This Hilary Swank Bomb Is One Of The Least Scientifically Accurate Sci-Fi Movies Ever

Not all disaster movies are created equal. Some can get away with preposterous yet entertaining high-concept premises that take liberties with scientific accuracy (see "Armageddon," "The Day After Tomorrow," or "Space Cowboys"), and some (like "Sphere") cannot. Jon Amiel's 2003 sci-fi-disaster flick "The Core," starring Hilary Swank and Aaron Eckhart, belongs in the latter category. Amiel's picture was among the few casualties that tried to ride the popular wave of disaster blockbusters that largely dominated the big screen in the second half of the '90s and the aughts but failed miserably. It turns out that if you attempt to feed the average moviegoer crowd a bunch of baloney, chances are you'll get called out for it.

"The Core's" plot followed a team of scientists who went on a mission to get to the center of the Earth and restart its core after it stopped spinning due to a secret government program that went awry. It's not that the film wasn't entertaining to a certain degree, characterized by those typical disaster movie tropes, but that its script was so looney tunes regarding technology and realism that the Science & Entertainment Exchange (a program backed by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences to push realistic science and tech in film and TV) called it (via The Australian) the most embarrassing and scientifically inaccurate sci-fi of all time. And that's hardly good marketing for a film that aims to draw in the biggest crowd possible. But, frankly, you didn't need to be a scientist to suss out how lunatic the plot points in this movie truly were.

In retrospect, at its best moments, "The Core" knew how ludicrous its "science narrative" was and played more like an expensive B-movie than a legitimate hard sci-fi. But back in the early aughts when disaster films weren't necessarily known for being flat-out bonkers, that wasn't always clear to the audience. There's a lot of stupid fun to be had watching this movie (which the late Roger Ebert certainly has found and appreciated) if you're crystal-clear about what to expect from it going in. But back in 2003 that just wasn't enough for "The Core" to bring in the big bucks.

Against its estimated production cost of $85 million, Amiel's film only garnered $31 million domestically and $43 million internationally, which added up to a worldwide sum of $74 million at the box office – not even breaking even. Unsurprisingly, critics and audiences were also mixed on it (the picture currently stands at 39% on Rotten Tomatoes), and other than being a massive bomb, "The Core" got pretty much forgotten in the past two decades — until it found a second life on Netflix in 2025. Still, it's hard to defend or recommend this misfire of a movie when you have numerous other disaster features from the same era that are bigger, better, and more entertaining in virtually every aspect.