Supervolcano (2005)

I came upon this today while clicking through the channels and was amazed how good it was.A volcano is a difficult subject for a film because there's not going to be a scene where the hero defeats it. The best that he can hope for is to outrun it (Pierce Brosnan in DANTE'S PEAK) or find a way to divert the lava flow (Tommy Lee Jones in VOLCANO). But that doesn't give the audience the same satisfaction as seeing Ripley in the original ALIEN launch the monster into the vacuum of space.Based on the program that came on after the movie, this is an all too possible event. The last time it blew its top was some 600,000 years ago. It may be another 600,000 or it could be tomorrow.The movie isn't meant to be fun. It's a very sober examination of the fact that despite all our technology we stand helpless against Nature's wrath.It helps that the Canadian cast was totally unfamiliar to me. There weren't any actors that I could figure always/never get killed off in this.No heroes. No bad guys. Just people trying to muddle through the best they can.It reminded me of an excellent movie called THREADS that dealt with the threat of nuclear war in a mature, hysteria free manner.Way to go, Discovery Channel.

This is one of the scariest films I've ever seen. It's one of the best in the disaster film genre, light years better than anything that Irwin Allen ever did. It involves scientists studying and then warning of an impending volcanic eruption of Old Faithful at Yellowstone Park. The script was logical and completely believable, and the special effects were well-done. My only complaint was that the acting was mediocre, but the actors are not the primary focus of attention. This is clearly something that could happen in real life. However, it's important to know that what's displayed in this film is the worst possible thing that could happen, and several factors would have to come together for the events in this film to become a reality.

This was hyped up with a massive amount of trailers and one of the things I dislike about a lot of programmes these days is the hype they receive . I also noticed it was one of those very multinational productions like THE GRID so I was expecting a very mid Atlantic flavour full of bed hopping , mawkishness , action scenes , really poor dialogue and of course a happy ending but what I got was something unexpected The first episode is a bizarre mix involving soap opera , disaster movie build up and an episode of the BBC science show HORIZON . The characters are introduced and some of them are interviewed for camera . Instantly I thought this was a mistake since the interviews are conducted in the past even ie if they are interviewed then we know they'll be seeing the final credits and won't die . However when the supervolcano erupts setting off a chain reaction of other volcanic eruptions it becomes clear that the interviewees are out of the line of fire and the ones in danger haven't been interviewed hence they might die . So much for my conclusion that we'll be having an optimistic ending . What does become clear is that the human race may suffer the fate of the dinosaurs ! SUPERVOLCANO is gripping , informative and downbeat . It's maybe not as shocking as the BBC docudrama THREADS but in its own way it's just as effective . It's not flawless , for example the special effects look a little too like CGI in some scenes and there's bits that just don't ring true like people in Britain stocking up on food and water in the face of a coming disaster , sorry but we don't do that in this country - We just sit back in an apathetic manner in front the television with a cup of tea in our hands . Brits give fatalism a bad name . If I have one serious problem then it's the fact the narrative is too short . We find out that the ash in the atmosphere has blocked out much of the suns light meaning we have a " Nuclear winter " effect whereby even at the height of Summer the Earth's temperature will cool leading to all sorts of geographical disasters like famine in the third world where millions will die but this is only referred to in passing while another effect - The collapse of the American economy and all that entails - is not mentioned at all . But despite the flaws this is a pretty good speculative drama simply because iit's all too credible

Mild Spoiler Alert!!!The first wrong note this speculative drama started with was the ridiculous holographic display. The excuse that this was set in "the near future" doesn't work as everything else in the film is exactly as they are today. Then an unusual number of British actors appeared in roles that should have been casted to American actors. That probably doesn't make much of a difference to the non-English speaking backers of this film. Then we get inserted "interviews" like they do in those crime re-creation shows. The writing is frequently not very good and the actors were suffering for it. The shock edit techniques got tiresome early on. One actor seemed to have been instructed to imitate Mr. Scott from Star Trek. The whole thing was getting like those bad made-for-TV movies on the Sci-Fi Channel here. I was ready to find something else to watch.Then the first eruption happens and suddenly the film take a good turn. It gets very tense and urgent. The tone changes for the better and stays that way until about 10 minutes before the end when the film loses focus again.The science is much better than anything out of the Hollywood disaster machine lately. But that really isn't much to be proud of. Just turning by on the Weather Channel after the film was premiered, you could easily see that if a similar event happened just then, the outcome would be much different. Most of the ash would be deposited in Cannda, not that that wouldn't be with out it's own set of problems for the world.By the end I was wondering what the point of it all was. I had the strange feeling that this was all some sort of British fantasy about the lousy yanks getting their just desserts. Sort of like how "Rocky" was really a white boys revenge fantasy on African Americans. Or the many Hollywood films of the 1980's and 90's where the black character is killed off halfway thru the film as a subtle way to tell African-Americans that it wasn't a good idea to be heroic or try to be successful. Interestingly, something like this happens in Supervolcano when the ONLY black character in the film is killed by the volcano.On a technical note, the film was shown in a 3 hour time slot with plenty of commercial breaks and a 30 minute mini-documentary hosted by Tom Brokaw. I assume that nothing was cut.