Dante's Peak is a 1997 disaster film starring Pierce Brosnan and Linda Hamilton. It portrays the effect of a volcano erupting in a small town in the Pacific Northwest portion of the United States. It was released a few months before Volcano and received wider success.[2] It has also been acclaimed for its relative scientific accuracy, which Volcano lacked.[3]
Plot
Set in the fictional town of Dante's Peak, Washington, located in the northern Cascade Mountains, the film is somewhat based on the real-life eruptions of Mount St. Helens in 1980 and Mount Pinatubo in 1991 and is noted to have put emphasis on trying to accurately depict a volcanic eruption.[4] The type depicted in the film is a Plinian eruption (Estimated VEI 5).
The film begins with the volcanic eruption of an unnamed volcano in Colombia (the script says this is Galeras, and the eruption is presumably the 1993 eruption which killed several volcanologists) where volcanologist Dr. Harry Dalton (Brosnan) attempts to evacuate with his fiancée Marianne. As they begin heading out of the town, large volcanic bombs begin to crash onto the small town, one of which penetrates the vehicle and kills Marianne.
Four years later, Harry is called in from vacation to investigate activity going on in the Northern Cascades region near the town of Dante's Peak. The first indication of volcanic activity is depicted when two young backpackers from Los Angeles are shown skinny dipping in a hot spring; a few minutes later, a small amount of volcanic activity turns the hot spring sulfuric, boiling the couple alive. At Dante's Peak, the town is receiving an award for being "The second most desirable place to live in the United States, population under 20,000" and celebrating its annual "Pioneer Days Festival". Harry meets with the town's mayor, Rachel Wando (Hamilton), who accompanies him with her two children, Graham (Foley) and Lauren (Smith), up to the mountain's "high lake" (high altitude lake located near the summit) to check the acidity in the water. After checking the acidity and picking up the mayor's ex-mother in law, Ruth (Hoffman), the five of them head to the town's hot springs where they discover the bodies of two dead backpackers, seared by the volcanic activity under the hot springs. Just before discovering the bodies, Graham attempts to make a dive into the springs since the bodies were hidden by steam, but in the nick of time Harry catches him and Lauren screams, thus revealing the bodies. After evaluating the situation, Harry calls a town meeting to discuss the option of putting the town on alert. As this occurs, Dalton's boss, Dr. Paul Dreyfus (Charles Hallahan) shows up to evaluate the mountain and goes against Harry's decision for putting the town on alert based on an economically devastating decision made in 1980 when he put the towns around Mammoth Mountain on alert without the mountain blowing. Despite feeling strongly opposed to the decision (and being asked to leave), Harry remains in the town to help Dreyfus and his USGS crew Greg, Terry, Nancy, and Stan (Heslov, Trutner, Field, and Ma) evaluate the possible eruption of the mountain. Initially, tests show no sign that the mountain will erupt, and after a week the crew begins to think about leaving the town. Over the same period, Harry forms a bond with the mayor and her children, turning romantic as the plot progresses. After the town's water supply becomes sulfuric due to the acidity of the mountain breaching the town's springs, Harry and Dreyfus then decide to put the town on alert and call for an evacuation. Rachel attempts to get her ex mother-in-law to come down but she refuses, preferring instead to stay at the cabin that she and her husband built higher up in the mountain.
During the town meeting alerting the citizens to evacuate, the mountain begins to erupt, causing a stampede and a rush for the town's citizens to evacuate. Earthquakes lead to the destruction of many of the town's structures, and the main bridge leading out of town collapses leading traffic jams along the only other route out, causing chaos as citizens rush to escape.
Meanwhile, the mayor's children steal her car and drive it up the mountain to their grandmother's cabin in hopes of getting her to come down with them. When Harry and Rachel try to reach the children, they discover them to have left for the summit to bring down their grandmother. As the eruption continues, the USGS crew prepares to depart the town and both Harry and Rachel head up the mountain after the children, only to find the grandmother still refusing to leave her home. Meanwhile, the grandmother's dog has run out of the house and into the woods. Down in the town, the mountain has expelled large amounts of ash and most residents have been killed or have escaped. The National Guard shows up to aid in the evacuation as news crews begin to set up camp at a safe distance to cover the mountain's eruption.
Up the mountain, Harry and Rachel reach the cabin but don't initially find the children or their grandmother; after a few minutes of frantic searching they find them outside nearby, looking for the dog Roughy, and all make their way into the house where Ruth tells them to leave her alone and go back to the town. As they argue for her to come with them, a lava flow engulfs all three cars and parts of the house. The five of them flee to the nearby lake and take a metal boat across the river, leaving the dog behind. As they trek across, they realize that the lake has been turned to sulfuric acid and is eating through the metal boat. To keep the kids from panicking, Harry begins to sing, hoping that the boat will make it across, but as they near the other end of the lake, the boat's motor fails, the propeller blades were eaten by the acid. Before it reaches the shore, the boat begins to sink and Ruth jumps off to pull it along to the pier before it sinks, though doing so causes her to suffer injuries from the lake's acidity. She wades through the acidic water screaming, but dragging the boat along to try and save the rest of them. After evaluating her injuries, the five of them continue down the mountain with Harry carrying Ruth on his back.
