[film] World On Fire; The Martian

[kaberett]

World On Fire (2011; apparently also called Miami Magma and Swamp Volcano) is something I picked up a few years ago while creating a collection of Terrible Geology Movies; I finally got around to watching it on Saturday night and it was actually surprisingly good.

I mean. Not the science, obviously; the science was gloriously wrong in all the ways one hopes for when one goes about buying this manner of thing. (THAT IS NOT HOW LAVA TUBES. THAT IS NOT HOW OIL FORMATION. THAT IS NOT HOW LAVA. :D) But... it passed Bechdel repeatedly (because the female PI kept talking to her younger sister, a "volcanology prodigy", about science); male characters died in a way that would have been fridging for the sake of the women's character development except they were too busy doing cool science to care particularly; bonus terrible CGI; and mind-bendingly wrong data security. A+ will probably watch again.

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The Martian (2015) I unabashedly adore, because it is full of brave space robots and also brave space people and people making hard decisions as best they can and diversity in science and loyalty and brave space potatoes and did I mention the space robots. I cried most of the way through it (BRAVE. SPACE. ROBOTS.), I about corpsed when I muttered to shortcipher "... is that Sebastian Stan" and received the response "[confused look] who's Sebastian Stan?"

Laughed out loud several times in addition to crying, applauded it a fair bit, was gently horrified by the approach to spacewalks but whatever, am now intending to actually acquire and read the book. Probably also the DVD, because I think this can go on my safe shelf. Much gratitude to my useless ex for coaxing me out of the house and to the cinema.

Comments

[vass]

Ooh. I'll mention World on Fire to fasangel, she went to The Martian recently because she was hoping it'd be another The Core. She's been hoping that since we first saw The Core in the cinema, and all of us walked out going "that was so bad it was actually... good?"

Have you watched The Core? 2003. I haven't made a safe shelf, but if I did, it would be on it. For a long time it was the one film Old FAS[*] was most likely to put on if no one could agree on what to put on but we wanted some sort of moving pictures on the TV. GLORIOUSLY bad science. SO BAD. If it isn't in your Terrible Geology Movies collection, it would be a worthy addition.

[[*] Melbourne Uni's SF club. Fantasy And Science Fiction Appreciation Society = FASFAS = FAS². Old FAS were the cohort before the advent of the Scary First Years (a large influx of extroverts one year who changed the group culture a lot while not actually doing anything wrong.) We went to movies wearing cloaks, played endless games of Bartok, Warlords and Scumbags, and Settlers of Cataan, and had large sleepovers with red cordial and DVDs. One time election day was the morning after a movie night, so we all rocked up to a polling place together in our cloaks.]

[kaberett]

It is indeed The Core levels of bad, I do indeed own The Core, and if you'd like me to type up a list of the rest of the films of this general thrust that I own I'd be delighted to :)

[vass]

That would be wonderful. :)

[kaberett]

2012
The Core
Dante's Peak
Mega Fault
Meteor Storm
World On Fire

[vass]

Thank you. :)

[redsixwing]

Oh, awesome. I want to see The Martian this week (and may actually get to, hooray!)

World On Fire sounds hilaribad, but I love movies like that. (see also: Deep Impact, Dante's Peak.)

[sfred]

I would very much like to see The Martian. Hopefully I can make space to do so.

[frith_in_thorns]

I found the book version of The Martian really unsatisfying and totally lacking in emotional depth, but I was thinking when I read it that I expect it'll make a really good film! (Please tell me they added at least one non-male scientist in NASA/JLP though??)

(Also BASICALLY NO DESCRIPTIONS OF MARS EVER, which I found such a bizarre writing choice.)

[kaberett]

OKAY WOW so like the film is all gorgeous, loving panned shots across the Martian surface, and there are lots of women hanging around NASA/JPL, and lots of PoC, and while the head of PR is the woman landside who does most of the talking (the Ares III team featuring Several Women) all of the shots of Rooms Of Scientists have a pretty realistic gender/race diversity going on, AND the person who first notices that shit's moving around on the surface of Mars is a woman. So, yeah, the heads-of-department are all male, but two of the four are PoC, but. I would happily go watch it again.

(I mean, it was deeply weird watching it immediately after the news of liquid surface water on Mars hit, because, er, WELL. But!)

That is v good to know about the book, in that it means I probably won't bother reading it.

[frith_in_thorns]

I am planning to give my copy of the book to my father for Christmas, he will probably appreciate it much more than I did. But at least it sounds like the film is basically the book I wanted, so that's good and I will definitely watch it! (On DVD because I have no money right now.)

The press person and the watching-satellite-data person are both women in the book, but they are seriously the only mentioned non-male NASA/JLP people earthside. ALSO literally everyone talks in snappy one-liners and enjoys the humour style typically stereotyped to 13-yr-old boys. (All the Ares ppl including Mark are constantly rating the hotness of the younger female astronaut and make sexual jokes involving her, forex.) So frustrating.

[kaberett]

... you will be pleased to hear that that is ENTIRELY ABSENT from the film

[frith_in_thorns]

EXCELLENT NEWS.