History YMMV / Volcano

** Stan melting into nothingness once he lands in lava.

* HateSink: Norman Calder, real estate developer. He shows himself to be an unrepentant {{jerkass}} through the whole film who starts off by campaigning ''against'' better transit for lower-income Los Angelinos who work in his ritzy area because, in part, drilling the tunnels is "noisy." He's shown to be patronizing to his fiancée, a trauma surgeon, by suggesting she'd be better off treating rich people for tennis elbow than ''saving lives'' like she does at her current job. He later pressures her twice to abandon her post and her patients as her triage unit is being overwhelmed by casualties, once by phone where his complaint is "who knows what those ''people'' are coughing up on you!" and then later when he essentially issues an ultimatum that it's him or her job. (She picks the job.) His dose of LaserGuidedKarma is definitely cathartic.

* DesignatedVillain: Stan Olber, chairman of the MTA. He’s made out to be the bad guy due to the fact he proceeds with the subway trains remaining on schedule despite the warnings from both Roark and Amy that something suspicious is brewing but he was in his right to keep the trains on schedule and also because MTA doesn’t answer to the city of Los Angeles. Still, he redeems himself admirably later on, showing his much more heroic colors as he leads a rescue team into the tunnel to get to a stricken train, then sacrifices himself to save someone else.

** Also “I Love LA” by Music/RandyNewman in the end credits.
* DesignatedVillain: Two, one redeemed, one very not.
** Stan Olber, chairman of the MTA. He’s made out to be the bad guy due to the fact he proceeds with the subway trains remaining on schedule despite the warnings from both Roark and Amy that something suspicious is brewing but he was in his right to keep the trains on schedule and also because MTA doesn’t answer to the city of Los Angeles. Still, he redeems himself admirably later on, showing his much more heroic colors as he leads a rescue team into the tunnel to get to a stricken train, then sacrifices himself to save someone else.
** Norman Calder, real estate developer. Unlike Stan, Norman shows himself to be an unrepentant jerkass through the whole film. He starts off by campaigning ''against'' better transit for lower-income Los Angelinos who work in his ritzy area because, in part, drilling the tunnels is "noisy." He's shown to be patronizing to his fiancee, a trauma surgeon, by suggesting she'd be better off treating rich people for tennis elbow than ''saving lives'' like she does at her current job. He later pressures her twice to abandon her post and her patients as her triage unit is being overwhelmed by casualties, once by phone where his complaint is "who knows what those ''people'' are coughing up on you!" and then later when he essentially issues an ultimatum that it's him or her job. (She picks the job.) His dose of LaserGuidedKarma is definitely cathartic.
* DontShootTheMessage: Well, sure, racial tension in a crisis is going to make things worse and working together ''is'' a good moral. Just using a popcorn action movie with the themes feeling very tacked on probably wasn't the best way to go about.

** A pre-''Film/IronMan'' Don Cheadle is featured prominently as Roarke's coworker and friend, Emmett.
** Creator/KevinFeige got his start in Hollywood as producer Lauren Shuler Donner's assistant for this film.

* RonTheDeathEater: Kelly does have TooDumbToLive moments as expected for a child character, but to say that she was the one responsible for the deaths of the firemen is a major stretch. Viewers seem to miss that she ''did'' notice the lava and fearfully start to walk away from it, only to be trapped by a lava bomb that squirted lava on her leg (which should have killed her) in seconds after landing, trapping her. It was not like she actually did anything that was unreasonable for a 13-year-old suddenly facing down lava. If anything, Roarke was the idiotic one for even leaving her alone, and it was impressive that this girl didn't break down from the stress of this.

* SoBadItsGood: Narmtastic dialogue, GenreBlindness and ConvectionSchmonvection all rolled into a cliche ridden disaster movie. It's practically a perfect storm of elements for bad movie lovers. But the heroism aspects resonate even stronger after 9/11. [[Series/MysteryScienceTheater3000 Mike Nelson]] in his book ''Mike Nelson's Movie Megacheese'' compares it to an old war movie, saying it was "cornball, but with heart".
* TheScrappy: Kelly. ''So. Very. Much,'' even for "kid in a disaster movie" standards. You may find yourself wishing that someone would just [[JustEatGilligan put her into the lava]], considering that she certainly [[TooDumbToLive does nothing to prevent herself from dying already]] and puts the lives of dozens of others at risk [[TheLoad through her lethal idiocy.]]
* SignatureScene: The "Stan" scene is the main scene anyone remembers from this movie. Especially, people who watched it as kids and were thoroughly traumatized.

