRIVES HIS TRUCK THROUGH THE LAVA AND ALSO RESCUES A DOG WHILST DOING SO.
I MEAN.
Guys.
Like.
It's lava. It'll fuck your shit up. THERE IS NO WAY THE CAR WOULDN'T FUCKING MELT INTO THE FUCKING LAVA. THAT THE WHEELS WOULD KEEP TURNING. THERE IS NO WAY. LAVA IS VERY HOT.
If there's one thing I know about lava, it's that it's VERY HOT. And sure, it burns the tyres off and they're driving on rims, but like, IT STILL MELTS METAL THOUGH? Because it's VERY HOT.
ANY-WAY. I had a problem with this during the worst movie I have ever seen (Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, seriously, JW:FK, go fuck yourself to death), and I have a problem now with Dante's Peak not representing lava accurately.
MEANWHILE back at the town the Geology USA team is making their escape across the bridge – apparently there's only one way in and out of this town? Seems like a mistake – and of course, all of this sludge and trees and chaos is descending from the mountain because all of the snow is melting, there are landslides, etc etc.
So they're driving across the bridge in a convoy and the first two trucks make it across but not the van holding the boss dude from the start – remember the guy that was totally fucking wrong about the volcano? HIM – because the bridge starts breaking apart. And then he just sits in the van, and they're all like, "OH NO," and I'm like, "GET OUT AND JUMP!! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!" and THEN he gets out but by then it's too late because the bridge flips over and he dies.
LIKE.
WHY NOT TAKE TWO CARS, GUYS?
It's quite frustrating when these deaths could have been avoided by simply taking less cars.
Anyway, Pierce, Linda, the kids and the dog have made it back into the town, but the volcano is going to hardcore blow its load any minute. They stop to grab this radio thing and of course then the volcano is like "FUUUUUUUUUCCCKKKKKKKKK" (this volcano is big on TIMING, okay) and unleashes almighty hell, and then they've got to drive their beat up, tyre-less piece of shit truck into a mine shaft for safety, and then Pierce forgets the fucking radio thing so he has to go BACK, but the mine shaft collapses, yada yadayada, and then they're rescued.
In summation, they would've died a bunch of times in this movie, but honestly, even driving into a mine shaft wouldn't save you from a pyroclastic flow – I mean, MAYBE it would? But I don't think it would. They weren't that deep inside. I just don't know.
Look, it's… okay. Personally, I think Volcano is the superior movie. DP is possibly a touch more realistic (setting aside the lava driving)? It is based on the St Helens' volcano, though I think the DP version is sped up in terms of shit going from normal to catastrophic.
I mean, the thing that gets me is the lava, like, guys, like… it's super hot. I just feel like lava has been misrepresented in certain movies as not being hot, but it is though. IT IS SO HOT. I just don't believe you could drive a car through it. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe there's a Mythbusters episode. I don't know.
Seriously though, the Wikipedia page for the eruption of Mt St Helens is totally worth a read. Volcanoes are FUCKING SCARY.
