History Film / TheCore

-->'''Braz''': "Its actual name is 36 syllables long." [shrugs] "I call it {{Unobtainium}}".

* DownLADrain: Early in the film, the crew of the Space Shuttle has to make an emergency landing here after [[JustPlaneWrong Earth's collapsing magnetic field causes the Shuttle's navigation systems to go haywire during reentry]].

** JustPlaneWrong: Not only does the Space Shuttle not rely exclusively on a magnetic compass for navigation, a magnetic compass isn't even part of its navigation package. Earth's normal geomagnetic field changes not only with latitude and longitude, but also with altitude; and at the altitude for Low Earth Orbit, it's very different than it is down here on the surface. The shuttle determines its location partly by data fed to it from the ground -- which also doesn't rely on magnetic compasses -- and partly by extrapolating this data via its very limited onboard computers. (And nowadays, one would suppose, from GPS.)

''The Core'' is a 2003 DisasterMovie directed by Jon Amiel, with a cast including Creator/AaronEckhart, Creator/HilarySwank, Delroy Lindo, and Creator/StanleyTucci.

* ArmiesAreEvil: The Earth's core got screwed up because those darn evil military sorts wanted an... earthquake gun... or something. It seems almost wedged in as an afterthought to get double mileage out of handwaving the ridiculousness of the core stopping and so that the movie can claim to have an important message.
** DESTINI actually ''was'' a hastily-added plot point added in reshoots, after test audiences complained that the original story of the Earth's core just stopping for no discernible reason at all was nonsensical.

* ShoutOut: Oddly enough to ''Franchise/SailorMoon'' of all things. Kenyes tells his grad student assistant "You can use our T1 line to look up ''Sailor Moon'' crap, you're up to this!".

** ArtisticLicenseBiology: One of the first signs that something is going wrong is when pigeons suddenly go completely mental and start smashing into everything. This is explained by the changes to the Earth's electromagnetic field messing with their natural navigation systems. While it is true that many birds such as pigeons use electromagnetics to navigate, it is for long-distance travel only. It would be more like if your car's GPS went on the fritz: instead of flying to London, they'd end up in Norway. They still have eyes, they wouldn't just whack into anything in their way!\\

*** The Second Law of Thermodynamics, in particular, takes a mighty shellackin' in this movie. Even if unobtainium were a perfect insulator, so that no external heat could get in ''at all'', the interior of the ''Virgil'' would still generate an enormous amount of its own waste heat from human bodies, life support systems, electronics, the motors running the impellers, and so on. Just look at how hot the nuclear reactor's core was. The only "heat sink" they brought along was some liquid nitrogen. Even if half the entire payload mass was liquid nitrogen, it would certainly have absorbed all the heat it could within the first ''hour''. [[note: Although here we have a case of two scientific wrongs making a right: because of gravity, any journey through the planet, regardless of the start and end points, should supposedly only take about 45 minutes with an appropriate vehicle (which they had); so enough liquid nitrogen to cool the ''Virgil'' for an hour would actually have been sufficient and even allow a decent amount of leeway.]]

*** Our hero has to boost the warhead yield of the last bomb by 30%. How does he do this? By taking 6 pounds of plutonium from the ''Virgil'''s nuclear reactor and ''placing it next to the bomb''. It's doubtful the writers were aware that multimegaton nuclear devices use the nuclear ''fusion'' of heavy-hydrogen isotopes as their primary energy source, and only use the nuclear fission of plutonium-239 (which has to be weapons grade, not reactor grade) to set the fusion reaction off. Now, fission-fusion-fission bombs ''do'' employ a uranium-238 tamper around the outside, which absorbs the neutrons generated by the fusion reaction and undergoes spontaneous fission. This doubles or even quadruples the warhead yield. At the 200 megaton level, it's likely that all the bombs ''had'' to be fission-fusion-fission devices. '''However''', the uranium tamper must ''surround'' the fusion core to do this. Having a chunk of uranium (or plutonium) sitting off to one side would only create some atomized uranium (or plutonium) shrapnel.

It may, however, work if the field is fluctuating wildly and causing the pigeons to get confused and panic, but that's probably overthinking things. In its defence, the movie also [[LampshadeHanging lampshades]] it; when the hero asks "How do birds navigate?", one of his grad students replies, "By sight."

