It Blew Watch: Dante's Peak (1998)

Watched:  09/08/2024

Format:  Amazon

Viewing:  First

Director:  Roger Donaldson

Selection:  Jamie

Here's the thing about writers freaking out about AI.  Studios have been trying to crush the artistry of scripts into predictable, soulless little packages since there was a great train robbery and someone said "yes, but what if it was a great carriage robbery?".  After all, studios are a business, not a local playhouse laboring under the idea that letting the local veterinarian have the solo in Pippin is "art".  And studios want as much guarantee of profit on an investment as possible.  

To this end, producers have routinely beaten writers until those writers produce a script that hits all the same points as the movie that made a ga-jillion dollars, maybe even a decade prior, essentially not understanding how Find/ Replace works in Word, if that's all they want to do.  AI can't take the abuse studios want to dole out, so maybe writers ARE safe- even as AI could produce a pitch that sounds convincingly real.  And would absolutely write this script without blinking a digital eyeball.

But in the 1990's, AI was limited to fantasy in Terminator movies.  And so it was in the 1990's that we received an endless roster of disaster, monster and other movies that were all basically The Abyss's lovechild with 70's disaster movies.  This is how we get scrappy, quirky travelling teams of misfits looking up to our normal, handsomer leader.  We get corporate meddlers who won't listen to pure-hearted scientists/ roughnecks, and then a finale with 45 minutes of consequences of not listening to Ed Harris/ Roy Scheider/ etc... at the start.  

Also - we *must* have a likable, tough woman who is also foxy and mostly drives the plot by existing in the first act and insisting on being there through the third.

Whether it's Armageddon or Twister or this movie - Dante's Peak (1998) - it was a 1990's formula.   A looming threat the audience is pretty aware will pop off in the last reel, a work partnership where there just might be a hint of romance, and then explosions.  Also, the guy is single because he's just difficult and too tied to his job, although we see no indication of that through the movie.  

I like Pierce Brosnan.  Linda Hamilton is considered tops here at The Signal Watch.  I don't begrudge either wanting to pay the bills - someone was going to star in this heap.  And why not spend a month or two in the mountains?  I would.  

Brosnan plays the Vulcanologist who has some volcano-related personal tragedy so he has a backstory.  Hamilton plays the overworked, scrappy single-mom to two absolutely terrible children.  Brosnan is in charming, relaxed guy mode, and Hamilton is left trying to play a role usually given to a flavor-of-the-week star in this era, but Brosnan was known to be middle-aged, so I'm not shocked they wanted to cast him against someone who was remotely age appropriate - although the script is trying to say Hamilton is maybe 30 here (she would have been about 40).

Like most movies in this pre-Google era, the science is both accurate and bended to meet the needs of the script.  Do geologists send a guy to go look at a volcano because there are weird readings?  I don't know.  Maybe.  Do they send a herd of geologists up to the blast zone?  Could not say. Are dead squirrels a bad sign when it comes to volcanos?  It seems unlikely, but okay.  Is a scientifically accurate movie about a volcano dramatic?  

Well... there's a lot of standing around before the volcano goes up.  Almost an hour.  We get treated to what's essentially a minor emergency when a geologist falls down a hill.  We see Brosnan and Hamilton attempt romantic chemistry to varying effect.  But mostly we see plot points imported from a dozen other movies - especially "You're a loose cannon and you cannot panic all these people in case you're wrong", which we know means "all who doubt our hero will be picked off, one by one, whether they were right or wrong when tragedy strikes."  

There is the suggestion that what you want to do when you are afraid a volcano is about to blow is stand on top of it, and that seems off to me, somehow.

We have to Jaws this thing.  Those evil town council people who only think about things like jobs... and money for the city...  are our stand-ins.  Our mayor (Hamilton) seems, frankly, very bad at her job, failing to be decisive and not just say "we should leave", a call that seems like a very good one in short order.  

The movie refuses to share the geography or lay out of this remote mountain town - so it's not til we're watching boulders rain down on White People Central (check out the crowd shots) that we find out - somehow the only exit out of town is a two-lane bridge.  Ie:  Anyone who had even driven into town would know - we can't evacuate the town in time at time of eruption, and we need to be overly cautious and do this *now*.  Instead, they spend 24 hours looking into poisoned drinking water sources - which seems like that alone would have driven everyone away, calling a town meeting (where the water is curiously pure), when the same message that got them there could also have told them to leave.

We also watch in mute horror as a 10 and 12 year old steal mom's car to find Grandma, hurling themselves into "shit kids in movies do so the movie can happen".

This is where you realize - this movie has given up on trying to be good.  The kids are now solely to blame for their own fates, because somehow "liquid magma" was not part of their vocabulary, and they refuse to understand their Grandma has a death wish.  

And so the last part of the movie is essentially like watching someone else ride the tram at Universal Studios in the Earthquake exhibit. We know our heroes and kids will be fine, but they must be *very near* calamity.  And this part is worth seeing, because the effects are a mix of practical, miniatures, optical and - I assume - a splash of digital.  I have no idea if this is how the world works when a volcano is coming down on your head.  I thought poison gas was a problem.  Burning hot ash.  Rocks.  And we get some of that?  Maybe.  I dunno.  

The thing you can't do in a volcano movie is *fight* the volcano, so it makes a movie about running away, which means you have to care about whether anyone makes it, and, friends.... this movie is not that movie.  You can't have Quint trying to get his revenge.  You can't blow up the volcano before it crashes into Earth.  And, honestly, my understanding is that we're incredibly bad at knowing a volcano is going to do its thing until it does it, so how much you can prepare is kind of a head scratcher.  And it makes having our geologists on site when they could get that data remotely a bit more perplexing.  You do not solve a volcano.  You solve an evacuation plan, Mayor Hamilton.

If you want a nod that they knew this movie was a turkey, there's a Wilhelm Scream during a key death scene.  

Anyway, I liked that Linda Hamilton exists, and is in the movie.  I liked the FX.  And that's what I liked about Dante's Peak, I guess.  But it is chock full of "that guy" actors.  And you will be exhausted remembering where you know "that guy" from.  But is is a good distraction as they go about churning through 90's movie moments.