Entertainment
Netflix’s Forgotten Disaster Movie Has The Hottest Icons Of The ‘90s
By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
The ‘90s were filled with so many crazy blockbuster films that it’s easy for many of them to fall into our collective pop culture memory hole. For example, did you know this decade featured an over-the-top natural disaster movie starring the biggest names from the James Bond and Terminator franchises? The film in question is Dante’s Peak (1997), starring Pierce Brosnan and Linda Hamilton, and you can now stream this forgotten blockbuster film on Netflix.
The premise of Dante’s Peak is that a volcanologist is sent to explore a town in Washington (the titular Dante’s Peak), which is right next to a stratovolcano. While he tries to figure out what is going on with this town (including multiple mysterious deaths and a contaminated water supply), an earthquake causes the aforementioned volcano to explode. This expert is suddenly thrust into a race for his life, and he may be the only one who can save everyone before it is too late and their town is completely engulfed in lava.
When Franchise Worlds Collide
The cast of Dante’s Peak includes some great character actors, including Jamie Renée Smith (best known for Hidden Canyons) and Charles Hallahan (best known outside this movie for The Thing). However, the real draw of the film is Pierce Brosnan (best known for his James Bond films) as a rugged volcano expert whose esoteric knowledge is all that stands between a tiny town and certain death. Meanwhile, Linda Hamilton (best known for her Terminator films) plays a hands-on mayor whose willingness to trust an outside may or may not be enough to save her constituents from a fiery fate.
Dante’s Peak wasn’t a box office bomb, but it didn’t exactly set moviegoers on fire when it first hit theaters. Against a blockbuster budget of $116 million, the movie earned $178.1 million. That’s not exactly box office bomb territory, but the studio was hoping for a larger profit, and the fact that this ambitious film couldn’t even crack $200 million is a big part of why we never got a sequel.
Critics Were Neither Shaken Nor Stirred
When Dante’s Peak came out, many reviewers thought it was more of a disaster than a disaster film. On Rotten Tomatoes, it has a rating of 30 percent, with critics claiming that the dialogue and characterization are poor but that the movie is pretty solid once all hell is breaking loose. That was the general consensus of Siskel and Ebert, who each gave the film two and a half stars, while the former (who claimed “the movie really starts to cook” after the volcano erupts) sarcastically asked, “can I recommend half of a movie?”
So, before you blow your top like a volcano, I need to answer the obvious question: why should you watch a movie that disappointed at the box office and that critics generally hated? First of all, I agree with Siskel and Ebert’s take that this movie gets downright compelling after the volcano explodes. This leaves us with nearly an hour of witnessing nature’s fiery wrath, and if you like natural disaster movies for the “disaster” part, Dante’s Peak is a movie that delivers in spades.
A Cast That Knows How To Have Fun
Additionally, natural disaster movies have something in common with horror movies: they are more enjoyable when you actually like the various everyman characters who must stare death in the face. In Dante’s Peak, those characters are played by ‘90s action icons Pierce Brosnan and Linda Hamilton, two seriously attractive actors with charisma to spare. Even when the writing in this forgotten thriller falls flat, you are left with smart, sexy characters and killer special effects, all of which add up to some serious spectacle.
At the end of the day, spectacle is the main reason to watch Dante’s Peak: it’s got all the cheesy pomp and explosive circumstance that you’d expect from a natural disaster movie. I personally found Pierce Brosnan and Linda Hamilton quite entertaining in this film, and they have an easy chemistry that helps to animate their many shared scenes. Even if you hate these characters, though, you’ll be entertained by the vivid special effects that have held up surprisingly well and look so much better than anything you’ll get from a modern made-for-streaming movie.
Will you agree that it’s worth climbing Dante’s Peak, or is this one natural disaster opus that you’d rather leave in the past? The only way to find out is to grab your remote and stream this forgotten blockbuster on Netflix. If nothing else, this movie is the perfect excuse to turn your living room into a game you haven’t played since childhood: The Floor Is Lava.