* DesignatedVillain: Stan Olber. He’s made out to be the bad guy due to the fact he proceeds with the subway trains remaining on schedule despite the warnings from both Roark and Amy that something suspicious is brewing but he was in his right to keep the trains on schedule and also because MTA doesn’t answer to the city of Los Angeles. Despite these reasons, he’s seen as the bad guy but his actions later on in the film makes him anything but the bad guy.

** The film has a message about working together in the face of a crisis, but it's put in some of the most blunt terms, including an adorable little boy pointing out how everyone looks the same from the volcano ash after the eruption.

** A pre-''Film/IronMan'' Don Cheadle is featured prominently as Rourke's coworker and friend, Emmett.

* RonTheDeathEater: Kelly does have TooDumbToLive moments as expected for a child character, but to say that she was the one responsible for the deaths of the firemen is a major stretch. Viewers seem to miss that she ''did'' notice the lava and fearfully start to walk away from it, only to be trapped by a lava bomb that squirted lava on her leg (which should have killed her) in seconds after landing, trapping her. It was not like she actually did anything that was unreasonable for a 13-year-old suddenly facing down lava. If anything, Rourke was the idiotic one for even leaving her alone, and it was impressive that this girl didn't break down from the stress of this.

* UnintentionallyUnsympathetic: At the start of the film, a small/moderate earthquake happens to go off in LA. This makes main protagonist Rourke, who is divorced from his wife and is supposed to be off work for a week to spend it with her, go into work defying what the said to his ex-wife and his daughter. When his ex-wife calls and berates him, she's supposed to be annoying, but she ends up coming across as the more reasonable of the two given the context, especially since it's implied that he's done that before and is the reason for the divorce in the first place.

* UnintentionllyUnsympathetic: At the start of the film, a small/moderate earthquake happens to go off in LA. This makes main protagonist Rourke, who is divorced from his wife and is supposed to be off work for a week to spend it with her, go into work defying what the said to his ex-wife and his daughter. When his ex-wife calls and berates him, she's supposed to be annoying, but she ends up coming across as the more reasonable of the two given the context, especially since it's implied that he's done that before and is the reason for the divorce in the first place.

* WhatAnIdiot:
** Pretty much ''everything'' Kelly does just serves to endanger herself, her father, or the lives of others he could easily have saved.
** Mike's brutal lack of knowledge on both lava and magma. Especially from a man of his position who has to be prepared for any kind of disaster even if a Volcano is highly unlikely to happen.
*** To be fair, the odds of a volcano suddenly erupting in that part of California are so small as to be an infinitesimal. He'd be better spending his time learning what to do in case of an asteroid bombardment. (This could also be an AsYouKnow moment: it’s quite possible that he knows what lava and magma are, he’s just asking so that a viewer with little to no knowledge of either/both gets brought up to speed.)
** Several members of the LAPD, LAFD, DWP and MTA also not having ANY idea about what lava or magma is.
** Also the LAPD and the LAFD using a ''bus'' in the hopes that it will deflect the advancing lava flow. Even if this had any chance of working, there's nothing else to seal the "blockage" the bus was intended to create, and the lava simply flows around the melting hulk either way.
** A homeless guy falling to sleep near the approaching lava flow on Wilshire, covered in fallen ash. Only Roark and Amy notice him and get him out before he meets a fiery end. [[AlternateCharacterInterpretation Although it could possibly be that said homeless man was knocked unconscious by volcanic gas, rather than simply thinking that an approaching lava flow is a good place for beddy-byes.]]
** Both Roark and Amy escape from being burned alive. It shows that there was a little bit of space for them to squeeze between the bus and the tree but Roark calls for one of the firemen to lower the ladder on his truck to pull him, Amy and the homeless man out of danger but the firemen can’t pull them in due to the homeless man’s weight putting to much pressure on the ladder and he has to swing them over the EXTREMELY hot ass lava to safety and it almost gives out but thankfully it gives out on the other side of the street that isn’t covered in lava and all three of them land on the ground uninjured.

** Creator/KevinFeige got his start in Hollywood as producer Lauren Schuler-Donner's assistant for this film.

* TookTheBadFilmSeriously: Tommy Lee Jones, Don Cheadle, Keith David and John Carroll Lynch seem to be the only ones who know that they’re in a disaster movie and they all act accordingly to the fact it is a disaster movie.

* ThrowItIn: The part where Stan asks one of his fellow Metro teammates to give him a push into the derailed train wasn’t scripted. John Carroll Lynch literally had trouble getting on the train and needed a push.

*** To be fair, the odds of a volcano suddenly erupting in that part of California are so small as to be an infinitesimal. He'd be better spending his time learning what to do in case of an asteroid bombardment.

** Averted with Stan. While he did ignore both Mike and Amy’s warnings that something suspicious was brewing underneath the city but when shit does hit the fan? He doesn’t hesitate to go down to investigate the problem and is one of the VERY few characters to know what lava and magma is.

* SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic: "Build a Wall" and "March of the Lava", by Music/AlanSilvestri.

* RetroactiveRecognition: Valente Rodriguez, best known for his role as Ernie in ''Series/TheGeorgeLopezShow'', plays the subway conductor that Stan eventually saves from the lava flow.

* RootingForTheEmpire: Many people wanted the lava to win.
** [[YouBastard Why?]] Probably because of the cheesy dialogue and general silliness of the plot.
* SpecialEffectsFailure: There are points in the film where the lava may not exactly be convincing. Plus, the shot of an entire flotilla of helicopters swarming onscreen as they prepare to dump thousands of gallons of water on blocked lava flow is clearly just one too many helicopters duplicated into the same shot in too small an airspace for them all to function.

* SoBadItsGood: Narmtastic dialogue, GenreBlindness and ConvectionSchmonvection all rolled into a cliche ridden disaster movie. It's practically a perfect storm of elements for bad movie lovers.
** But the heroism aspects resonate even stronger after 9/11.
** [[Series/MysteryScienceTheater3000 Mike Nelson]] in his book ''Mike Nelson's Movie Megacheese'' compares it to an old war movie, saying it was "cornball, but with heart".

* WhatAnIdiot: Pretty much ''everything'' Kelly does just serves to endanger herself, her father, or the lives of others he could easily have saved.

** Mike's brutal lack of knowledge on both lava and magma.
** Especially from a man of his position who has to be prepared for any kind of disaster even if a Volcano is highly unlikely to happen.

** Mike's brutal lack of knowledge on both lava and magma. Especially from a man of his position who has to be prepared for any kind of disaster even if a Volcano is highly unlikely to happen.

** Averted with Stan. Even though he did put off Roark and Amy’s warnings that something was off but when shit does hit the the fan, he’s one of the few characters who takes the situation seriously and is the ONLY one besides Amy and the other scientists to know what lava is considering he urges everyone to quickly get off the train when he sees the flow making its way towards the derailed train.
** A homeless guy falling to sleep near the approaching lava flow on Wilshire, covered in fallen ash. Only Roark and Amy notice him and get him out before he meets a very unpleasant death. [[AlternateCharacterInterpretation Although it could possibly be that said homeless man was knocked unconscious by volcanic gas, rather than simply thinking that an approaching lava flow is a good place for beddy-byes.]]
** Amy gets one too although it was mostly Roark’s idea as one of the palm trees fall in front of them as they are carrying the homeless man to safety, trapping them between the burning tree and the bus. It shows that there was a little bit of space for them to squeeze between the bus and the tree but Roark calls for one of the firemen to lower the ladder on his truck to pull him, Amy and the homeless man out of danger but the firemen can’t pull them in due to the homeless man’s weight putting to much pressure on the ladder and he has to swing them over the EXTREMELY hot ass lava to safety and it almost gives out but thankfully it gives out on the other side of the street that isn’t covered in lava and all three of them land on the ground uninjured.
** Still they created too much work and stress and it nearly cost them their lives.

** Several members of the LAPD, LAFD, DWP and MTA also not having any idea about what lava or magma is.

** Several members of the LAPD, LAFD, DWP and Metro also not having any idea about what lava or magma is.

* DesignatedVillain: Stan Olber. He’s made out to be the bad guy due to the fact he proceeds with the subway trains remaining on schedule despite the warnings from both Roark and Amy that something suspicious is brewing but he was in his right to keep the trains on schedule and also because MTA doesn’t answer to the city of Los Angeles. Despite these reasons, he’s seen as the bad guy but his actions later on in the film makes him anything but the bad guy.

** Roark and Amy also gets one as well as one of the palm trees fall in front of them as they are carrying the homeless man to safety, trapping them between the burning tree and the bus. It shows that there was a little bit of space for them to squeeze between the bus and the tree but Roark calls for one of the firemen to lower the ladder on his truck to pull him, Amy and the homeless man out of danger but the firemen can’t pull them in due to the homeless man’s weight putting to much pressure on the ladder and he has to swing them over the EXTREMELY hot ass lava to safety and it almost gives out but thankfully it gives out on the other side of the street that isn’t covered in lava and all three of them land on the ground uninjured.

* DesignatedVillain: Stan Olber. He’s made out to be the bad guy due to the fact he proceeds with the subway trains remaining on schedule despite the warnings from both Roark and Amy that something suspicious is brewing but he was in his right to keep the trains on schedule and also because MTA doesn’t answer to the city of Los Angeles but despite the reasons he’s seen as the enemy even though his actions later on in the film makes him anything but the bad guy.