Back in town, the USGS crew (the last ones left), are evacuated by the military, but a lahar (volcanic-caused mudslide) causes the small bridge to begin to break apart as they reach it. Both military vehicles, carrying the majority of people in the party, make it across, but the one USGS vehicle, driven by Dreyfus, does not make it and he is killed as the bridge is washed away. Up the mountain, Ruth asks to be put down and after a talk with the children, she dies and her body is left there as the other four continue down the mountain. At a ranger station, they hot wire a truck and use it to continue down the mountain. While doing so, they encounter a lava flow that has blocked the route; the lava has mostly cooled on top but parts of it are still visibly simmering. As they manage to cross, they encounter and rescue the grandmother's dog who evidently circled the lake in the woods but became trapped on a rock surrounded by the lava flow.
Continuing down the mountain, they discover the washed-out bridge. Realizing that they have no other means of escape, Harry heads back to the USGS makeshift operations center where he notes that computers are indicating that the mountain is about to experience a catastrophic eruption. As he leaves, he picks up a tracking device on loan from NASA (nicknamed E.L.F., which had been mocked by team members in an earlier scene). Heading back to the truck he begins to head towards the town's mines as Dante's Peak finally explodes and a giant pyroclastic cloud engulfs the town. The truck makes it safely into the mine but the town is destroyed, leading the USGS crew to believe Harry has been killed. Inside the mine, Graham leads the way, as most of the abandoned mines serve as a hideout for him and his friends, and shows the survivors all of his supplies. Remembering that he left the GTD in the truck, Harry leaves to activate it. Harry reaches the truck, but there is a cave-in and Harry is injured and trapped inside the truck. The situation keeps getting worse as Harry's arm is broken by falling rocks and he has to reach the tracking device without causing a fatal cave-in. While trying to activate the device, Harry is trapped in the car by many minor cave-ins around the car. Eventually he reaches it and activates it. The device flashes for "one or two days" before the four are rescued from the mine.
After being rescued from the mine by a huge team, Harry meets the rest of his crew who tell him that Dreyfus didn't make it and that "he got to see the show". Rachel and her children are escorted out of the mine followed by applause from the rescue team for their survival. On board a helicopter, Graham asks Harry if he really meant what he said in the mine about taking the family fishing and Harry confirms it with the words, "Sure did." He and Rachel clasp hands and kiss and Harry tells the helicopter pilot that they are ready to go. As the helicopter flies into the distance over the ruins of Dante's Peak, the camera turns to the volcano, the tense theme music suggesting that it may erupt again at some point in the future, and that the town of Dante's Peak would remain abandoned.
Cast
Production
Producer Joseph M. Singer became intrigued by the idea of a movie about a volcano wreaking havoc on a small town after seeing an interview with a volcanologist. Singer recalls looking on in amazement as the volcanologist, who was captured on videotape out in the field, "watched a pyroclastic cloud (an incandescent cloud of hot gases, ash and rock fragments that surges down a hill at speeds exceeding 100 mph and at temperatures raging to 475°F) emerge from an erupting volcano and commented that the wind was changing and the cloud was moving his way. There was a moment of silence and then he said, 'I think I'm going to die.' Seconds later, that's exactly what happened."[5]
Singer was awed by the tape, which made him wonder what a volcanologist really does. So he "started calling around" only to find "that about half the volcanologists I was trying to contact were dead."[5]
Singer eventually spoke to several United States Geological Survey (USGS) veterans, who had witnessed many eruptions around the world. His conclusion: "These people are the ultimate adventurers, always living on the edge. They go into situations where no sane person would go." However, Singer did not want a movie about "over-the-top thrill seekers" but rather one that offers a realistic look at the natural disaster that has been the source of great myth and fascination for thousands of years.[5]
Singer discussed his idea with screenwriter Leslie Bohem, who was writing Daylight, another Singer production for Universal. Bohem tinkered with the film's main concept until he developed a story line that both he and Singer felt had potential. The script was sold to Universal and Donaldson was brought on board to direct.[5]
Another production and filming locale was the David A. Johnston Cascades Volcano Observatory in Vancouver, Washington, and the crater rim and crater itself of Mount St. Helens. The Cascades Volcano Observatory building can be seen in a few scenes in the movie, and Mt. Adams (a 12,776-foot Cascade volcano, 35 miles east of Mt. St. Helens) can be seen in the scene where Harry's crew is deploying a piece of scientific equipment. At the end of the movie, news footage of Mt. St. Helens taken immediately after the 1980 eruption is used when the camera shot widens out to show the devastation of the town itself.
One of the biggest scenes in this movie's special effects was the scene of the mudslide breaking the dam. This was done with a 3/4 scale model of the dam and 6 million tons of water. While taking the shot of this scene, they had 7 cameras set up in four different locations (two in each location except the one at water level) to keep from having the devastating surprise of having one of the cameras not work, which would cause the crew to rebuild the dam and shoot it all over again. This scene takes up about thirty seconds of the movie, but was one of the most expensive parts of the special effects.
Many miniatures were used during the making of the movie, and were used in parts such as the collapsing highway and the cars going over the bridge being pounded by the mudslide.
The town scenes were filmed in northern Idaho's Silver Valley, in the city of Wallace.
Reception
Dante's Peak opened to generally unfavorable reviews and holds a 29% rating at RottenTomatoes.com.[6] During its opening weekend, it grossed $18,479,435 USD on 2,657 screens, and ultimately grossed $67,155,742 USD, far short of its $116,000,000 budget. However, the film broke even thanks to a strong international campaign that saved the film from a total financial loss and has since grown to obtain a cult status.
See also
References
External links
