(Images courtesy of Wikipedia).
THIS Bad Science Film Night featured 2 versions of Jules Verne’s Journey into the Centre of the Earth, one from 1959 and one from 2008, with as venue Britain’s best living room J. The old version was watched in great detail with a lot of comments by the landlord, the second was skipped through in 5 minutes as it was actually not interesting at all and will only be mentioned shortly hereafter. Clearly the 1959 version won!
The start of the film is set in Edinburgh, which happens to be the place where our landlord studied and has some opinions about! Professor Oliver Lindenbrook (James Mason) is given an interesting rock by one of his students (Alec McEwan or Pat Boon) which according to him must have come from Iceland, but more interestingly, has a plumb bob inside with an inscription. It appears to originate from Arne Saknussem, an Icelandic adventurer who had the goal to travel into the centre of the Earth, only 300 years ago. Together, they make the plan to travel the same journey and set off to Iceland. The first difficulties start with a Swedish professor, but they are safed by Hans and Gertrude, the actual hero of this story, even though she is a duck!
They descend into the volcano then, accompanied by Gertrude, Hans and Carla, a professors widow who will amaze everyone by wearing a corset to the centre of the Earth! A brilliant first quote: “We’re not having Pat Boon with an accordion going down the mountain!” and “An Indiana Jones moment; this is where they got it all from in those films!” together with “Let us rest to have a cup of tea”. After all, they are British. They descend into one of Iceland’s volcano’s and travel down, walking all the way (more than 6000 km!). They travel through open cracks with huge crystals, where water flows and trees grow and can still swim at 129 km depth down. There they are in THE LIMESTONE formation, after only 21 days of walking. How they manage to carry all their food for the whole journey remains a miracle! In the meantime, they get sabotaged, people get lost and separated, which makes them use the echo of a bullet to determine the direction where they can find Alec, yeah right. Following this, they travel through luminescent algae and very strong winds. On the 256th day (how do they get their drinking water?!) they walk through a magic mushroom forest which they use for cooking and eat on porcelain bowls they brought with them!
After a while, they reach a huge ocean, which originates according to them from the fact that a huge earthquake ruptured the surface of the Earth, making fissures through which water flew down to the centre of the Earth. Here they are welcomed by giant reptiles “What the hell has that been eating?!” and they quickly float away on some kind of wooden built thing. They float up to the junction of the south and north pole where metallic objects are levitating and they get into a vortex going down which spits them out on a sunny coastline. Here, they appear to find the hidden city of Atlantis, at the centre of the Earth! After the poor Gertrude is killed by the bad saboteur who they had taken prisoner, they are attacked by more gigantic reptiles and they have to find a way out. There is a vent with a lot of wind, and they use the altar stone made out of asbestos to travel on a rising column of molten magma through the vent to the surface of the Earth as in a flying saucer. Apparently, this conduit leads to Italy as they fly out a volcano and they are in the end welcomed back in Edinburgh as heroes while everyone, including the landlord sing some kind of geology song.
In the 5 minutes we saw of the new version, we could already determine that here Gertrude was replaced by a blue bird, the reptiles by an enormous T-rex, the flying saucer by a T-rex skull but we still have the magic mushrooms. They new film makers have learned from the 1959 film where they said at the end: A scientist that cannot prove what he has discovered has discovered nothing. I'll not embarrass this great university by asking them to take my word for my accomplishments”. Therefore, in the new film, they bring back diamonds of their visit and they seem to be very proud in the new film to get their story published in the excellent earth sciences journal ‘Scientific American’…
- Favourite quote: Hans [in Icelandic, to his duck] My Gotrun, have you been lonely?
- Hero: Gertrude, the duck, which saves the Professor and Alec in the first place and sadly dies at the end, but for a good cause…
- Best save: Gertrude who finds the vent in Atlantis which they use to get back to the surface.
- Best piece of science: Proof for hot spots rising from at least the CMB as the conduit actually goes through to the centre of the Earth!
- Overall review: A great film (the old one) where new filmmakers can learn something from. Good actors, a very realistic story and as best character our duck. Invaluable, mostly in combination with the comments of our landlord!
- Total number of BSFN-ites: 9. Still plenty of room available at this large venue!
