Dante's Peak vs Volcano | Film Face Off

I’ve been wanting to try a new review format for movies with a particular angle in mind. I often create and abandon formats because the idea works for only a few situations, but it can be a fun experiment nonetheless. This particular format would be doing what I often do in my reviews but more deliberately: compare and contrast. I figured a good place to start would be with two movies that were in direct competition with one another when they were released to theaters in 1997.

While it’s far less common these days, there would be times when certain movies would compete at the box office over the same audience with a similar topic. I’m not talking about something like Barbenheimer, which was a phenomenon of recent years in which two very different movies competed at the box office over separate audiences. I’m talking about movies that fit into the same genre or have so many similarities, that you wonder if the same writers were involved in some way or another. In the 1990s, we had movies like Dante’s Peak and Volcano coming out within three months of each other about the same thing. I saw both in theaters as a kid and I had a particular preference between the two at the time, but I hadn’t seen either of them since then. One day recently, however, I saw that both were on streaming and my lady had seen neither. What better excuse to go down memory lane with a volcano movie double feature?

Dante’s Peak (1997)

Pros

Practical effects still look good
Solid musical score
Decent story involving the main characters

Cons

Reaching for drama when not much is happening
Volcano action does not start until well past the halfway mark
Cliches abound
The thickest of plot armor
Dumb characters are dumb
Questionable editing and digital effects
Really bad dialogue in spots

Synopsis

Expert volcanologist Harry Dalton (Pierce Brosnan) is sent to the small Washington town of Dante’s Peak to investigate some recent readings of the dormant volcano that overshadows it. He hits it off quickly with the mayor Rachel Wando (Linda Hamilton) who somehow finds time to be the mayor, the sole employee of a cafe & hardware store, and a mother of two young children. Harry sees plenty of signs that the volcano is coming out of its dormancy and wants to raise the alarm, but his boss Paul (Charles Hallahan) is concerned that doing so would ruin the tourism of the town and bankrupt it, with which the various members of the city council agree. Harry concedes his desire to put the town on alert but continues to voice his concern as he and his team of volcanologists continue to investigate. During his stay, his relationship with Rachel and the volcano’s activity continue to intensify until finally the titular peak blows its top and destruction ensues. It’s then a race against time to get out of town before everyone and everything gets wiped out.

Volcano (1997)

Pros

LA suffers a lot of destruction
Volcano activity starts early to keep the pacing up
Brutal deaths

Cons

Digital effects have aged poorly
Volcano is less impressive and lava only looks good some of the time
Cliches abound
The thickest of plot armor
80% of the movie is Tommy Lee Jones yelling
Lots of needless sub-plots and side characters
Cheesy scenes to combat racism
Dumb characters and dumb dialogue
Solution to combating volcano seems incomplete

Synopsis

Mike Roark (Tommy Lee Jones) is the head of Los Angeles’ Office of Emergency Management and is determined to handle every disaster as it comes up. Lucky for him one earthquake after another keeps happening to keep him busy. Unbeknownst to him and the rest of the residents of the city, it isn’t just the usual rumblings of the San Andreas fault, but some magma is bubbling under the surface looking to get out. Roark has to juggle being a good dad to his teenage daughter while also trying to find quick solutions to each new disaster that comes up as a volcano begins to form under the city’s surface. The local geologist Dr. Amy Barnes (Anne Heche) provides colorful input to the situation by informing Roark about the way the volcano is behaving and where it’s likely to strike next as the two of them work together to solve this massive problem. Also, there are twenty other sub-plots going on at the same time involving a real estate mogul, victims of the volcano who have been displaced, doctors treating the victims, employees at the Office of Emergency Management, a subway train that gets trapped, and so on.

With all that out of the way, let’s do the big comparisons before we announce a winner.

Characters & Dialogue

If a movie were to win points for having more characters, Volcano would win between the two because of the number of side characters that have more impact and importance than a singular line of dialogue. However, more does not always mean better. Volcano has too many characters to develop over its runtime and none of them come out as being deep or interesting by the end. Tommy Lee Jones’ character is just a walking shouting man of action who gets to emote about his daughter every once in a while, but that’s about it. Anne Heche is the other main character, but she’s more annoying than interesting. The rest of the cast is mostly forgettable with Don Cheadle being the exception as the smartass who bounces off of Jones.