*** The ''Virgil'' encounters an underground equivalent of an asteroid belt composed of gigantic diamonds... which cannot form as deep as it is, since carbon could not possibly crystallize in those kinds of temperatures... the crystals would be constantly breaking down before they could fully form. Plus, carbon is far too light to remain below the mantle for very long... it would be like popping a balloon at ground level and expecting the helium to remain where it was.
*** In RealLife, the Earth's core spins ''because'' the rest of the Earth is spinning. It rotates once every 23 hours 56 minutes 4 seconds, just like the rest of the Earth does. Relative to somebody standing on the Earth's surface, the core doesn't appear to move at all. If the core "stopped spinning", it would appear to ''spin in the opposite direction'' relative to the Earth's surface. (And where would all that angular momentum go? At the very least, the rest of the Earth would have to ''speed up''.)
*** The Earth's outer core weighs in at 1.8 ''sextillion'' metric tons. You'd have to throw one ''hell'' of a monkey wrench into the path of ''that'' spinning freight train to brake it from one-rotation-every-24-hours to a dead stop. And even if you did, all that angular momentum would have to go somewhere; the rest of the Earth should have ''sped up'' by quite a huge margin.\\
Not to mention we haven't developed a single nuclear warhead powerful enough to even break 6.0 on the Moment Magnitude scale. Krakatoa laughs at our most powerful nuke. So how can you expect a nuke to even give so much as a nudge to all that molten iron?
*** Now that we're with the core's weight (and thus, density), at some point they get the surprise that the core is supposedly of a different density than they ''thought'' (emphasis added) it had. The movie handwaves it with a variant of "hey, nobody has ever been down there to ''measure'' the core's density" (again, emphasis added). Never mind that said density ''has'' been accurately ''measured'' by how it affects seismic waves' (from earthquakes of known origin) propagation, a measurement that has been verified by how it's used to accurately calculate back the position of new quakes by their seismic waves' propagation through the core.
*** When the ''Virgil'' descends through the Earth's crust and into the mantle (and, later, when it has to travel upward through the mantle to escape), the mantle shown is clearly supposed to be a liquid, thereby not requiring the use of their drilling laser. In RealLife, the lower and middle mantles are semi-liquid goop that flow like pitch (at best), while the upper mantle is most decidedly solid.

*** Our hero has to boost the warhead yield of the last bomb by 30%. How does he do this? By taking 6 pounds of plutonium from the ''Virgil'''s nuclear reactor and ''placing it next to the bomb''. It's doubtful the writers were even aware that multimegaton nuclear devices use the nuclear ''fusion'' of heavy-hydrogen isotopes as their primary energy source, and only use the nuclear fission of plutonium-239 (which has to be weapons grade, not reactor grade) to set the fusion reaction off.\\
Fission-fusion-fission bombs ''do'' employ a uranium-238 tamper around the outside, which absorbs the neutrons generated by the fusion reaction and undergoes spontaneous fission. This doubles or even quadruples the warhead yield. At the 200 megaton level, it's likely that all the bombs ''had'' to be fission-fusion-fission devices. However, the uranium tamper must ''surround'' the fusion core to do this. Having a chunk of uranium (or plutonium) sitting off to one side would only create some atomized uranium(or plutonium) shrapnel.

*** The Second Law of Thermodynamics, in particular, takes a mighty shellackin' in this movie. Even if unobtainium were a perfect insulator, so that no external heat could get in ''at all'', the interior of the ''Virgil'' would still generate an enormous amount of its own waste heat from human bodies, life support systems, electronics, the motors running the impellers, etc.. You ''saw'' how hot the nuclear reactor's core was. The only "heat sink" they brought along was some liquid nitrogen. Even if half the entire payload mass was liquid nitrogen, it would certainly have absorbed all the heat it could within the first ''hour''.\\
Likewise, generating electric energy simply because it's hot outside won't work. You can only generate power if there's a temperature ''difference'', and heat is allowed to flow ''along'' that temperature difference -- unobtainium or no unobtainium. Any theoretically-possible scheme for using the hull to generate impeller power would have fried the contents within seconds.
*** Interestingly, because of gravity any journey through the planet, regardless of the start and end points, should supposedly only take about 45 minutes with an appropriate vehicle ([[MST3KMantra which they had]]); so enough liquid nitrogen to cool the ''Virgil'' for an hour would actually have been sufficient and even allow a decent amount of leeway.
** JustPlaneWrong: Not only does the Space Shuttle not rely exclusively on a magnetic compass for navigation, a magnetic compass isn't even part of its navigation package. Earth's normal geomagnetic field changes not only with latitude and longitude, it also changes with altitude, and at the altitude for Low Earth Orbit it's very different than it is down here on the surface. The shuttle determines its location partly by data fed to it from the ground -- which also doesn't rely on magnetic compasses -- and partly by extrapolating this data via its very limited onboard computers. (And nowadays, one would suppose, from GPS.)

