Movies That Are Easy On The Brain: ‘The Core’ (2003)
Ah, yes, a secret mission to the center of the Earth
There are days when I want my intellect challenged, and there are days when I want to unscrew my head like a pickle jar, gently remove my wet brain, rest it on my lap, and watch a movie that doesn’t require any cognitive abilities.
Some movies wrestle with the complexities of the human experience. And then there‘s The Core.
The Core is a 2003 sci-fi disaster movie about a ragtag team of scientists who drill deep into the Earth's interior because the planet's molten center has stopped spinning. This is bad. The plan is all-American: Nuke the titular core until it starts spinning again.
This is not a movie that demands great concentration, which is perfect because I’ve been having problems focusing lately. Something about the collapse of society makes my head feel like it’s full of cotton candy.
So I’ve been re-watching movies that aren’t good, bad, or so-bad-they’re-good. I’ve been returning to movies that are like sweatpants or pouring syrup slowly over a couple of toasted Eggos. Movies that don’t care if I drool.
A movie that is easy on the brain is usually a big ‘ol Hollywood production. I love low-budget horror movies and eccentric independent comedies, but both require little engagement, and my siblings, I can barely engage with my toothbrush.
A movie that is easy on the brain must include a talented cast who may be too good for the dopey source material. You’ll know a movie is easy on the brain when an excellent actor has to explain the plot, and that plot makes no sense. A movie that is easy on the brain is a movie that is content to sit with you in a room and tell you a story about beautiful people and explosions.
The Core is all of this. It is a very good ‘b-movie.’ Do you know what the ‘b’ in ‘b-movie’ stands for? It’s from the 1950s when double features were popular. The first movie would always be the hits, and the second feature, the one at the bottom, was always a less-publicized low-budget flick. Well, for a movie like The Core, the ‘b’ in ‘b-movie’ should stand for ‘big-budget’ and ‘boom’ and ‘brainless.’
Do you want more? But not too much more? Okey-dokey: The Core also serves up cutting-edge turn-of-the-century CGI effects. There’s a lot of excellent lava, for example. It’s patriotic without being too patriotic. Like many Hollywood movies of the distant and near past, The Core suggests the Federal government knows what it’s doing. When a general is told the Earth is broken, his response is well, how do we fix it?
LOL! And the answer? With science!
The year of our Lord 2003 was a cultural dead zone, an awkward moment in history that still clung to the casual optimism of the 1990s. The Core has it all: turtlenecks, tiny sunglasses, and chunky computer keyboards. The turn-of-the-century technology on display is actually comforting. I mean, watch it just for the haircuts.
There was a slew of disaster movies made during the late ’90s and early aughts. The best included 1998’s Armageddon and Deep Impact, both amazing death from space movies. And who can forget 2004’s The Day After Tomorrow, the disaster movie where our heroes can outrun the cold? But The Core beats them all because The Core is completely unbelievable.
And you won’t care.
Do you want a great cast? Playing unbelievable characters? How about Stanley Tucci playing a flamboyant, chain-smoking celebrity scientist? Or Academy Award-winning actress Hillary Swank as a swaggering space shuttle astronaut who is a genius at piloting the movies’ real star: a sort of indestructible submarine/locomotive that can bore through rock with lasers. The Core also stars Aaron Eckhart, a wholesome loaf of man. He is all eye twinkles and chin dimples. Eckhart plays a geophysicist, and dammit, he’s the cutest geophysicist ever. [He plays the world's greatest shark wrangler in the mutant shark flick Deep Blue Sea.]
The Core has some scary scenes. As I rewatched it, I wondered if I wanted to watch a disaster movie while monster hurricanes are brewing in the Gulf. But it is fun to escape into cartoonish mayhem.
There's a scene where all of Rome is destroyed by lightning because that’s a thing that would happen if Earth’s molten core stopped spinning. Apparently. Hey, at least we’re not dealing with random catastrophic lightning storms that can make buildings explode, right? The Core wanted to make geology popular the way Jurassic Park made paleontology look cool. It didn’t work, but the movie has some really interesting rock talk.
Here is some fun movie nerd trivia: The drilling vehicle is made of a fictional unbreakable metal called “unobtanium.” That’s the same substance that drives the plot of James Cameron’s legendary sci-fi epic Avatar—the evil corporation is strip-mining the alien moon Pandora for unobtanium. Anyway, when was the last time you watched Avatar or Avatar: The Way Of Water? They’re both so weird and beautiful—smurf cats and space dragons fighting robot marines! Both of those movies are also easy on the brain.
So look: Watch The Core on Pluto. Think of it as a way of traveling into the future. You will watch the opening disaster scene, and then, before you know it, two hours and 15 minutes will have passed. Isn’t that wonderful?
What are some of your favorite movies that are easy on the brain? Let me know in the comments. I need something to watch tonight.