Geology...in Films!

For those of you that don’t know it, today was the release date for The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug which may not be everybody’s cup of tea (it certainly is mine), but no matter what your kind of movie is, I bet that somewhere in it there is geology.

This isn’t the first time this has crossed my mind but I thought seeing as I am doing a blog, now would be a good time to mention it.

Geology is in films. And I don’t meant films about geology like Iain Stewart on TV, I mean films about the hero that goes on a journey and ends up saving the day, or a film where a serial killer is on the loose trying to kill the main character because “he knows too much”.

I couldn’t help but notice the scene in Due Date which is set in the spectacular Grand Canyon in America and you can see the horizontal bedding which has been exposed because of the river cutting a valley don through the geology.

A lot of epic films like Lord of the Rings have scenes which zoom out and show epic scenes of natural beauty. Sometimes people even sort this out when picking a film to watch, which is why review website IMDb has a section specifically for ‘Films Featuring Natural Scenic Beauty’. Looking through the list the first few I recognise are Lord of the Rings, The Sound of Music and Stardust but there are many more which contain scenes of geology. To be honest, most films which have an element of the outdoors or nature in probably have geology in there somewhere.

Sometimes rocks are even important objects in films, for instance Harry Potter and the Philosphers Stone. Granted it’s not quite the same as that rock was created by people not nature but the principle is there.

Or for anyone that watches or has read A Game of Thrones, the blade made out of dragon glass used for killing White Walkers is actually obsidian! Which is basically glass which cools very quickly when erupted from a volcano!

So I implore you to take a look next time you are watching a film, and see if there are any cool looking rock outcrops or props that link to geology.

Happy reading!