Dante's Peak: Difference between revisions

[[File:dantes_peak.jpg|frame|Rising from the ashes...]]

 

 

Vulcanologist [[Ignored Expert|Dr. Harry Dalton]] (Pierce Brosnan) is sent to the area to check out the volcano; after a few incidents involving char-boiled skinny dippers and some flirtation with Mayor Rachel Wando (Linda Hamilton), he tries to send the town on alert. Unfortunately, he is [[We Need to Get Proof|shut down by his superior]]. The town [[Tempting Fate|happens]] to be second place in the 'most desirable small town to live in the US' list, and they don't want any "crazy" accusations scaring away the tourists, which the town's economy depends on. Besides, there's [[Million-to-One Chance|a million to one chance]] that it could go off. [[What Could Possibly Go Wrong?|What could happen]]?

[[Chekhov's Volcano|Surprising no one, it erupts]].

 

 

* [[Abandoned Mine]]: Wando's son uses it as a hideout/clubhouse, and when the volcano erupts, it's where Harry and the Wando family hole up until help arrives.

* [[Actor Allusion]] / [[Meaningful Name]]: Pierce Brosnan as [[Timothy Dalton|Dr. Dalton]]. As in, the guy who played [[James Bond|Bond]] before him.

* [[Chekhov's Volcano]]

* [[Chekhov's Gun]]: The E.L.F. global tracking device, the mineshaft.

* [[Disappeared Dad]]: The Wando children's father left Rachel and them. Ruth, his mother, holds Rachel responsible for that, and their relationship is adversarial as a result.

* [[Disaster Movie]]

* [[Doomed Hometown]]: That town had "doomed" written all over it.

* [[Dueling Movies]]: With ''[[Volcano]]''.

* [[Hellish Copter]]: The helicopter pilot attempts to take off in the middle of the ash storm, [[Cassandra Truth|despite being warned about what a bad idea this was]]. The ash is ingested into the turbines, the engines seize, and the chopper crashes to the ground.

* [[Heroic Sacrifice]]: {{spoiler|Ruth.}} Cracked [http://www.cracked.com/article_18838_the-5-most-easily-avoidable-movie-deaths_p2.html points out] some major flaws in the logic of this.

* [[Hollywood Science]]: Although it's known for being scientifically sound, it's still an action movie.

** Volcanic ash should have all the main characters either dead or dying because it's incredibly fine and will get into their lungs and kill them. But seeing as this is just a disaster movie, this is excusable.

** Not just trying to save his own skin, he was taking a large payoff from some corporate big-shot to fly him out of there.

* [[Must Have Caffeine]]: "Coffee! Coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee! Cappu-'''cci'''-no!"

* [[Reasonable Authority Figure]]: Dr. Paul Dreyfus, despite being a bit of a [[Commander Contrarian]], is a reasonable boss who respects Dr. Dalton.

* [[Redemption Equals Death]]: Ruth. She spends the whole movie hating on her daughter-in-law for driving away her son and abandoning her grandchildren. And then she pooh-poohs the danger of the volcano because the daughter-in-law is dating the geologist. But once things prove to be deadly, she performs a [[Heroic Sacrifice]] and saves everyone, living only long enough to apologize.

* [[Stuff Blowing Up]]: Not just the volcano, but also a helicopter and a gas station.

* [[Shown Their Work]]: Although not perfect, it does get a lot more of the science right than usual, maybe 60% to 70% of it. That's a ''good'' percentage for Hollywood.

* [[Tempting Fate]]: Dante's Peak receiving their award for being such a great town to live in.

* [[Too Dumb to Live]]: Rachel's two kids stealing her truck so they can drive up the mountain to rescue grandma. [[Lampshade Hanging|Even]] ''[[Lampshade Hanging|they]]'' [[Lampshade Hanging|realize it's a dumb idea]].

** You'd think a trained pilot would know better than to attempt to take off in the middle of an ash storm. Especially since he was specifically warned that the ashes would seize up his engines. There's a good reason civil aviation grinds to a halt when there's a major volcanic eruption.

** Grandmother Ruth refusing to listen to the warnings of a member of the ''USGS'' and staying on her mountainside home.

* [[You Fail Geology Forever]]: It tried to get some research done, but they ultimately could not get it all right. Fluid lava is not known for being a sign of an explosive eruption. Likewise, [[Outrun the Fireball|Outrunning the Pyroclastic Flow]] is impossible in [[Real Life]] if you are already in its path; the mine they held up in should have been rendered a [[Death World]] by the hot gas and sheer temperature. And that far in the mine should have been wiped out the second the flow hit.

** On the other hand, they aren't shown to be actually outrunning the pyroclastic flow: they traveled a much shorter distance than it did -- it was gaining on them the whole way, and people ''have'' survived pyroclastic flows by being underground at the time they passed over them. The most famous example is a prisoner in the St. Pierre jail on the island of Martinique, when Mount Pelee erupted in 1902.

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Films of the 1990s]]

[[Category:Film]]