** "I'm gonna need an unlimited supply of {{Xena}} tapes and Hot Pockets."

''The Core'' is a 2003 DisasterMovie directed by Jon Amiel, with a cast including Aaron Eckhart, Creator/HilarySwank, Delroy Lindo, and Creator/StanleyTucci.

** The ''Virgil'' itself, in a way, as every last subsidiary compartment is lost or sacrificed over the course of the film.

** ArtisticLicenseMedicine: A failure of the Earth's magnetic field isn't going to stop a pacemaker (or a wristwatch, for that matter), and even if it did, the heart the pacemaker is attached to wouldn't suddenly stop beating entirely. Pacemakers are given to patients with ''irregular'' or ''erratic'' heartbeats. A failed pacemaker may be a medical emergency, but it's not a guaranteed instant death sentence.
*** There is one possible justification: the shifting magnetic field induced electrical current into the wiring and electrodes around the heart. The pacemaker isn't the killer, it's simply the means. Accidental minor electrical shock via current generated by shifting magnetic fields that puts the patient into ventricular fibrillation. At least it's a shorter stretch than everything else in this flick.

** The ''[[DivineComedy Virgil]]''.

* MeaningfulName: The ship is named the ''Virgil'', after Dante's guide through Hell in the ''DivineComedy''.

[[quoteright:350:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/The_Core_Poster.jpg]]

''The Core'' is a 2003 film about a group of scientists who must travel to the center of the Earth to restart the faltering core of the planet. The government gets a group of four scientists to find a way to make the Earth's core continue to spin, since it's winding down and with it goes the Earth's magnetic field, and without it the entire surface will be melted by cosmic winds. Using literal {{Unobtanium}} to build a ship hull that grows stronger the more pressure is put on it, they set off to deploy a set of five [[DeusExNukina 200 megaton nuclear bombs]] in the core with the idea to restart it spinning.

* DoNotPassGo
--> '''Dr. Josh Keyes:''' ''Blindfolded. Do not pass go. Go directly to [=PhD=].''

* FollowTheLeader: The film was pitched as "Film/{{Armageddon}}, [[RecycledInSpace but]] ''down''."

** ArtisticLicenseBiology: One of the first signs that something is going wrong is when pigeons suddenly go mental and start smashing into everything. This is explained by the changes to the Earth's electromagnetic field messing with their natural navigation systems. While it is true that many birds such as pigeons use electromagnetics to navigate, it is for long-distance travel only. It would be more like if your car's GPS went on the fritz: instead of flying to London, they'd end up in Norway. They still have eyes, they wouldn't just whack into anything in their way!\\

'''''The Core''''' is a 2003 film about a group of scientists who must travel to the center of the Earth to restart the faltering core of the planet. The government gets a group of four scientists to find a way to make the Earth's core continue to spin, since it's winding down and with it goes the Earth's magnetic field, and without it the entire surface will be melted by cosmic winds. Using literal {{Unobtanium}} to build a ship hull that grows stronger the more pressure is put on it, they set off to deploy a set of five [[DeusExNukina 200 megaton nuclear bombs]] in the core with the idea to restart it spinning.

It goes without saying that the science is atrocious... actually it went with saying, it's [[http://www.intuitor.com/moviephysics/ The Intuitor's]] pick for movie with the worst physics. But enough about that, we must get to what little story there is!

Glib disdain aside, it's a decent popcorn flick with good special effects and a premise that wouldn't be out of place in a Creator/JulesVerne novel. That said, parallels to ''JourneyToTheCenterOfTheEarth'' aren't likely to be favorable for this movie because the characterizations aren't much to write home about. You have intrepid lead scientist, sexy romantic interest female scientist, DeadpanSnarker scientist, and geeky enthusiastic scientist. Aided by a PlayfulHacker with a rat motif.

Now say your [[MST3KMantra mantra]] three times and [[LieBackAndThinkOfEngland lie back thinking of England]].

* BuffySpeak: Josh at one point refers to himself as "Apocalypse Boy."