Many things make this movie a winner, but first and most important of all is DJ Qualls. His character’s name is Rat. He uses the wrapper from a stick of gum to give Aaron Eckhart’s cell phone, “free long distance… forever.” His character literally hacks the planet in this movie—literally. Fuck you Zero Cool. An actual line from the movie is, “You want me to hack the planet? He wants me to hack the planet... Ok, if I decide to do this, I'll need an unlimited supply of Xena tapes and Hotpockets.” I think Rat then spends the rest of the movie surrounded by government drones who watch as he masturbates to a loop of the scene where Xena and Gabrielle les out in an ancient Jacuzzi; Rat stopping occasionally to limply caress the keyboard in an attempt to hack the planet with greasy, jizz covered hands.
They also build a machine to travel to the center of the earth so that they can restart the earth’s core which has mysteriously stopped spinning. Seriously, no one knows why… it’s a total fucking mystery. Stanley Tucci did it. Anyway, without the core spinning the earth doesn’t have a magnetic field because science. This causes all kinds of terrible things like people with pace makers dropping dead, total planetary destruction, and birds…
Imagine yourself in Trafalgar Square as thousands of birds descend from the sky attacking panes of glass and double decker buses alike. We follow the harrowing journey of a young handheld camera as it makes its way through the frightened throngs of tourists in search of safety. There’s also a kid who I’m pretty sure is a ghost with a pronounced sniffle. The Core is also lazy. I have two examples, the first of which is a dialog/callback debacle. At some point Aaron “Apocalypse Boy” Eckhart and French Scientist have a bit of touching dialog about their motivations for being involved in such a crazy situation.
French Scientist: I came here to save my wife and my two children and... seven billion lives... it's too much. I just hope I'm, I'm smart enough and brave enough to save three.
Later, after French Scientist dies, Swank and Eckhart share this exchange while they both unconvincingly lose their shit:
Swank: Serge died so we could complete our job.
Apocalypse Boy: [sarcastically] Oh, that's right, the job of saving the world
Swank: Not the whole world Josh! Just three of them.
I understand the intent of this. I get call backs. What I don’t understand is how they could not find some way to make it so, “Just three of them,” doesn’t grammatically refer to the word, “world.” Unless I’m missing some kind of Mormon through line in The Core, this is just bad writing. Easy fix:
Swank: Serge died so we could complete our job.
Apocalypse Boy: [sarcastically] Oh, that's right, the job of saving seven billion people
Swank: Not all of them Josh! Just three of them.
Sure, it’s a bit more dialog, but it makes sense and I’m not left debating the cosmological ramifications of a multiple earth theory.
The second bit of lazy comes in the form of a peach. There’s a scene where Apocalypse Boy uses a peach to demonstrate what happens to the earth without its electromagnetic field. He lights a peach on fire flamethrower style with a can of hair spray and a lighter. Fire is cool. Hold on though, if you check the trivia on IMDB page it says that they didn't have a peach on set. They couldn't find a peach so they made an apple look like a peach—movie magic! Look, I’m no filmmaker, but I know they plan scenes well in advance of shooting, so how does no one remember the peach? I really want to know everything about this story. I want to hear about the guy who got fired for not having the peach. I want to meet the guy who suggested they turn an apple into a peach. Was he the same guy who found the apple? I want to meet the person who turned the apple into the peach. Had they ever done such a thing before? Perhaps turning a grapefruit into a cantaloupe?
Did I mention they use nuclear bombs to restart the core? Yeah, so they use nuclear bombs to restart the core. This movie is insane. Please, please cover The Core in an episode. I’ve seen it at least 30 times since 2003 and I would love it if you would validate my obsession.
