Journey to the Center of the Earth (2008)

On a quest to find out what happened to his missing brother, a scientist, his nephew and their mountain guide discover a fantastic and dangerous lost world in the center of the earth.

Director:

Eric Brevig

Writers:

Michael D. Weiss (screenplay), Jennifer Flackett (screenplay),

Stars:

Brendan Fraser, Josh Hutcherson, Anita Briem

1 win & 3 nominations.

Cast

Complete credited cast:
Brendan Fraser	...	Trevor Anderson
Josh Hutcherson	...	Sean Anderson
Anita Briem	...	Hannah Ásgeirsson
Seth Meyers	...	Professor Alan Kitzens
Jean Michel Paré	...	Max Anderson
Jane Wheeler	...	Elizabeth
Frank Fontaine	...	Old Man
Giancarlo Caltabiano	...	Leonard
Kaniehtiio Horn	...	Gum-Chewing Girl
Garth Gilker	...	Sigurbjörn Ásgeirsson

Storyline

Professor Trevor Anderson receives his teenager nephew Sean Anderson. He will spend ten days with his uncle while his mother, Elizabeth, prepares to move to Canada. She gives a box to Trevor that belonged to his missing brother, Max, and Trevor finds a book with references to the last journey of his brother. He decides to follow the steps of Max with Sean and they travel to Iceland, where they meet the guide Hannah Ásgeirsson. While climbing a mountain, there is a thunderstorm and they protect themselves in a cave. However, a lightening collapses the entrance and the trio is trapped in the cave. They seek an exit and falls in a hole, discovering a lost world in the center of the Earth.

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Plot Keywords:

lost world | cave | guide | mountain | missing brother | 

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Taglines:

Same Planet. Different World.

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Genres:

Action | Adventure | Family | Fantasy | Sci-Fi

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Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated PG for intense adventure action and some scary moments

Details

Official Sites:

Metropolitan Films [fr] New Line Cinema [us]

Country:

USA

Language:

English Icelandic Italian

Release Date:

11 July 2008 (USA)

Also Known As:

Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D

Filming Locations:

Cité du Cinéma, Montréal, Québec, Canada

Box Office

Budget:

$45,000,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend:

£953,878 (UK) (11 July 2008)

Gross:

$101,702,060 (USA) (5 December 2008)

Company Credits

Production Co:

New Line Cinema, Walden Media

Technical Specs

Runtime:

93 min

Sound Mix:

SDDS Dolby Digital DTS

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

When Trevor opens the box of stuff belonging to his lost brother, he pulls out an odd wooden item, declares that he doesn't know what it is, and sets it aside. The item is a Holmes Stereoscope, a device designed in 1861 by the American physician and writer, Oliver Wendell Holmes, for the viewing of so-called "stereocards". A stereocard is like a postcard which has a Left-view and Right-view photograph mounted alongside one another. When viewed through this stereoscope, the photographs are merged into one 3-D image (which was later adopted for the ViewMaster viewers and cards). The Holmes Stereoscope was a great source of entertainment in the Victorian era. It was, in a sense, the Home Entertainment Centre of its day, as it transported its users to exotic places all over the world. People bought packs of stereocards for their entertainment - in much the same way as we buy DVDs today! (Thus, a character in a 3-D movie having no idea what a stereoscope is, makes for a cute little 3-D in-joke...)

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Goofs

Sean walks across a chasm on magnetic rocks that float on a horizontal plane and bump off one another like bits of flat wood. Magnetic poles either attract or repel, so the rocks should either snap together or repel from one another, spin, then snap together. Even if large, flat magnetic rocks somehow found a natural equilibrium between their weight and magnetism, the weight of a person walking on them would destroy it.

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Quotes

[from trailer]
Trevor: [in complete awe] Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the center of the Earth.

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Crazy Credits

The film begins with the sound of a T-Rex walking, which causes the New Line and Walden Media company logos to vibrate slightly.

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Connections

References Jurassic Park III (2001)

User Reviews

Silly, but surprisingly enjoyable anyway

The reviewers of "Journey" are probably all correct: the logic is spotty, the premise is silly, and the requirement of the audience to suspend disbelief is beyond a typically successful film. However, despite all of that, I liked it! I went to see it because in my small town the offerings are rather slim, and I had seen everything else (is it me, or did this summer's films seem a bit clichéd and lame?).

Brendan Fraser has always been a great actor, with an agreeable presence. That he was the star here helped a lot. As did the newcomer actor, the Icelandic lady- Anita Briem. Somehow, one never seems to think of film stars as coming from Iceland. But she is comely and interesting to watch, and she looked good with Fraser. The supporting cast (and there wasn't much of them, as it was mostly CGI stuff, and not really populated with many humans, except for brief appearances) was also adequate, albeit they had little to do.

Overall, then, this was science fiction with an emphasis on the "fiction." Little here was even remotely believable. Yet taken together, it made an interesting visual contemplation of "what if?" and an enjoyable couple of hours at the cinema (for example, the characters free-fall to the "center of the earth," which would be 4,000 MILES down. Allowing for the rather slap-dash explanation of "magma envelopes" and all, we are nonetheless asked to believe they fell thousands of miles in a few seconds. The lava tube they fell down, fake as it was, was kind of evocative--- it did bring to mind a sense of mystery, and the powers of nature that are WAY beyond our everyday experiences, even if it was rather silly).

Oh, BTW, an obvious logic flaw--- if there really was a magma envelope surrounding the interior ocean and lush tropical paradise--- why didn't the free-fall take them through that, it being a sphere and all? Don't even think about it! Just enjoy the fairy tale.