Last night, tired of the endless depressing, appalling, horrible news from around the world, Garry played a movie he had previously taped.
San Andreas Fault, is not merely a disaster film. It is every disaster film you have ever seen in one single showing. It’s earthquakes that will turn Kansas into the Pacific beach capital of the nation. It’s crashing buildings, towering infernos, the hugest omigod tsunamis. We get to see the bravest heroes and most craven cowardice.
It’s all there. Every cliché from every disaster movie made in this and the previous century which numbers quite a few and I’m pretty sure we’ve seen all of them. But we’d never seen this one before. I think it was originally filmed in 3D. Everyone said it was drivel, but it made more than $300,000 million at the box office, so clearly drivel sells very well.
It certainly sold well at our house last night. When the intended second husband of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson‘s wife (Carla Gugino) played by Ioan Gruffudd (aka “The Asshole”) abandons Rock’s daughter to her fate, trapped under fallen cement in a parking garage, it’s no less than you expect from the cowardly CEO of a major corporation.
By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia
We know they are cowards because … well …that’s what they always do in the movies, right? Have you ever seen a brave, manly CEO stand up to anyone or anything outside a boardroom? Especially when they are trying to marry the hero’s ex-wife who we all know should be with the hero. Even though The Hero can’t utter a coherent sentence (and probably hasn’t since he came back from The War (insert name of war here), he’s a hero (with medals to prove it) and would never run, not even when a million tons of water and a complete cruise ship is about to fall on his head.
So. Finally. The family reconnects. The entire west coast is smoldering ruins covered by about half the Pacific Ocean. There isn’t a bridge, a building … nothing. Total, absolute devastation everywhere.
Garry is giggling to himself. Because he knows. I know. We both know. It’s coming.
The Rock, arm around his wife, his daughter saved, is gazing over the wreckage of the world and Garry murmurs … “Now, we rebuild.”
Beat. Beat. Beat. Pause.
And THEN The Rock says: “Now, we rebuild.”
Garry collapsed into laughter. The last time he laughed that much was when Trevor Noah had Ben Carson on the show and Trevor did a better Ben Carson than Ben Carson. Garry was still howling while the credits rolled.
A perfect ending.
We’d seen the world end. We’d see the best, the bravest. The worst. We’d seen the most depraved cowardice imaginable and in HD wide-screen.
But now, we rebuild. We have to rebuild … because … SAN ANDREAS 2 is coming! As the headline says, this will finally allow The Rock to punch an earthquake. No cowardice there!
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Categories: Humor, Movie Review, Movies
SERENDIPITY: SEEKING INTELLIGENT LIFE ON EARTH 
Thanks – I avoided this one because of the crit but I think I’ll watch it now! To be honest, I’ll watch anything that has either global disasters or zombies. Preferably both!
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The ONLY thing it lacks is zombies. Maybe in v2.0.
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They could come boiling out of the fault line…
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I’ll take disasters over Zombies. Give me a western disaster movie and I’m in heaven.
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🙂
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I miss hearing about a lot of movies, and this must have been one of them. I do hope the sequel will be about the rebuilding… they never show the rebuilding, it just seems to happen out of nowhere in between movies.
One of my friends from the other place I hang out who knows a thing or two about science thinks that the most likely place for an earthquake disaster is not California, but the Pacific Northwest. They have the same fault issues as CA, but are nowhere near as prepped for a major earthquake as California is. Of course, Yellowstone could also go at any minute and take half of the country with it…
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Kansas beaches, here we come!
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Squirrel, during my working days I covered lots of disasters including the annual New England shore line flooding. We knew exactly which streets and roads would be hammered hardest by the waves surging over “protective” walls.
We knew which homes would be destroyed.
I’d approach the owners with a poker face and ask the usual questions. I usually ended the interviews with a solemn “what now?”.
I silently mouthed the words — as they answered — “We’re not going anywhere..we’re gonna rebuild!”
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Sounds like the same story here every time the Mississippi River floods. They don’t care if they’ll ever be able to buy flood insurance again… they’re gonna rebuild so we can feel sorry for them again the next time!
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Garry used to hear that a lot as a reporter covering floods. “Oh, we’ve been flooded out three times before, but we’re just gonna do it again because we love it here.”