Dante’s Peak wins on this front for dedicating a lot more time and energy to its main characters as it injects a love story between the two. That isn’t to say that the characters are much better than in Volcano because they’re all pretty one-dimensional archetypes. However, since there are far fewer characters to keep track of, they’re more memorable. It doesn’t help that Dante’s Peak has some really cringe-inducing dialogue. There’s a section in the film when all of the volcanologist team is more actively involved in what’s going on and all their “personalities” are on display with multiple scenes trying to make them seem funny or quirky. However, the dumbest line of the film comes from Linda Hamilton’s Rachel when she is escaping with her family and Harry on the lake of acid. I do not recall if this is 100% accurate to the words, but she essentially says “Acid eats metal” after Harry announces the lava has turned the lake into acid as though the audience wouldn’t be able to figure out the characters are in danger. It’s such a dumb line, I almost want to give Volcano the point.

When it comes to characters, Dante’s Peak wins despite the cringe team of scientists. When it comes to dialogue, it’s a closer race between the two, but Volcano is no masterpiece of character interactions either as there are some pretty dumb lines as well. So, I have to give a point to Dante’s Peak.

Plot & Pacing

I am biased towards Dante’s Peak in terms of plot simply because it mimics some of the same qualities from my favorite shark movie, Jaws. There’s the hero character who knows more than most and who just wants to protect the people and do the right thing but he gets prevented by his superiors and bureaucrats who are more concerned about keeping the tourism money flowing in their town. The downside of this movie’s plot, however, is that the pacing is relatively slow. A lot of time is spent developing the characters, which is fine, but there’s not enough going on to keep the movie flowing. This is why there are scenes injected into the first two acts to try to keep the drama and suspense up for audiences not to fall asleep.

Volcano is more unique in its own regard for focusing more on the ongoing disaster and how characters adjust and react to the events that are actively unfolding. The initial eruption happens much earlier in the movie and the movie does not slow down after it. As a result, there’s a lot more action and drama scattered throughout the whole runtime.

I prefer the plot of Dante’s Peak as it allows for more meaningful interactions with characters that are more than just background noise. However, I cannot deny that the main spectacle of the movie does not start doing much until the third act, which makes the scenes in which the movie tries to add suspense that much more obviously bad. Volcano has better pacing and gets things going much earlier. I also somewhat appreciate the attempts Volcano makes at all the different departments of a city reacting to a disaster, providing different perspectives on the situation. Despite my biases and preferences, I’m going to give the point to Volcano on this one.

Soundtrack

Volcano may have the score of Alan Silvestri, who has contributed some truly memorable music to classic movies, but this isn’t his best work. He may have been phoning this one in because I cannot recall any of the music from Volcano as anything other than generic. Dante’s Peak, however, has a very memorable theme to it and has a lot of drama and emotion to make it far more memorable. This is an easy win for Dante’s Peak.

Special Effects & Destruction

This will be another easy win for Dante’s Peak. Despite both movies having special effects that have aged poorly due to using digital effects from the 1990s, Volcano relied less on practical effects for its destruction and it shows. Dante’s Peak used a lot of practical effects and miniatures to film its destruction. Sure, there are some scenes in which the digital imposing of the volcano and its eruption do not look good. There are moments where you can see how some questionable editing choices were made to have an impact on the moment. However, when comparing the two films side by side, there’s no real competition between them.

Other Details

Perhaps where the two movies are in the closest battle is in which one is more cringe-inducing. The weak attempts in Dante’s Peak to inject drama into a scene are pretty bad, along with the frequent cliches and conveniences in the plot. Meanwhile, Volcano has scenes in which it has to make some commentary on racism in America that are pretty cheesy. Depending on your preference for something goofy and stupid, this could be a positive or a negative. My biases prevent me from giving a point to either because I certainly laughed at both.

I will, however, give the nod to Volcano for taking a different approach to its plot and showing the perspectives of various emergency offices in a city handling a disaster. It’s a little more unique than the usual plotline that Dante’s Peak does. That being said, I still appreciate the attempt at romance in Dante’s Peak. So, I guess this section just comes out to a tie.

Winner: Dante’s Peak

Despite Volcano having better pacing and fewer cringe-inducing lines of dialogue, and even though it defeats racism, Dante’s Peak comes out being the better disaster movie. The characters are more compelling. The effects hold up better. The music and drama are more memorable. It may be cliche and follows the same familiar formula as other disaster or animal attack movies, but I’ll take the disaster movie starring James Bond over the movie that has Tommy Lee Jones yelling for 90% of it.

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