A few weeks ago, my son begged me to go to the movies, in an actual theatre, with actual movie popcorn. And because that movie popcorn was such a temptation, and I’m all vaccinated, I agreed and I let him choose the movie. He chose Godzilla vs. Kong, which is, I admit, not my usual fare. I do love a good action movie, and I have nothing against kaiju flicks. Pacific Rim is a masterpiece, in my opinion. But I haven’t seen a Godzilla movie since the 1990s one with Matthew Broderick. I took my father to that one, as he’s a huge Godzilla fan, and while it was not good, at least it was silly and a good time was had. So I expected about the same for this movie.

For the most part, I enjoyed the film. Look. It’s Millie Bobby Brown from Stranger Things being her most sassy as a conspiracy theorist trying to find out what is going on. That alone was worth the price of admission. Add in some good writing and great special effects, and overall, it’s perfect for hanging with your kid and watching monsters fight.

But then there was the science. And oh, I tried to get past this part, y’all. I tried. Except my eyes rolled back in my head so hard that I hurt myself. My son wanted to know what was wrong, so I whispered back two words: “Hollow Earth”.

And now, I will warn you that there are spoilers. One of the major plot points of this film is that they are trying to return Kong to the homeland of the titans, and there’s a rather disgraced scientist who believes that homeland is inside the Earth. There’s a whole gravitational field issue to deal with, the bad guys have the vehicle to survive it, yadda yadda yadda. And eventually, we find our way there. Kong, of course, being from there, just jumps right in and is fine. Everyone else has to deal with a gravitational distortion, and I was marginally okay with this idea.

Even the concept of Hollow Earth as a science fiction trope doesn’t really bother me that much. It’s been done for centuries, starting with Ludvig Holberg’s novel “Niel Klim’s Underground Travels” in 1741, through Jules Verne’s “Journey to the Center of the Earth” in 1864, to modern versions like Gears of War and the Hollow World campaign in Dungeons and Dragons.

So why was I bothered by this version? The visuals were stunning. Gravity was a bit all over the place. But it’s this subterranean, prehistoric world, and there is green vegetation everywhere. EVERYWHERE. There is no light source but for one volcano? No Sun. Nothing that should be giving plants a way to do photosynthesis. And no. I cannot. I tried. I did. Sadly, that is what broke my suspension of disbelief.

Now Hollow Earth was once a popular hypothesis. It was proven incorrect back in 1774 by the Schiehallion experiment, which was the follow-up to an early expedition. These two separate science teams climbed mountains and performed vertical deflection experiments to understand changes in gravitational attraction. Basically, you hang a pendulum and measure the angle of the plumb-bob as it is pulled by the gravity of a large body, like a mountain. By finding the pull on opposite sides, you can work your way to finding the mean density of the Earth, and they showed from all these calculations that Earth is not hollow.

Still, the trope persists, but I guess it’s not one for me. I still think the movie is worth a watch if that’s your thing.

More Information

Hollow Earth (Wikipedia)

The Hollow Earth Theory Isn’t So Funny Anymore (Wired)