How come the insurance keeps paying off? I can barely get them to fix anything for any reason, but these people keep having the homes washed away and that’s okay?
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I haven’t seen the movie but can assume it’s Hollywood big effects big time. As for earthquakes I arrived after the 1989 one and witnessed the damages (took years and years to repair some sections of the highway) but over all my years in CA I’ve only felt tremors (hangers rattling in the closets, things like that.) I’m not really looking forward to one, but we seem to be more prone to wild fire now that anything else.
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The movie was a special effects extravaganza. What made it special was that they did not merely embrace cliches, but leapt upon them with a level of enthusiasm rarely seen — even in Hollywood. NO cliche was left behind.
As for reality … que sera, right? I personally would not choose to live on an active earthquake fault … or on the slopes of a volcano. On on a flood plain. Call me crazy, but I just feel that’s tempting fate a bit blatently.
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I remember seeing a trailer for that movie and decided it would not be my cup of tea. It wasn’t meant to be a parody was it?
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Garry thinks they meant to be serious. I’m not so sure. I’m surprised they could keep a straight face with that dialogue. Surely they knew it was funny. In any case, intentional or not, it’s hilarious.
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We’ve had a few earth quakes that rattled the dishes but that was as bad as it got.
Leslie
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We’ve had a few of them right here in Massachusetts. Old, mostly inactive, but there are fault lines everywhere.
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Yes they seem to be a fairly common factor.
Leslie
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I used to live right above San Francisco and we were pretty blasé about the whole earthquake thing. If it comes, it comes. If not, why worry about it? It’s not like we can stop it from coming. You know?
I was there in 1989 when the earthquake interrupted the A’s and the Giants in the World Series and collapsed highways all over the Bay Area. The fact that the A’s and the Giants were playing at Candlestick Park saved thousands of lives. People went home early. If they hadn’t those highways would have been packed with commuters. Pure. Dumb. Luck.
But like I said, can’t stop the earthquakes from happening. Now I live in an area that’s surrounded by active volcanoes… and we get earthquakes. Ha!
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I was in Oakland for that one and I missed being one of those cars under the collapsed highway by a hairsbreadth. I also missed being on one of the airplanes crashed into the World Trade Center on 9/11 by an upset stomach and ensuing delay of plans. In the end, we will all die of something. But I would prefer to NOT live on an active earthquake fault. It would make me nervous and I’m quite nervous enough as it is.
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While the experts reassure Californians by saying it’s not coming now, there are always doomsayers who say every little quake is a precursor to “The Big One.” I think I’m glad I didn’t see this movie — I prefer to believe that there will be a “big one,” with major local damage and devastation, but nothing as widespread as is described above. My preparation: periodically I lay in some water to keep me going for a few days, but I’m quite likely to be unable to reach my stash. Having said that, we’ve recently had a lot of little quakes (<1,0) that can't be felt but are either building or releasing pressure underneath us along the San Andreas Fault!
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Movies like this remind me that I really don’t want to live on a lively earthquake fault … even if the weather and the view are perfect. This movie is SO over the top. It’s a vehicle for special effects. Period. And as such, it’s pretty good. Could it happen? Really? Well a meteor could hit the earth too … but I’m not going to lose sleep over it. Not yet, anyway.
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I don’t take the real life disasters lightly. Not with all that’s happening these days.
It’s just the wonderfulness of this homage to disaster movies. They don’t waste any time building the plot or the characters. No sub plots to play out except for the cowardly boyfriend (Richard Chamberlain in “The Towering Inferno”) who is ultimately outed in classic disaster film style. What I miss is the collection of fading super stars in supporting roles. We used to fret about who would survive and who would die? We no longer have Fred Astaire (with nice hair piece), Jennifer Jones, George Kennedy, Red Buttons, Ernie Borgnine, Shelley Winters, Leslie Nielsen, Peter Graves, Gloria Swanson, Henry Fonda, etc to play at our heart strings as the earth trembles and the sky falls. We don’t have Steve McQueen and Paul Newman to save everyone with dazzling heroics. Still, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson offers a workman like performance as the hero.
I apologize for laughing at the fade out line.
Nearer My God To Thee.
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