Somebody needs to buy NBC a dictionary…
Okay, I admit it. I have a fondness for cheesy disaster movies. Cheesy action movies as well, but especially cheesy disaster movies. And NBC recently aired what is possibly the cheesiest action movie I’ve ever seen (although I’m sure there are many more I haven’t). It was called 10.5 Apocalypse and was actually a sequel to a movie they aired 2 years ago and which I didn’t see (although I did read a cute recap of it). The overall premise is that in the last movie there was a huge earthquake on the West Coast (a 10.5) and this movie takes place just after that as a series of related disaster seem to be making their way across the United States and will result in a new fault forming in the middle of the US, consequently dividing the country in two. While the individual disasters initially hit them quite off guard and caused a lot of damage (losses include Las Vegas, various cities and towns throughout the Midwest, especially anything near any known volcanoes, dormant or not) and the fault did end up destroying a couple of large cities like Houston (although they had long evacuated most of the states in the vicinity of the projected path of the fault, except for the spunky elderly couple of course) they did not cry at these losses. No, they cried at the fact that the country was now geographically divided in two by what is essentially a gorge a few hundred metres across (1km max). No, really they actually cried at that. I’ll never be able to look at Beau Bridges (the actor who played the president) the same way again. Meanwhile, Hawaii and Alaska are all “Excuse me bitches? We’re geographically separated, and hell, Hawaii got struck by a huge wave as a result of the 10.5 at the beginning of the movie and you don’t see us crying. Wanky whiners.”
Needless to say, it was one of the stupidest endings I’ve ever seen. Dean Cain (or Superman! As we kept calling him throughout the movie) who played a firefighter who got a heroic death rescuing his brother, sister-in-law, and random showgirl, probably specifically requested that death so that he, and the actor playing his brother, would not have to pathetically cry when the country was divided in two. They diverted the fault away from two major nuclear power plants preventing a nuclear winter and they’re sad that they’ll have to fly to cross the country? Or build a fucking bridge? Losers.
And of course I must at least mention the science, or the “science”. Apparently the whole thing was caused the reversal of the movement of the continents. That’s right, the continents were switching directions. And did I mention that this whole thing was extremely accelerated? You should have seen that fault move. Oh and you could see magma flowing in the fault less than a km below ground. I’m no geologist but none of that seems right. And why were high ranking scientists randomly going out and placing themselves in pointless danger? Don’t they have flunkies, or I don’t know, local people they could send out? One of them actually died because he was flying in a helicopter in front of the Hoover Dam as it was cracking and the water was rising (and they could see this) and the dam broke and swept them away. OMG the stupid. But I’ll say this for them, their stupid was sort of entertaining at times (although being able to fast-forward because we taped it was also nice).
Needless to say, it was one of the stupidest endings I’ve ever seen. Dean Cain (or Superman! As we kept calling him throughout the movie) who played a firefighter who got a heroic death rescuing his brother, sister-in-law, and random showgirl, probably specifically requested that death so that he, and the actor playing his brother, would not have to pathetically cry when the country was divided in two. They diverted the fault away from two major nuclear power plants preventing a nuclear winter and they’re sad that they’ll have to fly to cross the country? Or build a fucking bridge? Losers.
And of course I must at least mention the science, or the “science”. Apparently the whole thing was caused the reversal of the movement of the continents. That’s right, the continents were switching directions. And did I mention that this whole thing was extremely accelerated? You should have seen that fault move. Oh and you could see magma flowing in the fault less than a km below ground. I’m no geologist but none of that seems right. And why were high ranking scientists randomly going out and placing themselves in pointless danger? Don’t they have flunkies, or I don’t know, local people they could send out? One of them actually died because he was flying in a helicopter in front of the Hoover Dam as it was cracking and the water was rising (and they could see this) and the dam broke and swept them away. OMG the stupid. But I’ll say this for them, their stupid was sort of entertaining at times (although being able to fast-forward because we taped it was also nice).