Movies that showcase geology, petroleum geoscience or even fantastical rocks and worlds can be a great public education tool to help spark interest in the field geoscientists love. They appeal to those who might not otherwise have a strong interest in geology and can even serve as a fun teaching tool in classrooms (see sidebar). They also make for a fantastic evening of movie marathon debate: what did a film portray realistically about the field? Where did it stretch some aspects or go completely off course?
Whether educational or recreational, many a movie has featured geology and geoscientists over the years.
“There are many entertaining oil-related movies from the ‘40s and ‘50s especially, and they vary from well-known to some B movies that few have heard of,” said Jeff Spencer, a geologist whose collection of movie posters, inserts and promotional pieces is currently on display at the Kilgore College East Texas Oil Museum in an exhibit entitled “REEL Oil: Hollywood’s Boom of the 1940s and 1950s.” Spencer has collected oil film memorabilia for years and said the first oil movie he remembers watching was “Hellfighters.”
“My dad was a big John Wayne fan, and I watched it with him long before I knew I was going to be a geologist or in the oil industry!” he recalled.
Spencer’s exhibit will run through December, but for those interested in more recently produced or fictitious examples of geology in film, here are three movies to see and discuss:
The newer movie adaptation of Frank Herbert’s novel focuses much more on geology than the previous 1984 version. The plot is set on a fictional desert planet called Arrakis, where roving machines mine for an orange powder called the Spice Melange, which – appropriately enough – serves as an allegory for oil within the Imperium, as interstellar travel and commerce are impossible without it. The planet has no water, only erosion, but sandstones indicate the presence of rivers and oceans long ago, before the spice-producing sandworms transformed the planet into total desert. The movie, which debuted its second film in the series this year, was shot in locales including the Rub al-Khali desert in Abu Dhabi, which is the largest uninterrupted desert in the world, Wadi Rum in Jordan and Africa’s Namib Desert.
Yes, the famous franchise is full of geo nods and nuggets. Three of the planets in the “Star Wars” franchise allude to geology-related concepts: Hoth, the glacial planet; Mustafar, the lava planet; and Utapau, the sinkhole planet.
Home to the rebel base in “The Empire Strikes Back,” Hoth’s temperatures reach below minus-75 Celsius, and the planet features crystalline geysers that erupt in icy particles and water vapor. Scenes on Hoth were filmed in Finse, Norway, and battlefield scenes in the movie were shot at nearby Hardangerjøkulen Glacier. Conversely, Mustafar is a once flourishing planet that experienced hypervolcanism after a shift in orbit heated its core. The Empire mines the lava on Mustafar for mirkanite, a mineral used to make super lasers. Finally, Utapau, the locale where Obi Wan battles General Grievous, features sinkholes that formed after its subterranean oceans eroded the underside of the planet’s crust. Minerals in these sinkholes are a valuable export for the planet.
Newer “Star Wars” media also highlights kyber crystals, rare gems with a connection to the Force that allows them to amplify energy. These are used as focusing lenses for the lightsabers used by both the Jedi and the Sith. In some “Star Wars” lore, lightsaber colors reflect the user’s bond with the Force: red indicates a corrupted kyber crystal and is used by Sith or traitorous Jedi.
- “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom”
If volcanism and paleontology are your thing, this is an obvious hot spot for geo references. Forbes featured a geological review of “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom,” the fifth movie of the franchise, written by freelance geologist David Bressan. Bressan shares that the famous Isla Nublar – where dinosaurs, revived with cloning technology, roam free in an abandoned theme park – is part of an archipelago in the Pacific Ocean, west of Costa Rica. Some say that Michael Crichton, the author of the novel on which the franchise is based, used the real Isla Coca as inspiration. In the movie, the volcanic activity that supposedly created Isla Nublar enables the construction of a geothermal power plant on the northern portion of the mountains. The movie’s Mount Sibo features a couple of volcanic impossibilities, including humans outrunning a pyroclastic flow, not to mention surviving inhalation of all of the gases and ash produced in an eruption.