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I'll not waste your valuable time by picking the movie apart. There's so much pseudo-scientific nonsense begging for a good thrashing that it would take a review the size of a screenplay to do justice to the critique. And in all fairness to those viewers intent on watching this film, I can't discuss my objections without revealing spoilers. So I'll confine my comments exclusively to the plot and the characters... 

When odd things start happening - thirty-two people drop dead simultaneously in Boston and pigeons heedlessly fly into the sides of buildings at Trafalgar Square - Dr. Joshua Keyes (Aaron Eckhart), who specializes in geomagnetics at the University of Chicago, and Dr. Serge Leveque (Tcheky Karyo), a high energy weapons expert presumably from France, are summoned to Washington. The Pentagon wants to know if an electromagnetic pulse weapon might have caused those isolated but unique events. Keyes' and Leveque's answer is no and they are summarily dismissed, but Keyes can't let it go.

Upon returning to Chicago, he performs some research and correlates what he finds in a computer simulation; he sadly concludes that the Earth's core has ceased to rotate. Since the spinning core generates the planet's protective magnetic field, this spells doom; as the field collapses, cosmic radiation will penetrate the atmosphere to wreak havoc. And as an unpleasant overture to life's inevitable extinction, vast atmospheric instabilities will cause unprecedented lightning storms on a destructive scale never before known. Keyes brings his findings to the attention of National Science Advisor Dr. Conrad Zimsky (Stanley Tucci), a nicotine addicted egomaniac who's not adverse to stealing other scientists' work.

The experts examine Keye's research and quickly conclude the obvious: the only hope to preserve life on Earth is to restart the core's spin. A few more mathematical models and computer simulations later, it's determined that this can be done with a one thousand megaton thermonuclear explosion at the boundary between the Earth's inner and outer cores. Fortunately (and conveniently), the technology exists for deep Earth penetration in a manned craft able to set the weapons in place. For two decades in his desolate desert hanger, Dr. Ed Brazzelton (Delroy Lindo) just happens to have been developing on a shoestring budget the required hardware. This sets into motion a fifty billion dollar rapid development of the unique craft that is the planet's only hope for survival.

The second half of the film follows the intrepid “terranauts” on their mission. Admittedly, they do not encounter the dinosaurs and primitive life of Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth, but what they do experience is no less absurd. Will the brave crew save the Earth? Will self-sacrifice and extreme heroism rule the day? Will any survive to return to the Earth's surface, thousands of miles above? Maybe. 

The screenwriters have invested a few of the characters with some psychological baggage before packing them into the huge worm-like craft made of Unobtainium for the unimaginable trip through solid rock and liquid magma. For example, Childs is a bit of a prodigy, the youngest ever astronaut-pilot; she's never experienced failure and lacks maturity. And Brazzelton and Zimsky share decades-old enmity over valuable intellectual property. Such internal and external conflicts give the actors something to do besides reacting to blue screens and I'm confident they were grateful. The cast is uniformly excellent. Many have made notable appearances in much better films, and it's highly unusual to find these specific players involved in this genre. I can only hope that this experience hasn't soured them on science fiction. 

Video: How Does The Disc Look?

The film's theatrical aspect ratio of 2.35:1 is presented in a great anamorphic video transfer. Edge halos are essentially absent. Small object details and fine textures are exceptional. Color based on flesh tones is highly accurate. Chroma noise and smearing are not visible. Shadow detail is quite good, but does lack some definition in a few nighttime scenes. And I didn't notice any digital artifacts. The images are sufficiently revealing to make the CGI effects somewhat obvious, beyond the “that's impossible” factor. Film gain is not apparent. In general, this is a great looking disc.

Audio: How Does The Disc Sound?

The Dolby Digital 5.1 track is also excellent. The surrounds are quite active and with one exception, decode perfectly with EX enabled. That one exception is the launch platform arrival scene in the rain; the surround track's rainfall sounds are too high in the center surround as compared with the left and right surrounds. Exceptionally deep bass is felt as well as heard and will require a capable subwoofer to appreciate. Christopher Young's heroic orchestral score, brass and soaring strings, is nicely conveyed across a wide soundstage and with a palpable sense of depth. Sound effects have a pleasant punch, uninhibited by audible compression; in fact, to provide dynamic headroom for the sound effects, the dialog runs a couple of dB lower than most DVDs. The spoken word remains quite clear throughout; the sonic fireworks never get in the way.

There is a second English track in Dolby Surround 2.0, and the alternate language track is in French. The audio is supported by subtitles in French and English, for which Closed Captions are also provided.

Supplements: What Goodies Are There?

Director Jon Amiel may be heard in a scene-specific, feature-length commentary. I appreciate his inclusion of filmmaking technical details, such as the description of a crane shot, the substitution of a disguised apple for a peach, and noting how special effects were integrated. He describes some of his artistic decisions and the contributions of his production designers. You'll also find a few admiring comments about his actors. But I found his emphasis of those scientific factoids that are accurate all the more annoying in light of his glossing over the excessive artists' license taken in the making of the movie. To the Core and Back: The Making of The Core (10:52) is a stereotypical making-of short that offers the director, the producers, and the writers the opportunity to comment on their work. The players are also heard from, in particular Hillary Swank. She comments on how she found the new experience of acting in front of a blue screen, based exclusively on her imagination, so challenging.

Deconstruction of the Visual Effects is a group of shorts that delve into CGI and practical effects. "Pre-Visualization" (4:31) describes the process of creating animatics as an aid to the director as whole sequences were constructed. "Trafalgar Square" (3:16) describes how the CGI pigeons were created; the filmmakers want you to know that no pigeons were harmed in the making of this film. "Rome" (3:32) is a description of the seamless blending of a model shot (the model was an impressive eighty feet in diameter) and CGI to create the illusion of mass destruction. Further mayhem at "The Golden Gate Bridge" (4:27) shows how that sequence was created. Finally, "The Geode" (3:03) demonstrates how a small set was integrated into a larger CGI shot.

There are ten Deleted or Extended Scenes (14:11 aggregate), which play sequentially with or without an optional director's commentary. With the exception of the first deleted scene in which Keyes has a touching emotional reaction to his initial discovery of mankind's imminent doom, the rest are best left as supplements. In several, Zimsky is portrayed as unstable or a buffoon, even more addicted to nicotine than we perceive in the theatrical cut. Leaving them behind was a good call.

Finally, Paramount has included several trailers. Timeline (1:58) has not been released to the motion picture theaters...yet. Tomb Raider 2: The Cradle of Life (2:27) and The Indiana Jones Trilogy (1:46) are both DVD promos. All of the supplements are shown in non-anamorphic widescreen or full screen. The 135-minute feature is organized into twenty chapters.

DVD-ROM Exclusives: What do you get when you pop the disc in your PC?

No ROM extras have been included.

Parting Thoughts