Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.

So, yesterday Harry ran a review by Darth Siskel, a guy I’ve known ever since I met him in line on the opening day of THE PHANTOM MENACE outside the Mann’s Chinese. We weren’t the lunatics who were out there for a month. We were just the lunatics who were out there for 18 hours or so. Darth Siskel didn’t seem terribly fond of THE CORE, and Harry made some cracks about it in his intro.

Cracks that evidently chapped the ass of John Rogers, the screenwriter of the film.

In the interest of fairness, I decided to run John’s response intact. I met him this past year at the San Diego ComiCon, and he seemed like a good guy in the little bit of time we had to talk. He makes his points well, too, so check this out...

Why did I bother?

I don't "claim" it's true. It's not like I'm a nutjob in a shack with tinfoil on my head "claiming" that I've come up with some theory on how the earth works. I "stated" it was true. Because it is true. Thanks for the cheap fucking shot after I tried to be reasonable and constructive.

And the mocking may have been more effective if you'd spelled "physicist" correctly.

A five minute trip to any online encyclopedia source (either MSN Encarta or the Britannica service) would let you know that the model of the Earth's Core I used for the movie is correct. The Core does indeed spin, slightly faster than the Earth itself. The EM Field is produced by the Core, and when the direction of the flow reverses the poles shift. The Earth is built for that sort of process, that's why when the Core flow stops (I used "altered" in the script, but it was too vague for the suits) the Earth doesn't tear apart immediately and/or the EM Field doesn't just collapse, as DarthSiskel assumed would happen in his review. All the facts, temperatures, and pressures for the layers of the Earth are to the best known value.

The "gem bubble" the ship gets caught in is based on an actual geological formation. The largest one across is one mile, but that's all we've found close to the surface. A larger size is a fair extrapolation.

The systems of the ship are all based on real-world techs, from the ultrasonic/laser digging beam based on the medical technology used to break up kidney stones, to the MRI/video guidance screens. Even the shell of the ship is based on a real, experimental molecule. The Zimsky device is based on research the Nazis did in the '40's.

Okay, you got me on the Coliseum blowing up. It should have been just collapsing from the repeated lightning strikes, but it blows up. Sorry for the FX guys having a little fun there.

The nose cone of the Virgil returns to the surface by riding the magma flows within the crust, which are travelling at an accelerated rate because of the Core restart. They don't need a drill because they're travelling WITH the current through pre-existing channels. It takes them longer than ten minutes to return - that time passage is covered in a subtitle. I'd run through how everything Darth mentions is actually fully explained in the script, but I'm already verging on petty, so I'll move on.

The nice folks at WIRED magazine have decided our science is pretty sound. You can check out their brief article about the movie's tech in their online "PLAY" section, or in November's issue.

Of course, you couldn't be bothered to take that five minute trip through some actual reading before deciding, somehow, despite that you pretty obviously have no bloody idea how the Earth works, that the science in the movie was bullshit. Pointing out that Hollywood made another lazy science movie suited your opinion, so you accused the writers of being lazy.

Thanks. Three goddamn years of working, FIGHTING, to get rid of the fucking dinosaurs, magma-walks in "space-suits", bullshit-sci-crap sources for the Earth's crisis, a fucking WINDSHIELD at one point (think about it), all the while thinking "I love sci-fi. Sci fi has suffered too many bad-science movies. It's my responsibility to my fellow sci-fi fans to make sure the science is as close as I can get it." All so some guys who enjoy the power trip of snark can toss it out the window without ever thinking "Hey, you know maybe, just POSSIBLY, as I know jackshit about this, this could all be right."

No problem with warp drive, alien species who can't open a kitchen door, or a living liquid planet-god. But an improbable equation for semi-solid fluid dynamics, you're the logic cops.

There are a scrum of guys out here in LaLa Land who love genre films, some writers, some directors, hell even some suits. We're fighting every day to try to make half-way decent stuff. Sure, sometimes we don't get there. But we work our asses off behind the scenes, trying like hell, always remembering the fellow fanboys out there, and unlike some people actually trying to make stuff.

Darth's implied criticism of the film itself - he didn't connect with the characters, he felt some aspects were rushed - okay. I don't agree with him, but perfectly that's valid. You don't like the characters, the plot points, the ideas, didn't think exposition was clear, hell the names, anything about the writing - fine. That's your opinion, that's what the forum's for.

But the ridicule is all based on the assumption that the science is crap. That assumption is unfounded.

I know this is futile. I honestly don't expect you to print this unedited. I don't really care about a bunch of guys sitting in their underwear in their basements taking time off from their on-line stroke photos of Jessica Alba to bash something because they're ignorant. I hate to even dignify this with a reply. But some small part of me hates to see all that time and work get dismissed without even a tiny bit of shame on your part for being arrogant, condescending, and above all, dead wrong.

I just had to get this off my chest. I don't mind sarcasm. Traded that card myself often enough. But ignorant, lazy sarcasm ... if good science in a science fiction movie isn't rewarded with even nominal, polite respect before you go on to trash the movie, why the FUCK ARE WE EVEN BOTHERING?!